The role models denied the opportunity to shine
In her new book, Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches Mairi Kidd tells the stories of the inspiring Scottish women whom history has overlooked and society sought to belittle, ignore or oppress
Doing it like a (Scottish) woman
On 25 July 2019 a group called ROAR (Represent, Object, Advocate, Rewrite) published the results of its 2017/18 count of opportunities for women in Scottish literature. The picture was one of structural and persistent inequality: in a country with a flourishing literary scene and more women than men in its population, women were routinely under-represented in numbers of books published, as reviewers and authors reviewed, and even on stage at book festivals.
Predictably, the pushback began as soon as the results were published. Women should just try harder, the comments jeered, stop watching trash on TV and improve their intellects in order to compete with male peers who have been proven, time and again, to have – quite simply – more talent.
Just try harder, dear
The history of Scotland’s women is little told, but when we look closer it gives the lie to the narrative of women crying foul as men succeed on simple merit. Take as one example Sophia Jex-blake, who began a campaign to enter Edinburgh University’s School of Medicine in the 1860s, on the basis of her belief that all women required was ‘a fair field and no favour’. When Jexblake’s initial application was approved by the university’s Senate despite 200 signatures on a petition against, the university court refused to provide for her tuition on the basis that it could not make the necessary arrangements ‘in the interest of one lady’. Jexblake then recruited another six women to join her via the pages of this very newspaper. One of these women – Edith Petchey – won first place in the examinations of 1870. This should have entitled Petchey to the prestigious Hope Scholarship, but the award was withheld from her on the basis that the fallout would be too great should she win over a male peer.
The Edinburgh Seven, as they became known, were subjected to obscene abuse and ultimately rioting as they sought to sit an anatomy exam in Surgeon’s Hall in 1870. They were denied the right to graduate and travelled abroad to obtain degrees and licences to practise medicine. Only in July of this year did Edinburgh University posthumously award the women their degrees, when Principal Peter Mathieson acknowledged that the treatment of the Seven by the university was ‘a historical wrong.’
Is this a lie I see before me? The Edinburgh Seven are just one example among dozens in my new book Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches of women done a disservice by history as viewed through the male gaze. Gruoch of Scotland is another – an 11th century descendent of the royal Pictish House of Alpin. Gruoch reigned with her second husband during a rare and lengthy period of peace and prosperity for Scotland, after which they were succeeded by Gruoch’s son from her first marriage. Modern readers may not recognise Gruoch’s name but they will know her literary alter-ego ‘Lady Macbeth’, the childless, scheming harridan of Shakespeare’s play. Shakespeare took his inspiration from the accounts of sycophantic chroniclers cooking up wild narratives intended to butter up their Stuart masters via flattering comparisons with those that had come before. Exit Gruoch – you don’t fit the narrative. Enter Macbeth’s ‘fiend-like queen’, stealing a throne for her husband by stealth.
Witch panics were another period in Scotland’s history in which we see women’s power curtailed, through exceptionally brutal means. While many of the women judicially killed in the persecutions were elderly, poor, ill and defenceless, others wielded significant – one might say too much – power. One of these was Euphame Mccalzean, sentenced to be burned alive in Edinburgh in 1591. As heir to her father’s substantial fortune, Euphame was a wealthy woman in her own right, to the degree that her husband Patrick Moscrow took the Mccalzean name on their marriage. Euphame was accused of witchcraft by a witness who had never met her – but who did have links to her husband’s family. The killing of Euphame achieved both a transfer of property into male control and the silencing of a powerful woman who challenged the authority of her husband and his family. Exit the Mccalzeans, enter the Moscrows.
On the subject of names, the book divides its women into warriors, witches and ‘damn rebel bitches’. The first group are fighters and strivers – women like Elsie Inglis, Jenny Lee and Williamina Fleming, who stood for justice, equality, and women’s right to use their gifts on a level playing field. There are also those
The Edinburgh Seven were denied the right to graduate and travelled abroad to obtain degrees and licences to practise medicine. Only in July of this year did Edinburgh University posthumously award the women their degrees
such as Mairi Chisolm who risked their lives in situations of genuine military conflict. The witches includes those literally accused of witchcraft, but also bewitchers of other sorts, from Burns’s lover Agnes Maclehose (‘Nancy’) to ‘Spook School’ artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh. ‘Damn Rebel Bitches’ is a nod to Maggie Craig’s brilliant book of the same name. That section includes those who were literally rebels by the legal standards of their day – Jacobite ‘colonel’ Anne Farquharson and campfollower Elizabeth Grant – and also some of the many Scottish suffragists and suffragettes, activists and trade unionists who earned us the rights we have today. The last woman in the book is Anstruther’s South Seas princess Titaua Marama, as a nod to the many New Scots who have brought their individual stories to these shores to add to the greater story of Scotland.
It were ever thus
It’s possible to draw interesting links between the treatment of women in the past and the realities of life for women in the present day. The narrative of the meritocracy is one example – posh white blokes have it easiest in the world because talent will out – and Sophia Jex-blake’s story lets us see it for the tosh it is. Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches seeks also to find less obvious and less literal parallels too – between the persecution of women in witch trials and ‘slut-shaming’ and other social media abuse of women today, for example. The book seeks to pay tribute to the women’s lives via its ‘Live your life by…’ inspiration sections in each history. Hopefully these offer something for every reader, from thoughts on what learning a language can do to enrich our lives – inspired by Jane Haining, whose dedication to her young Jewish charges in a school in Budapest ultimately led to her death in Auschwitz – to the relationship lessons we might draw from the (bad) example of Mary Queen of Scots or the (fictional) one of Maw Broon. Our three-voiced country For all there have been deliberate efforts to suppress or forget the stories of Scotland’s women, there are also genuine barriers to accessing the detail of their lives. In as many instances as possible the book offers a quotation from each woman, or a contemporaneous citation. These appear in no fewer than five languages: Old Irish; Latin; Scots; modern Gaelic, and English. French might have been added, and others too. Our complex cultural heritage can make our history difficult to navigate, particularly for those who cannot read Gaelic, since much written in the language is not yet available in translation. In writing Warriors and Witches and Damn Rebel Bitches I wanted to weave our languages together into a brightly-coloured cloth in which our women’s stories are woven into warp threads and weft. One of our immediatelyrecognisable national symbols is, after all, a patterned woven fabric, and one of my favourite tiny incidentals in the book is the fact that Gaelic poet and land campaigner Mary Macpherson personally designed and wove a tartan for her favourite politician. What a woman.