It matters in that it happened, but it's a filter that can't be removed. It's common across Antiquity as well, but I get the sense, reading in the older period, that for the most part, it hides the voices of the women more effectively. When women in Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period are quoted (or "quoted"), the writer has an intent to express their point of view, whereas with older writers, women either were invisible or, more generally, the target of social or political criticism.
Male writers may be unreliable narrators of what the women thought, but they weren't producing in-depth psychological studies of what Clovis was thinking either. It was enough for them (and must be for us) that Clovis was sticking by his Frankish gods out of custom, and Clothild was literately debating his theology. It reveals more about her and her education, status and viewpoint than it does about the King's. Looking at her, I learn that she was a highly educated, intelligent, and political postRomano-Germanic woman with a strong will. He comes off as faceless, a force of featureless resistance to her intent.
If we had a time machine (or a chronoscope) we could sort it all out, but unless some monastery (or the carbonized Pompeiian library) can yield rarer manuscripts from 500BC-AD1000, the evidence is gone (assuming it existed.)
There is so much here that I love! And particularly your point about the general unreliability of male writers - even when talking about other males - is apt too. Their depictions of individuals are so stylised that I often wonder how much we can take from them. It's obviously hugely illuminating about literary culture and theological thought of the time, but do they really show us what these individuals were like? And yes to longing to go back to ancient libraries! I was reading just yesterday about the devastating loss of manuscripts from the East Anglian region in the later Anglo-Saxon period, manuscripts that likely had been there before. Imagine what we'd know if they'd survived!
Two observations which spring to mind immediately. It would of course be lovely to think that writings by women would paint a different picture - I would certainly like to think so - but I fear it wouldn't, for a few reasons.
1/ If women had been able to produce writings which survived (women of more than one 'class', that is) then this would presuppose a different society (a more equal one, I mean, in which women were allowed to express themselves more), in which case they'd tell a different story, not to mention that history would be a lot different (better too, no doubt). So there's a sort of logical consideration there.
2/ It may be the case that had certain women been able to write accounts which survive down to us, then we would have the same social-history questions for them and their accounts - namely, 'to what extent were they conditioned by the social mores and orthodox ideology of their time?'. To give a modern parallel - there were a lot of women who did not support the suffragettes, even worked against them. What if the only accounts we had of the suffrage movement was written by those sorts of Conservative-type women?
Perhaps what I'm suggesting here is we have to keep in mind the social background of the writer, male or female. Remember too that the male writers were just as conditioned by the society in which they lived. And they all have agenda-like intentions with their writing (propaganda, that is). Of course I would love to see a female writer with a sort of dissident agenda from that period, but the best we can hope for there would be someone today imagining such as a work of historical fiction (which I would love to read!).
Yes, absolutely, to everything you've written here! Your overriding point about having to 'keep in mind the social background of the writer' is so important. I think, often, when talking about Bede and his contemporaries we slip into talking about how they 'hated women', for example, but I don't think it's that simple for them. As you say, they were writing within very specific contexts and often for very specific reasons. If we understand the whole breadth of those factors (as best we can!), then perhaps we can begin to understand why they presented particular characters in the ways they did. Bede, for example, doesn't provide a role for women in the conversion of their husbands (apart from negative presentations, occasionally), yet if we use a theological lens he does seem to model them on ideal wives using New Testament criteria; is he therefore saying, actually, that they did do a good job of being a godly wife, in a way that didn't clash with his overall aims for writing? Yes - love historical fiction for recreating some of the women we wish we could see in the historical record!
Yes - I am getting the impression Bede was trying to present a sort of ideal. So I would say it’s a little unfair to judge him as misogynist. It was more the general society perhaps that was such, with the effect that it had. Just as unhealthy for men as it is for women, this patriarchy malarkey!
