Publications Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’s Internet Archive
Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 185 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 185, April 1995.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Bold in her Breeches
Jo Stanley
Pandora £14.99
There has been a big upsurge in interest in women adventurers of all kinds. Several films have been produced featuring female cowboys, outlaws and bandits. Another film is soon to be released about Ann Bonney and Mary Read, the two best known women pirates. These strange women, who disguised themselves as men to live freer lives than their more conventional contemporaries, quite rightly fascinate people. Did they really exist? What were they like? How many women chose to live this way? Why did they do it? These are the questions Jo Stanley sets out to answer.
She does this with mixed results. The history of women and working class men is often hard to piece together. Most of the women featured in this book were illiterate and so have not left us their own stories. What evidence we have is often either sensationalised popular journalism of the time or official reports by a legal system which obviously would not have sided with women criminals.
The book begins with Artemisia, who captured a warship in 480 BC, and the possibly mythical Dane, Alfhild. Anne Chambers contributes a chapter on Grace O’Malley, the Irish pirate queen. There are several essays on the women of the ‘golden age of piracy’ in the 18th century.
One theme that runs throughout Stanley’s writing no matter what age she is discussing – is that the women were probably not great swashbuckling heroines of legend but frightened outsiders made to look that way because men find the idea thrilling. Men, she argues, like violent heroines because it justifies their own behaviour and fulfils certain types of sado-masochistic ‘pornographic’ fantasies.
She also tells us that these were violent times, that life at sea for lower class sailors was always in the balance. Discipline on board merchant and naval ships was harsh. Pirates, although working under more democratic conditions, were the kind of men who worked and played hard. After all, if they were caught, hanging was likely.
This contributed to a different set of values. This is true, but totally contradicts her first point. How could men be influenced by living in an age and atmosphere of violence and women be totally untouched by it? Most feminist historians who have looked at the issue of female warriors say their research shows that women are not naturally passive and nurturing but capable of the same range of abilities and desires as men. Jo Stanley seems to be trying to undermine this idea.
Although far from perfect, this book is definitely worth getting hold of, if only because you get a collection of essays from three very good feminist military historians. In fact, if you ignore the weirder outpouring of Jo Stanley, there are some quite exciting stories in the book.
Socialist Review Index | ETOL Main Page
Last updated: 15 December 2019