“In build she was tall, in her demeanour she was terrifying, in the glint of her eye most fierce and her voice was hoarse; a great mound of the tawniest hair fell to her hips.”
Cassius Dio, Roman history Book 62
Astonishing really, how a single woman could stand the test of time. No other Briton is remembered in quite the same way from the Bronze Age. Nor was any one person so utterly vilified by an enemy. In AD60, a red-headed “warrior queen” set out on a hate-trail of retribution so awful, she went down in history as the most divine deviant our country has ever known (perhaps with the exception of Ms Thatcher), but why is it that throughout history strong women have been begrudged so much? I suppose I ought to start at the beginning...
Bronze Age Britain was hardly a country of cohesion, we didn’t have a unifying king (or queen) of England yet and tiffs between sparring tribes was a regular occurrence. Even when the Romans invaded in AD43, we hadn’t learnt our lesson. The invading troops themselves were a typical misogynistic, dark-haired, olive-skinned bunch, in their eyes we were all inbred, tawny-haired, pale-skinned animals made worse by the fact we allowed our women to be queens and rule over land and people. To any Roman man, this was considered the ultimate disgrace. It was also for this reason that Queen Boudicca and her two virgin daughters were publically beaten and raped- for pride. The ‘calamitous’ political farce involving sexually voracious Cleopatra, their own Emperor Caesar and war hero Marc Antony some thirty years earlier was still fresh in their minds- they knew how dangerous a woman could be; to be queen was one thing, but warrior, another. And Boudicca was on another level. Fearsome with her foreign head of bright red hair, bellowing commands astride a chariot she no doubt inspired fear into the heart of thousands of well-trained soldiers simply because she was unprecedented to them. She represented the giver of life and the taker away all in one instance.
Nothing has changed. Boudicca’s spirit lives on in a number of all too visible, independent and opinionated women: Hilary Clinton, Coco Chanel, Jordan; all have been chastised for being too much of the three male-designated qualities above and according to feminist author, Naomi Segal, Director of the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies at UCL, it will never change. “The problem is that women can't be ghettoised. Whereas as whites we can feel a generalised guilt about white oppression of black people, men find it unbearable to feel that their partner, mother or daughter is criticising them for women's disadvantages, even if these disadvantages are undeniable. For women it's a problem, of course, that they can't simply stop loving or being sympathetic to men as, even if they're not heterosexual, they'll have fathers, brothers & sons. Women may feel angry about this but they often have a longstanding (not innate but well-taught) impulse to console men for their own fear-based aggression... Or women don't suffer from that scruple at all, but they are disempowered anyway, and disappear from the public arena for being disobedient in that respect.”
It was recently reported that there is an unconscious psychology for this; mothers apparently referred to their naughty sons as ‘cheeky’ whilst their daughters were deemed ‘stroppy’ for the same behaviour. A massive 88 percent of parents admitted to treating their sons and daughters differently; with boys getting away with it. The boundaries for girls are much more narrow and the consequences for misbehaviour more severe. Girls are witches, cunts, bitches, sluts, gash: a whole host of derogatory pseudonyms.
I feel it necessary to point out that not too long before Boudicca’s uprising, where she lead over half a million men into battle, there was another antihero of the Roman invasion, his name was Caratacus. His own guerrilla warfare had proven fruitless; he was captured and sent as a POW to Rome to stand trial. Amazingly, he was pardoned, given citizenship and welcomed as a hero. The fate for his female counterpart was not quite so magnanimous- she was either murdered or killed herself on the Primrose Hill battlefield, where the final showdown took place. This was only ever the end that would have afforded her it would seem. Continues Segal, “‘Loud’ and 'opinionated' are terms easily used about women who say things that those in power- mainly men, of course- still don't want to hear. It was 'strident' in the early 70s, or 'scold' or 'nag' from ancient times to the present. Women can have their faults like anybody, of course, but aggression based on insecurity is a male thing, and the technique of pomposity used to humiliate and silence the other is also male. It's only men who treat women with psychological or physical violence, excluding them & passing off a women's knowledge as 'loudness'.”
Even though we are permanently reminded of how to behave as women on a daily basis, via rigorous beauty regimes, primed and silenced Hollywood actresses and cross-legged subdued female television presenters, just remember that before our Pankhursts, our Greers and Elizabeth Wurtzels, we had a red-head. And she was loud!
Feature for -ology magazine, Histori-ology section, March 2011
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