I for one think history would be far richer if women’s voices had been preserved alongside men’s. When we rely mostly on male-authored sources, we get not women’s stories, but filtered impressions—what men thought worth recording. Even if, for argument’s sake, those accounts were unbiased and complete, we’re still left with far fewer perspectives than history deserves. The rare times we do hear directly from women, we see just how much complexity we’ve been missing. And yet, we can glimpse what it could have been, simply by reading all of you amazing women historians in publication and on Substack today—bringing depth, clarity, and balance in ways that feel long overdue.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Jonathan! I know you think very carefully before commenting so I really appreciate it. I'm particularly struck by what you say about the complexity that women's accounts have brought when they are available. Perhaps it's that slightly different perspective on the same (or similar) events, in the same way that individuals of different social backgrounds might interact with something differently because of their prior experiences.
Or rather: yes, but — I think the question is framed too narrowly, and too antagonistically.
Narrowly, because the issue isn’t simply that men wrote women’s stories, but that a very small subset of men did — mostly monks/clerics and a few political elites, especially in the early and high Middle Ages. So it’s not just the absence of women’s voices that matters, but the absence of a broader range of perspectives in general. More diversity of all kinds would have been wonderful.
Antagonistically, because “does it matter” carries a faint moral edge, and the framing risks turning this into a men vs women question. I think it’s more useful to ask: “what are the consequences of this textual situation?” That allows for historical nuance without turning this into a simple gendered standoff.
That's a helpful perspective to share - and thank you for sharing it kindly and respectfully! It's this kind of disagreement that is so essential in historical study.
You're absolutely right to point out the narrowness of the surviving sources not just being a male/female factor. I often say that we must remember that our precious Bede was writing, amongst other things, as a theologian and so in addition to his male (and 'English', Northumbrian, northern, Roman tradition of Christianity, monastic, etc. etc.) perspective, his history is very heavily influenced by his theological training. That shaped enormously the content that he selected! I couldn't agree with you more that more diversity of all kinds would have been wonderful: imagine a secular, low-born peasant male's perspective to compare with Bede's?!
And yes, your more nuanced question about the consequences of the situation is what I was actually getting at, so you have challenged me to think more carefully when constructing my questions in future!
um --- YESSS! I haven't even read yet. but HELL YES...this is what I keep saying in my videos. That most of history (and even science) is told from men, with men's opions, views, motives and desires coloring all of this data.
Haha...I am sooooo far behind in listening to all these amazing women on substack. I don't have time to read...so try to listen when in the car or on walks. And even then -- way far behind. My suggestion...just listen when/if you can instead of trying to watch. which makes me ponder - why am I spending soo much time editing these darn things if I suggest that. But still...that is my suggestion!
Maybe I’ll put it on next time I’m listening to a podcast while doing housework/going for a run! I do often wonder whether I need to branch out into the video/documentary-style posts, but then also wonder whether podcasts are the way forward… so much choice!
Yes after I left this comment I wondered too. My entire goal tho was to get monetized on YT so I could keep this education free. But that it isn't happening quickly so now wondering if I need to readjust and focus more on here and monetizing here...so many choices and so little time!
We need look no further than the world of my lifetime. Women’s voices emerged and I at least am still learning how distorted our images are if the only view we get is male (or white, or English speaking, or colonial….).
Yes, so true that the past 50-60 years at least have brought a huge change in the gender balance. And you are right to point out the other biases/shadows in historical writing: I focus primarily on women’s history, but there is such important work being done in those other areas you mention.
I think that so many women's voices lack from history also because they had to survive on a daily basis. As you know, they were concerned with finding food, providing for their children, labour, pregnancies, etc. which put them on the frontline, so to say. You speak of queens here and it's a fact that even if we have some evidence of what women thought or how they acted in their own voices, it's still women of a higher class and status. What I'm trying to say is: a whole hidden world lies underneath this problem but it's intersected with so many concepts that it makes it harder for us to untangle everything. So many unheard voices, yes. If we think from the point of view of everyday life, if they hardly ever ate or drank more beer than water I doubt they'd thought of anything further from bad weather or where they'd sleep that night. Would you not agree?
It is SO hard to untangle everything! And those lower-status voices are some of the hardest to recover, especially for the very early period that I study (A.D. 400-700). It's one of the reasons why I am actually, strictly speaking, an academic archaeologist, because I'm trying to use different sources of evidence to see if we can recover some of those experiences that haven't made it into the written record. This may not provide voices as such, but it can allow us to reconstruct something of the day-to-day experiences of those who weren't able to write it down.
