I've never been so disappointed by a book.

Review of 'Normal Women' by Philippa Gregory (2023)

Apr 06, 2024

Thank you to those who shaped this post by engaging with a Note I posted a few weeks ago (linked here): I’m so grateful for your insights on this topic and your thoughts were so valuable as I set about writing.

It’s not my usual practice to give up on a book I’ve started.

In fact, I’d go so far as to say that I can’t remember ever having done this, in my life. Once I begin reading a book I will always finish it, however long it takes.

There was one book, for example, that I downloaded onto my Kindle as I approached my due date with my son, 20th May 2023. I had seen this book floating around the history sphere for a while and knew that I would want something to keep me entertained during the frequent newborn night feeds everyone had told me about. I didn’t start reading it right away; I saved it, a treat set aside for those tedious midnight wake ups I knew were coming. When he finally arrived, ten days late, I allowed myself to unlock this precious escape from mundane motherhood, clawing back something of my past self through reading history.

But, ten months on, I still haven’t finished it.

I don’t find myself reaching for it. In the words of

Andrea Urquhart

, I don’t ‘feel that I can’t help but read on.’ Surely I’d have finished it by now if I did, right?

I struggle, however, to utter the words, “I’m done trying with this book.” I’d rather just leave it floating around on my ‘currently reading’ pile, just in case I get really into it one day and decide to finish it.

So far in 2024, I have given up reading three books. Three books!

I feel like such a failure: to give up on something I’ve started is just not in my nature.

And yet I know, from the discussion on a recent Note (linked here), that this is not an uncommon experience: not only did

Jenna Folarin

find herself giving up on a book, but when checking other reviews, her experience resonated with others:

I’m finally giving myself permission to say goodbye to the three books that I’ve started and not finished - that I’ve barely made a dent in - because, like

Morgan Dick

says, life is too short. I know that others have loved these books but they are just not for me at this time.

I will keep them on my shelf, not ready to say goodbye permanently. Perhaps, as

Leanna Julius

says so wisely, they ‘will be interesting at a different time’.

One of them, however, was so disappointing, despite huge media hype, that I had to share my thoughts on it with you.

Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History, by Philippa Gregory (2023)

The blurb made big promises:

‘A radical retelling of our nation’s story’
‘A landmark work of scholarship and storytelling’
‘It looks back at the past lives of half the population - without the judgemental gaze of the present.’
‘By spotlighting women’s presence, in the shadows of men’s history, it puts women where they belong - centre stage.’

I was attracted by the promise of a social history, looking not just at kings and queens but at people from across the social spectrum, including those from backgrounds more similar to my own.

I was attracted by the promise of a focus on the contributions made by women. This connects with my own research interests, seeking to uncover the tales less often told, those adjacent to our usual narratives.

I was attracted by the promise of scholarship and storytelling, again two disciplines that I straddle in my own work.

But, for me, Normal Women did not deliver on these promises.

Let me talk you through my reasons why…1

It suggests that women’s history is only recoverable after 1066.

I appreciate that the author needed to focus on a specific time period in order to keep her dataset manageable. We all do this when researching and writing.

The implication, however, for the popular reader engaging with this book is that we cannot recover women’s history before 1066, and I think that this perpetuates the myth of the ‘Dark Ages’. Her subtitle, ‘900 years of making history’ adds to this: why only 900 years? Women have been making history since the very beginning of time.

It is true that it can be more challenging to tell the stories of pre-Norman women, especially those who lived lives that have not left a written record. But they can be told - and they are so interesting. For these tales we often need to turn to alternative sources of evidence such as archaeology, including osteoarchaeology and paleopathology. We don’t get the same type of detail from these sources as we do from written ones, but we can uncover a lot.

Broad statements are made from quite minimal evidence.

Take this paragraph, for example:

‘Misbehaviour in marriage was punished - but the marriage would not be dissolved. In Rochester in the 1300s, any wife guilty of adultery was whipped three times around the churchyard and three times around the market - the same punishment as for an adulterous husband.’2

The statement - within this chapter covering 1066-1348 - is that ‘misbehaviour in marriage was punished’. But the only evidence given is for one place at one time: Rochester in the 1300s. What about London in the 1120s? Or rural Northumberland in the 1250s? Was misbehaviour in marriage treated in the same way there?

It’s interesting (to me) that the penalties for adulterous men and women are the same in Rochester in the 1300s. Was that the case in other times and places? Was the marriage always upheld or did some locations dissolve the marriage? How did that change or remain constant across time?

One piece of evidence for a claim in a chapter covering almost 300 years does not, to me, seem sufficient to back it up. I found myself getting frustrated by the frequency with which this happened.

Despite the claims of the blurb, there is no story woven, but rather rapid-fire statements.

I found it quite dizzying.

There were lots of short, almost micro-stories, rather than any extended portraits of women’s lives. I felt like I was being tossed about by the momentary waves of the little vignettes, so quickly would we bounce from one to the next.

It felt lacking, not doing the lives of these women justice: their stories were illuminated only for the briefest of moments. Where is the texture, the depth, the richness that makes up our human experience?

In many cases, a woman’s life left only one often fragmentary written record, when their lives came into the sphere of someone else. A court record, for example; a will; a land charter. By conducting such a broad-scale survey, however, I feel that Gregory’s writing perpetuates the flimsy-ness of these women’s records: rather than take their momentary appearances and weave a portrait around them, she reports the brief record and then moves on.

It’s slightly ‘man-hatey feminist’…

[bracing myself as I write in case this lands me in internet jail…]

I am all about bringing women’s history into the light and totally agree that it has been pushed aside for far, far too long. I’m totally behind the kind of feminism that attacks discrimination and inequality and brings about better conditions for women, be they physical, emotional, intellectual… Hey, I’m even about to start a PhD researching women’s lost stories (ask me in the comments if you’re eager to find out more!) and so much of my writing here focuses on women’s history:

But I do find it grating when feminist histories perpetuate what I call ‘man-hatey feminism’. The kind of feminism that tramples all over men in order to glorify women.

I think this book perpetuates this type of feminism, and it’s what eventually made me put it aside once and for all.

Let me give an example.

During her section on ‘The Nature of Women’, Gregory puts all Greek philosophers and Church Fathers together and associates them with a damning and highly misogynist opinion:

‘It was generally understood that exertion, sexual activity or excessive heat frequently turned women into men, and both Greek philosophers and church fathers agreed that would be an improvement.’3

She doesn’t give a footnote to her evidence (and it’s not in the preceding sentences of the paragraph) or go on to share examples. She makes a generalisation, putting all Greek philosophers and Church Fathers together under this sweeping statement. This statement is just left hanging there, inflammatory but with no evidence base.

I find this troubling because, for so many, books like this will shape opinions of past people. It’s simply not fair to past men to make a statement like this without backing it up.

As historians, we are trained to work with nuance and detail, being precise in our wording and not allowing our current views to impact our reading of the past. I think that Gregory’s feminist perspective has, here, affected her interpretation and presentation of the evidence.

And so, for these reasons, I’ve put this massive book (678 pages) back on my bookshelf.

Maybe it will be the right book for me at some point. Maybe not.

But it’s not for me at the moment.

Have you read ‘Normal Women’? If so, what were your thoughts? I know from Goodreads [thank you