The Good Wife of Bath

Herstory happened too. The omission of women from history doesn’t mean they didn’t live it, nor that they didn’t influence it. But just as we forget that to our detriment, so too it’s a mistake to think women fighting for their rights is exclusive to contemporary times. Many women have, over time, fought to be recognized as more than simply walking wombs, the “weaker vessel,” good only for sating men’s desires, “feeble-minded,” penis-less poor copies of men, responsible for the Fall, men’s inability to control their urges, and so much more. What’s true about the past is that women didn’t have the freedoms, education or ability to fight for their rights the way we continue to today. One has only to look at the evidence, whether it’s Cleopatra, Boadicea, Joan of Arc, Mary Magdalene, Elizabeth the First, Margery Kemp, Chaucer’s Alyson, to catch glimpses of those who knew they deserved better—if not authority, then at least respect and, one day, equality. These women—some powerful, but many not—would have striven in their own way, that is, used their wiles and more to achieve a degree of autonomy and a voice—one so loud and powerful, we still hear it today.

I moved about the room, noting the grief on the faces of those present, listening to their memories of my husband, how his ability to see the best in folk allowed them to rise to be that—myself included.

Where did the Lord command virginity? Tell me that, eh. On the contrary, He tells us to go forth and multiply.

As St. Jerome wrote,” the priest would thunder, “flame-haired women are hell-bound.

I've always said, never trust a person without brows, a maxim that has proven true on more than one occasion.