Out of the shadows
HETTA HOWES welcomes a centuries-spanning study that rescues women’s lives from the margins of history
Unquiet Women: From the Dusk of the Roman Empire to the Dawn of the Enlightenment by Max Adams Head of Zeus, 288 pages, £20
In Alan Bennett’s popular play The History Boys, a teacher describes the effect of using compound adjectives in writing. Putting “un” in front of a noun or verb, he explains, creates a turn of phrase that brings with it “a sense of not sharing. Of being out of it […] Not being in the swim.” It is exactly this sense of “being out of it” that Max Adams’s latest book, Unquiet Women, confronts. The scarcity or marginalisation of women’s stories in history is due, he suggests, not just to a paucity of material but to neglect. As the 18th-century author Mary Astell famously wrote: “Since the men being the historians, they seldom condescend to record the great and good actions of women.” The stories are there to be found, Adams reminds us, but they are kept to one side – out of the swim – because they tend to complicate the sweeping narratives of grand change favoured by many male historians.
Unquiet Women seeks to redress this imbalance by gathering together a huge number of women’s stories Adams has uncovered over the course of his historian’s career. It is an eclectic and global mix, but the common thread is an “unquiet spirit of curiosity and creativity”, a restlessness and refusal to accept fate that may not always be obtrusive but is certainly not quiet. From Trota of Salerno, a medieval medic who produced one of the first treatises to document cures for gynaecological issues, to Artemisia Gentileschi, an Italian artist who endured torture in order to bring her rapist to conviction (and then used her evocative work as a form of revenge), the pages of this collection are full of women who were not quiet in their own day, but whose stories have been gathering dust in the 21st century.
And while many of these stories are representative of women’s experience in patriarchal societies, Unquiet Women is also careful to record more hopeful moments in history. One particularly grisly example relates to the establishment of women’s rights in Ireland, with a document called the Cáin Adomnáin. This protected women from a variety of dangers – from their involvement in warfare to sexual harassment – and boasted an impressive list of witnesses.
According to legend, the document came about because Ronnat – the mother of a celebrated abbot, Adomnán, in the seventh century – tortured him for four years until he agreed to free women from their part in warfare and “the bondage of the cauldron”. After eight months deprived of food, and three years imprisoned in a stone chest while worms devoured his tongue, Adomnán was released and created the Cáin Adomnáin, the first laws for
The scarcity of women’s stories is due not just to a paucity of material, but to neglect
women in his country. While Ronnat’s dubious methods may be the stuff of myth and legend, the ancient document itself is testament to women’s ceaseless efforts to make their voices heard.
Other stories in the collection have been slow to come to light, Adams suggests, because we haven’t always looked for them in the right places. Throughout the book, careful attention is paid to the thread of women’s textiles, whether it forms the cloth produced in domestic or professional labour, or is carefully employed for artistic expression.
One example relates to the Andalusian poet Wallada Bint-al-Mustakfi who refused marriage, refused the prescribed veil, and refused to keep her affairs with
Some women were telling their stories with loom and needle rather than pen and paper
both men and women quiet. Her response to critics was embroidered on her robe, which announced that she was “going her way, with pride”. Meanwhile, the silk shroud in which a young woman in her twenties was found buried in Spitalfields market gives us insight into her status: silk was not easily available in Britain 1,700 years ago, when London was the Roman Londinium. While Christine de Pizan and Margery Kempe were recording their experiences in the vellum of manuscripts, other women were telling their stories with loom and needle rather than pen and paper.
The beautiful, faux-embroidered cover of Unquiet Women not only makes it an attractive addition to any bookshelf; it also serves as a reminder that, if we pay as much attention to cloth as to the written word, we can continue to unravel stories of unquiet women throughout history.