I agree that if women told their stories more during this time, we'd have a more reliable depiction of history regarding their roles in society than those told from men. Even at times where men may try to represent women, we need knowledge about women from women themselves to get the bigger picture on anything, from women's rights to women's history.
There's just something about actually living as a woman that the male writers of the time can't ever have captured - as talented and serious about their research as they might have been. There will have been small details about their experience that the men just wouldn't have thought to write down, things in the daily grind that wouldn't have seemed important but will have powerfully shaped their experiences.
1518 is a little later than my research focus (A.D. 400-700), but I think with women's history there are broadly applicable themes across the breadth of the 'medieval' world - and 1518 maybe could just sneak into medieval!
Hello Holly. Timely thoughts for me. As I am going through family documents I am desperately trying to find information relevant to the women in the family. There isn's much. But I did find a document from 1568 that relates to one of my women ancestors in southern Italy. I worked on transcribing and translating and trying to create the context. I am working with other information I have and what I know about the era in that town, just to try to emerge Laura Argentina. Neverhteless, at the end of the day, all I can do is create a number of plausible reasons for the legal document in which she is an agent. The best I will be able to do is to create a piece of 'plausible' historical fiction about her, but of course, it will be just that, plausible, but not verified. Yet, it is important to me to try to raise this ancestor from anonimity. And it will be from a 21st century's male voice. Hope to do her justice.
Just bringing her name out of the shadows is a start to bringing her justice! How beautiful that we can talk about Laura Argentina across the centuries in these ways. It's beautiful that she even made an appearance in the written evidence, though of course we wish women had been much more visible so that we could learn so much more about them.
As an aside, I love what you're doing with your family archive. It's such a unique position to be in and will make for such interesting storytelling!
It matters in that it happened, but it's a filter that can't be removed. It's common across Antiquity as well, but I get the sense, reading in the older period, that for the most part, it hides the voices of the women more effectively. When women in Late Antiquity and the early Medieval period are quoted (or "quoted"), the writer has an intent to express their point of view, whereas with older writers, women either were invisible or, more generally, the target of social or political criticism.
Male writers may be unreliable narrators of what the women thought, but they weren't producing in-depth psychological studies of what Clovis was thinking either. It was enough for them (and must be for us) that Clovis was sticking by his Frankish gods out of custom, and Clothild was literately debating his theology. It reveals more about her and her education, status and viewpoint than it does about the King's. Looking at her, I learn that she was a highly educated, intelligent, and political postRomano-Germanic woman with a strong will. He comes off as faceless, a force of featureless resistance to her intent.
If we had a time machine (or a chronoscope) we could sort it all out, but unless some monastery (or the carbonized Pompeiian library) can yield rarer manuscripts from 500BC-AD1000, the evidence is gone (assuming it existed.)
There is so much here that I love! And particularly your point about the general unreliability of male writers - even when talking about other males - is apt too. Their depictions of individuals are so stylised that I often wonder how much we can take from them. It's obviously hugely illuminating about literary culture and theological thought of the time, but do they really show us what these individuals were like? And yes to longing to go back to ancient libraries! I was reading just yesterday about the devastating loss of manuscripts from the East Anglian region in the later Anglo-Saxon period, manuscripts that likely had been there before. Imagine what we'd know if they'd survived!
Two observations which spring to mind immediately. It would of course be lovely to think that writings by women would paint a different picture - I would certainly like to think so - but I fear it wouldn't, for a few reasons.
1/ If women had been able to produce writings which survived (women of more than one 'class', that is) then this would presuppose a different society (a more equal one, I mean, in which women were allowed to express themselves more), in which case they'd tell a different story, not to mention that history would be a lot different (better too, no doubt). So there's a sort of logical consideration there.
2/ It may be the case that had certain women been able to write accounts which survive down to us, then we would have the same social-history questions for them and their accounts - namely, 'to what extent were they conditioned by the social mores and orthodox ideology of their time?'. To give a modern parallel - there were a lot of women who did not support the suffragettes, even worked against them. What if the only accounts we had of the suffrage movement was written by those sorts of Conservative-type women?
