“At every turn, women are taught that how someone reacts to them does more to establish their goodness and worth than anything they themselves might feel.”
“But next time we’re inclined to wonder why a woman didn’t immediately register and fix her own discomfort, we might wonder why we spent the preceding decades instructing her to override the signals we now blame her for not recognizing.”
Cleopatra, the last ruling sovereign of Ptolemaic Egypt, committed suicide to avoid being brought back to Rome and paraded in Augustus’ triumphal procession.
Hypatia, a Hellenistic Neoplatonist philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, was murdered by a mob of Christians who accused her of stopping attempts at reconciliation during a political feud in Alexandria at the beginning of the 5th century.
Joan of Arc was burned at the stake after having been found guilty at a trial for heresy that was purely politically motivated during the Hundred Years’ War, having fallen prey to the English forces after having brought several military success to French King Charles VII leading to his coronation in Reims.
Both Anne of Brittany and Lucrezia Borgia died after having had multiple pregnancies, brought to term or not. Despite being part of the upper class of their respective societies, they met the end of numerous women across the centuries - dying on the battlefield of women, on the marital bed, bodies exhausted from a succession of pregnancies.
Anne of Brittany was pregnant sixteen times, with only two daughters surviving until adulthood. The oldest, Claude, became Queen of France through her marriage with Francis I, while the youngest, Renée, became Duchess of Ferrara through her marriage with Ercole II d’Este.
Lucrezia Borgia had at least ten documented pregnancies, with three or four more miscarriages estimated. The birth of her last child brought complications resulting in Lucrezia’s death ten days later. Her second son, who survived adulthood, grew to become Duke of Ferrara and married Anne of Brittany’s second daughter, Renée of France.
Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, who according to Herodotus crucified and beheaded the Persian emperor Cyrus and then put his head in a wineflask filled with blood.
