She Became a Nun Just to Avoid Marriage (and Read Books)
Who would choose a convent over marriage? Well, meet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who called herself the "worst nun in history", built a private library in a convent in colonial Mexico, and argued with bishops, claiming that women had every right to study and learn, just as she did. Let's talk about this controversial nun, who unapologetically chose
The Business of Virginity in 18th-Century London
This passage comes from the 1779 book "Nocturnal Revels, or the History of King's-Place and Other Modern Nunneries" – and, in case it wasn't clear, nunnery here doesn't mean a convent full of nuns, but a brothel. Let me tell you how sex workers and madams manufactured and performed virginity over and over again, to
The Censored Witches' Flying Potion (That Promised a "Lover")
"Rub this on your skin, get a lover." That’s not clickbait. It’s a sixteenth-century recipe, written in all seriousness by the Italian natural philosopher Giambattista Della Porta. He recorded the formula for an ointment, said to be used by witches. The claim was that it could induce an extraordinary phenomenon: it would make the witch believe she was flying and
Fake Virginity: The Painful Renaissance ‘Cures’ They Sold Women
So, of course, someone offered a solution. A 17th-century English translation of an Italian book called Magia Naturalis puts it like this: In case that wasn’t clear: the
The Yellow Wallpaper: Behind the 'Madness' in the Pattern
Alone in her sick room in the late 19th century, a woman writes: What is going on? Still, she thinks: The narrator of this story is being treated by her husband, John, who is a doctor. Victorian medicine had some rather peculiar ideas about women's mental health. Take, for instance, the notion that intellectual stimulation could damage a woman's reproductive
Ephelia: Unmasking a Seventeenth-Century Feminist Voice
Do you love women writers who write with humour and irony? Who criticise their society in a satirical, tongue-in-cheek way? Do you like a good literary mystery? Let me introduce you to the elusive Ephelia – yes, that's Ephelia with an 'E', not Hamlet's Ophelia with an 'O'. Ephelia was a 17th-century poet & playwright whose identity has puzzled historians and
Dracula: Blood Transfusions and Control Over Women
'She wants blood, and blood she must have or die' – this is one of my favourite passages from Bram Stoker's 1897 masterpiece, Dracula. (And there are several!) So, let's set the scene. After a series of sleepwalking episodes, Lucy, one of the main characters in the novel, is left mysteriously exsanguinated: she's
Alchemy in the Renaissance: The Mysterious Isabella Cortese
How do you become an alchemist? This is what a 16th-century book suggests: This advice is said to come from a woman; it's from The Secrets of the Lady Isabella Cortese, published in Venice in 1561. But what does this book, and the mysterious writer to whom it is attributed, tell us about women, science, alchemy, authorship, authority and expertise
Caterina Sforza: The Alchemy and Power of a Renaissance Icon
Imagine you are the ruler of an Italian city in the Renaissance; your husband has been murdered and your children were taken hostage by your political enemies, who hope to take control of your fortress. Yet the people inside are still loyal to you and are not surrendering. So, leaving your children with your enemies, you go inside the castle,
Green Sickness: A Historical Look at the 'Disease of Virgins'
Imagine that it's 1554, and you're the father of a young girl who is unwell. You write to a friend of yours, who is a physician, describing her symptoms, which include her being 'pale, as if bloodless'. And this is the reply you get: The doctor continues, writing that the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates suggests that So… the solution for
The 'Queen of Hysterics' and 19th-Century Theatrical Hysteria
Everybody was talking about hysteria in late 19th-century Paris. Hysterics appeared in novels and plays; they were painted, photographed, sculpted and drawn. People crowded the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to attend demonstrations and lectures on hysterics given by the world-renowned neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot (1825-1893), and to gaze at his star patients. Who could resist admiring the ‘queen of hysterics’, the beautiful Blanche Wittmann (1859-1913), her face relaxed and insensible as she was pierced with needles by doctors, to demonstrate how she couldn’t feel any pain?
Moderata Fonte and ‘The Woman Question’
Is there anything more enlightening than listening in while women discuss their role in society? As the recent adaptation of Miriam Toews novel Women Talking shows, this is a pretty fascinating premise. In Toews’ story, which was inspired by real events, eight women from a Mennonite community gather to decide what to do in the aftermath of horrific sexual attacks
Why is it that we imagine an older woman when we think of a witch?
Close your eyes and imagine a witch. What do you see? In my case, perhaps unsurprisingly, I picture the Wicked Witch of the West as played by the wonderful Margaret Hamilton: stooped posture, hooked nose, hairy moles on a green face, slim body dressed in black robes, wispy hair covered by a hat, broom clutched menacingly in Dorothy’s direction. She’s
Elizabeth I and Ageing
A few days before Queen Elizabeth II’s death, she met the UK’s new prime minister, Liz Truss, at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland. Royal watchers were quick to point out what appeared to be a bluish bruise on her hand, as concerns over her health grew. At the time of her death, the Queen (1926-2022) was 96 years old, having reigned for 70 years. As the media coverage of the mourning and funeral rites took over the UK and much of the world, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Queen’s hands and ageing. I inevitably thought of Elizabeth I’s hands, famously beautiful with their long fingers, even into her old age.
Green Sickness and Virginity
From the mid-16th century to the early 20th century, young girls described as suffering from bodily weakness, dietary disorders, heart palpitations, fainting spells, paleness, and an absence of menstruation (amenorrhoea), were often given the diagnosis of ‘green sickness’, the ‘disease of virgins’.
What is Gender History?
In the 1920s, Virginia Woolf famously described how the history of women was unknown: ‘It has been common knowledge for ages that women exist, bear children, have no beards, and seldom go bald, but save in these respects […] we know little of them and have little evidence upon which to base our conclusions.’ Woolf was writing shortly after women were granted the vote in the UK (1918), after an arduous campaign by the suffragettes. This first feminist wave, associated with the political women’s suffrage movement, did not prompt historians to investigate women’s history with a few exceptions.
‘Neither, and yet both’: ‘Hermaphroditism’ and Binaries
It is estimated that between 1 and 2% of people have some kind of intersex variation and fall under the umbrella term of ‘sex variant’. (That’s around the same number of people who have red hair!) Yet, it is only in recent decades that intersex people have gained space in mainstream debates about equality and human rights. However, they have figured prominently in medical, religious, and legal arguments for centuries, serving as examples of competing ways of understanding gender and sex.
(Un)sexing, Violence, and Women
As she finds out the witches’ prophecy about Macbeth being crowned king and the current king’s imminent visit to their home, Lady Macbeth invokes evil spirits to help her be rid of her feminine qualities so that, together with Macbeth, she can murder the king:
She Became a Nun Just to Avoid Marriage (and Read Books)
The Business of Virginity in 18th-Century London
The Censored Witches' Flying Potion (That Promised a "Lover")
Fake Virginity: The Painful Renaissance ‘Cures’ They Sold Women
The Yellow Wallpaper: Behind the 'Madness' in the Pattern
Ephelia: Unmasking a Seventeenth-Century Feminist Voice
Dracula: Blood Transfusions and Control Over Women
Alchemy in the Renaissance: The Mysterious Isabella Cortese
Caterina Sforza: The Alchemy and Power of a Renaissance Icon
Green Sickness: A Historical Look at the 'Disease of Virgins'
The 'Queen of Hysterics' and 19th-Century Theatrical Hysteria
Moderata Fonte and ‘The Woman Question’
Why is it that we imagine an older woman when we think of a witch?
Elizabeth I and Ageing
Green Sickness and Virginity
What is Gender History?
‘Neither, and yet both’: ‘Hermaphroditism’ and Binaries