Perhaps what I'm suggesting here is we have to keep in mind the social background of the writer, male or female. Remember too that the male writers were just as conditioned by the society in which they lived. And they all have agenda-like intentions with their writing (propaganda, that is). Of course I would love to see a female writer with a sort of dissident agenda from that period, but the best we can hope for there would be someone today imagining such as a work of historical fiction (which I would love to read!).
Alas!
Yes, absolutely, to everything you've written here! Your overriding point about having to 'keep in mind the social background of the writer' is so important. I think, often, when talking about Bede and his contemporaries we slip into talking about how they 'hated women', for example, but I don't think it's that simple for them. As you say, they were writing within very specific contexts and often for very specific reasons. If we understand the whole breadth of those factors (as best we can!), then perhaps we can begin to understand why they presented particular characters in the ways they did. Bede, for example, doesn't provide a role for women in the conversion of their husbands (apart from negative presentations, occasionally), yet if we use a theological lens he does seem to model them on ideal wives using New Testament criteria; is he therefore saying, actually, that they did do a good job of being a godly wife, in a way that didn't clash with his overall aims for writing? Yes - love historical fiction for recreating some of the women we wish we could see in the historical record!
Yes - I am getting the impression Bede was trying to present a sort of ideal. So I would say it’s a little unfair to judge him as misogynist. It was more the general society perhaps that was such, with the effect that it had. Just as unhealthy for men as it is for women, this patriarchy malarkey!
I for one think history would be far richer if women’s voices had been preserved alongside men’s. When we rely mostly on male-authored sources, we get not women’s stories, but filtered impressions—what men thought worth recording. Even if, for argument’s sake, those accounts were unbiased and complete, we’re still left with far fewer perspectives than history deserves. The rare times we do hear directly from women, we see just how much complexity we’ve been missing. And yet, we can glimpse what it could have been, simply by reading all of you amazing women historians in publication and on Substack today—bringing depth, clarity, and balance in ways that feel long overdue.
Thank you for sharing your perspective, Jonathan! I know you think very carefully before commenting so I really appreciate it. I'm particularly struck by what you say about the complexity that women's accounts have brought when they are available. Perhaps it's that slightly different perspective on the same (or similar) events, in the same way that individuals of different social backgrounds might interact with something differently because of their prior experiences.
Absolutely! Those layered and lived perspectives are what challenge our assumptions and open up richer, more diverse understandings of the past.
No.
Or rather: yes, but — I think the question is framed too narrowly, and too antagonistically.
Narrowly, because the issue isn’t simply that men wrote women’s stories, but that a very small subset of men did — mostly monks/clerics and a few political elites, especially in the early and high Middle Ages. So it’s not just the absence of women’s voices that matters, but the absence of a broader range of perspectives in general. More diversity of all kinds would have been wonderful.
Antagonistically, because “does it matter” carries a faint moral edge, and the framing risks turning this into a men vs women question. I think it’s more useful to ask: “what are the consequences of this textual situation?” That allows for historical nuance without turning this into a simple gendered standoff.
That's a helpful perspective to share - and thank you for sharing it kindly and respectfully! It's this kind of disagreement that is so essential in historical study.
You're absolutely right to point out the narrowness of the surviving sources not just being a male/female factor. I often say that we must remember that our precious Bede was writing, amongst other things, as a theologian and so in addition to his male (and 'English', Northumbrian, northern, Roman tradition of Christianity, monastic, etc. etc.) perspective, his history is very heavily influenced by his theological training. That shaped enormously the content that he selected! I couldn't agree with you more that more diversity of all kinds would have been wonderful: imagine a secular, low-born peasant male's perspective to compare with Bede's?!
And yes, your more nuanced question about the consequences of the situation is what I was actually getting at, so you have challenged me to think more carefully when constructing my questions in future!
Thank you again for the very thoughtful comment.
um --- YESSS! I haven't even read yet. but HELL YES...this is what I keep saying in my videos. That most of history (and even science) is told from men, with men's opions, views, motives and desires coloring all of this data.
