Philippa Gregory (2023) Normal Women 900 Years of Making History.

Posted by celticman on Tue, 29 Jul 2025

I’ve a copy of Philippa Gregory’s novel, The Other Boleyn Girl.  I’ve had it for around five years. Keep meaning to read it. She’s written a stack of books and over 40 novels. These fed into her belief that women are the ghosts of history. She spent ten years researching Normal Women, drawing on archives, letters, and historical records that fed into her ficton. And at around 600 pages she’s re-written history: his-story as her-story. She gives voice to women "missing from the record’.

A current headline, for example, make more sense when viewed through Gregory’s lens.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr4exd0yx90o

Paul Gallagher, the elder brother of Liam and Noel (who are in a band called Oasis) has been charged with rape.

‘The other charges against him are three counts of intentional strangulation, coercive and controlling behaviour and two counts of making a threat to kill.’

We can expect and already have media frenzy.

We can also expect Paul Gallagher to walk free.

Her research suggests a higher rate of rape conviction in Elizabethan England (around 20%) than today (2% and as low as 1%), despite the absence of a police force, forensic or any kind of science.

Most sixteenth century convictions for rape meant the death sentence. Most crimes, including theft of a quill or loaf of bread meant a death sentence.

If damages were paid for rape it was paid to the father or husband. A bit like lost property.  Gregory shows women, with few exceptions, were never in control of their own body. They certainly couldn’t own property or expect to be educated.

 Elizabethan legal expert Sir Edward Coke recognized three sexes: ‘male, female and hermaphrodite’. (He, she or it).

 Women were ‘not allowed to enter universities in the English speaking world until very late in the 19th [century], not allowed to graduate and certainly not allowed to go on to do research’.

Gender didn’t yet exist.  Economic equality never existed and still does not.

 

Historical Period/Event Prevailing ‘Woman's Nature’ / Gendered Expectation Economic/Social Impact (Relation to Class)
Pre-1349 (Medieval Era) ‘Imperfectly-formed men,’ potential for transformation. Varied roles tied to household/agricultural labour.
Post-Black Death (1349) Labour necessity trumps gendered assumptions. Equal pay for equal work due to shortages of labour.
Post-14th Century (Ongoing) Deliberate suppression of women’s economic contribution. Wage suppression through legislation. Creation of ‘reserve army of women’.
Victorian Era ‘Mild, loving, maternal, non-sexual, not very logical,’  ‘weak and frail bodies’ (22-inch waist favoured). Limited to domestic sphere. Exclusion from public/professional life; historical narratives reinforce limitations.
Late 19th Century (Education) Women deemed intellectually inferior; limited capacity for research. Limited access to higher education; inability to graduate or pursue research, restricting class mobility.
Modern Era ‘Emotional and caring,’ suited for specific roles. Underpaid work in caring professions; unpaid family work; wages kept down.

 

‘women are not equal yet’ because they are made invisible, except in a separate sphere.

Aspect

Transition Description

Role of Class
Sex → Gender Shift from biological determinism to social constructivism Class mediates access to identity expression
Work and Reproduction Women’s roles in capitalist societies confined to unpaid housework, unwaged and poorly paid labour Working-class women doubly burdened
Medical/Legal Control Medical and legal systems enforced binary sex-gender roles Policies often disproportionately affect poor women
Colonial Power Colonial systems imposed European binary gender models Class-based divisions within colonized societies enforced gender hierarchies

 

Gregory calls for transparency. The recognition of how gender is constructed, feeds into class, patriarchy and a sense of male entitlement. Women’s equality—in a world growing more unequal—demands redress (sorry, had to use that pun) and the dismantling of 900-years of repression that perpetuate and normalise these inequalities. Read on.  

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