Roaring Girls

I love books which link and advance ideas and concepts I have already discovered through previous works so Roaring Girls was a perfect read for me. Holly Kyte's eight chosen women include (arguably) Britain's first science fiction author Margaret Cavendish who was brought to my attention through Monster, She Wrote and whose novel The Blazing World I went on to read, and Antiguan slave Mary Prince whose autobiography, The History of Mary Prince, I've also read. Kyte also tells the stories of Mary Frith, Mary Astell, Charlotte Charke, Hannah Snell, Anne Lister and Caroline Norton. I had vaguely heard a couple of these names before, but knew little of their lives or importance to women's history and was eager to learn.

Kyte gives well researched biographies of each of these women, exploring how the lives they led were considered outrageous and scandalous in their times, and showing how their influence had a profound effect on women's lives in the centuries to follow them. She writes in a lively and engaging style so Roaring Girls is actually quite the page-turner! I was interested in her cautions to see each woman in the context of the times in which she lived. Certainly, in several cases, their words or actions have problematic aspects when viewed from a twenty-first century perspective. However we interpret them today, these women were often intensely disliked by their peers, female as well as male. I was reminded of Zeba Talkhani's thoughts on her experience of female misogyny and how it is often women who cannot or will not oppose patriarchal systems themselves who are the most destructive towards their sisters who do threaten the status quo. Kyte shows us that this is nothing new.

As Kyte says, it is important for women today to remember our forebears' fights and to ensure these early feminists maintain their place in our history. The stories we tell ourselves and our children inform our understanding of the world. If we want to live in a balanced and tolerant society, we need to ensure all women's lives are portrayed in these stories, not just a narrow view of us as demure, submissive ornaments. We Need New Stories showed me just how shockingly wide the gaps are and Roaring Girls is an excellent resource to help fill them in.