😍 I still need to watch your videos!!
Haha...I am sooooo far behind in listening to all these amazing women on substack. I don't have time to read...so try to listen when in the car or on walks. And even then -- way far behind. My suggestion...just listen when/if you can instead of trying to watch. which makes me ponder - why am I spending soo much time editing these darn things if I suggest that. But still...that is my suggestion!
Maybe I’ll put it on next time I’m listening to a podcast while doing housework/going for a run! I do often wonder whether I need to branch out into the video/documentary-style posts, but then also wonder whether podcasts are the way forward… so much choice!
Yes after I left this comment I wondered too. My entire goal tho was to get monetized on YT so I could keep this education free. But that it isn't happening quickly so now wondering if I need to readjust and focus more on here and monetizing here...so many choices and so little time!
We need look no further than the world of my lifetime. Women’s voices emerged and I at least am still learning how distorted our images are if the only view we get is male (or white, or English speaking, or colonial….).
Yes, so true that the past 50-60 years at least have brought a huge change in the gender balance. And you are right to point out the other biases/shadows in historical writing: I focus primarily on women’s history, but there is such important work being done in those other areas you mention.
Thanks for your text, Holly.
I think that so many women's voices lack from history also because they had to survive on a daily basis. As you know, they were concerned with finding food, providing for their children, labour, pregnancies, etc. which put them on the frontline, so to say. You speak of queens here and it's a fact that even if we have some evidence of what women thought or how they acted in their own voices, it's still women of a higher class and status. What I'm trying to say is: a whole hidden world lies underneath this problem but it's intersected with so many concepts that it makes it harder for us to untangle everything. So many unheard voices, yes. If we think from the point of view of everyday life, if they hardly ever ate or drank more beer than water I doubt they'd thought of anything further from bad weather or where they'd sleep that night. Would you not agree?
It is SO hard to untangle everything! And those lower-status voices are some of the hardest to recover, especially for the very early period that I study (A.D. 400-700). It's one of the reasons why I am actually, strictly speaking, an academic archaeologist, because I'm trying to use different sources of evidence to see if we can recover some of those experiences that haven't made it into the written record. This may not provide voices as such, but it can allow us to reconstruct something of the day-to-day experiences of those who weren't able to write it down.
I agree that if women told their stories more during this time, we'd have a more reliable depiction of history regarding their roles in society than those told from men. Even at times where men may try to represent women, we need knowledge about women from women themselves to get the bigger picture on anything, from women's rights to women's history.
There's just something about actually living as a woman that the male writers of the time can't ever have captured - as talented and serious about their research as they might have been. There will have been small details about their experience that the men just wouldn't have thought to write down, things in the daily grind that wouldn't have seemed important but will have powerfully shaped their experiences.
Will take a look - thanks for sharing!
1518 is a little later than my research focus (A.D. 400-700), but I think with women's history there are broadly applicable themes across the breadth of the 'medieval' world - and 1518 maybe could just sneak into medieval!
Hello Holly. Timely thoughts for me. As I am going through family documents I am desperately trying to find information relevant to the women in the family. There isn's much. But I did find a document from 1568 that relates to one of my women ancestors in southern Italy. I worked on transcribing and translating and trying to create the context. I am working with other information I have and what I know about the era in that town, just to try to emerge Laura Argentina. Neverhteless, at the end of the day, all I can do is create a number of plausible reasons for the legal document in which she is an agent. The best I will be able to do is to create a piece of 'plausible' historical fiction about her, but of course, it will be just that, plausible, but not verified. Yet, it is important to me to try to raise this ancestor from anonimity. And it will be from a 21st century's male voice. Hope to do her justice.
Just bringing her name out of the shadows is a start to bringing her justice! How beautiful that we can talk about Laura Argentina across the centuries in these ways. It's beautiful that she even made an appearance in the written evidence, though of course we wish women had been much more visible so that we could learn so much more about them.
As an aside, I love what you're doing with your family archive. It's such a unique position to be in and will make for such interesting storytelling!
I actually *really* would buy this!