Centuries before Oates, Atwood, and Angelou, women were writing. They were writing love poems, novels, letters, and philosophical treatises. What they wrote was good, not the marginalized not-bad–for-a-girl writing but writing that was original, incisive, and insightful. They even go further back beyond the great Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, and Bronte sisters to time a time when Hera was King, er, Queen.
Sappho
Sappho’s stuff is so good it’s been around for over 2500 years. This ancient Greek poetess wrote lyrical love poetry to females, although lasciviousness is conspicuously absent from her scribblings. Unfortunately very little of Sappho’s poetry is available in anything but fragments, but her intense passion is evident in these pieces: “/Frankly I wish I were dead/When she left, she wept/a great deal; she said to me, ‘This parting must be/endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly’.” The poem goes on to reminisce about the time the young women spent braiding each other’s hair with flowers.
Sappho’s legacy lies in the Sapphic stanza, used by such poetic greats as Horace, Catullus, Swinburne, and yes, even Ginsberg.
Heloise
Before Good Housekeeping; before “hints” columns dispensing advice on getting red wine stains out of oyster white carpets, the namesake Heloise was a brilliant scholar in twelfth century France. Unfortunately her only extant works are love letters, first published in English in 1760, between her and her former lover. In a story more tragic than Romeo and Juliet, Peter Abelard, a great philosopher and Heloise’s teacher, seduced her and began a love affair that produced a son, Astrolabe. Infuriated, Heloise’s uncle Fulbert had Peter castrated and sent Heloise off to a convent in Paraclete, France. Peter became a monk.
Then begins their long-distance correspondence, marked by erudition and constrained passion. Although the original letters are written in Latin and in a formulaic style, their contents are nonetheless poignant. An excerpt from Heloise’s first letter to Abelard, after their separation, implores him to write her: “Let me have a faithful account of all that concerns you; I would know everything, be it ever so unfortunate. Perhaps by mingling my sighs with yours I may make your sufferings less, for it is said that all sorrows divided are made lighter.”
The letters between the two have been lionized in such films as Stealing Heaven and Being John Malkovich.
Women Troubadours of Occitania
Unattainable love is something almost everyone can relate to. In 1100–1300 Occitania (a region marked by the confluence of southern France, northern Spain and western Italy) had an entire female population devoted to writing songs of love, devotion, and supportive female companionship. Many of the poems survive only in fragments. Below is an excerpt from Tibors, one of the earliest troubadours:
Sweet handsome friend, I can tell you truly
that I’ve never been without desire
since it pleased you that I have you as my courtly lover;
nor did a time ever arrive, sweet handsome friend,
when I didn’t want to see you often;
nor did I ever feel regret, nor did it ever come to pass, if you went off angry,
that I felt joy until you had come back.
In other words, I can’t live without you.
What is so singular about the female troubadours—troubaritz—is that they wrote as themselves and not, as their male counterparts were wont to do, as courtly personae. In this way the troubaritz were railing against the troubadourean practice of writing obliquely. Instead, they complained about love, sex, and politics. Not surprisingly, the era of the troubaritz was short-lived; by 1230, writing in the vernacular, Occitanian, was outlawed.
Christine de Pizan
Christine was a fourteenth-century French feminist. Her most widely read book, The City of Ladies, is an allegory where fictional and historical women speak in a supportive forum about the traditional unjust treatment of women. Using both reason and Christianity for a foundation, Pizan and the ladies of her book begin to build their city discussing topics such as education, becoming a mother, and the problems of having drunk, violent, and spendthrift husbands. The characters Reason, Rectitude, and Justice all help Christine build this City of Ladies.
Like Kate Chopin 500 years later, Pizan began writing professionally to support her family after her being widowed at the young age of 25. She can, therefore, be considered Europe’s first professional female writer.
Marie de France
Say what you will about France, medieval French women had a better shot than anyone at writing. Marie de France, about whom we know very little, was a major twelfth-century contributor to the medieval French romance, a burgeoning genre referred to as the lais. These lais were written in poetic form but have been translated into prose for ease of use. Many of her lais center on knights, magic, and acts of chivalry. Marie also wrote about the darker side of humans: cuckoldry, jealousy, abandoned babies, tests of strength, and locked-up lovers—all in octosyllabic couplets.
Her influences can be seen in such later works as Sir Orfeo (the English version of the Greek story of Orpheus) and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
This is Part I of a two-part series. To read Part II, click here.
Tracey McCormick is Managing Editor of GreatHistory.com.
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Julie Bruneau said:
Makes me wonder if any of Julius Caesar’s wives left any writing behind.
Calpurnia: “I told you so.”
March 5th, 2009 at 2:49 pm
Tracey McCormick said:
Ha ha! Indeed: “Sic te dixi.”
March 25th, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Women Writers of the Past Four Hundred Years « SheSpoke. Find out what she said said:
[...] published Part II of a two-part series on women writers from the past 2500 years. Read Part I here. Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Happy Anniversary!Author InterviewsNew [...]
March 25th, 2009 at 9:37 pm