Rosalind Miles - The Women’s History of the World

Copyright Copyright Dedication Preface I IN THE BEGINNING 1 The First Women 2 The Great Goddess 3 The Rise of the Phallus II THE FALL OF WOMAN 4 God the Father 5 The Sins of the Mothers 6 A Little Learning III DOMINION AND DOMINATION 7 Woman’s Work 8 Revolution, the Great Engine 9 The Rod of Empire IV TURNING THE TIDE 10 The Rights of Woman 11 The Body Politic 12 Daughters of Time Notes and References Bibliography Index About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1988

Published by Paladin Books in 1989

Copyright © Rosalind Miles 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication

Source ISBN: 9780586088869

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2016 ISBN: 9780007571970

Version: 2016-09-13

For all the women of the world who have had no history

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Title Page

Copyright Copyright Copyright Dedication Preface I IN THE BEGINNING 1 The First Women 2 The Great Goddess 3 The Rise of the Phallus II THE FALL OF WOMAN 4 God the Father 5 The Sins of the Mothers 6 A Little Learning III DOMINION AND DOMINATION 7 Woman’s Work 8 Revolution, the Great Engine 9 The Rod of Empire IV TURNING THE TIDE 10 The Rights of Woman 11 The Body Politic 12 Daughters of Time Notes and References Bibliography Index About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk First published in Great Britain by Michael Joseph Ltd 1988 Published by Paladin Books in 1989 Copyright © Rosalind Miles 1988 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books HarperCollins Publishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication Source ISBN: 9780586088869 Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2016 ISBN: 9780007571970 Version: 2016-09-13

Dedication Dedication Dedication Preface I IN THE BEGINNING 1 The First Women 2 The Great Goddess 3 The Rise of the Phallus II THE FALL OF WOMAN 4 God the Father 5 The Sins of the Mothers 6 A Little Learning III DOMINION AND DOMINATION 7 Woman’s Work 8 Revolution, the Great Engine 9 The Rod of Empire IV TURNING THE TIDE 10 The Rights of Woman 11 The Body Politic 12 Daughters of Time Notes and References Bibliography Index About the Author Also by the Author About the Publisher For all the women of the world who have had no history

Preface

I IN THE BEGINNING

1 The First Women

2 The Great Goddess

3 The Rise of the Phallus

II THE FALL OF WOMAN

4 God the Father

5 The Sins of the Mothers

6 A Little Learning

III DOMINION AND DOMINATION

7 Woman’s Work

8 Revolution, the Great Engine

9 The Rod of Empire

IV TURNING THE TIDE

10 The Rights of Woman

11 The Body Politic

12 Daughters of Time

Notes and References

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Also by the Author

About the Publisher

Woman is and makes history. MARY RITTER BEARD

‘What is history?’ brooded Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman Empire. ‘Little more than a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of men.’ At last the hand that rocks the cradle has taken up the pen to set the record straight. In history, there were women too.

It would be hard to find much support for this proposition from the historical record. When a memorial stone was carved into the quay at Plymouth to commemorate the Founding Fathers who made the historic Mayflower voyage of 1620, there was no mention of the seventeen women who sailed with them to build the new world. In general, the historians of every era have shown little interest in the female sex. In 1238, only one maidservant, ‘awake by night and singing psalms’ saw the assassin who gained entry to the bedchamber of the king of England, knife in hand. She changed the course of history – and the chronicler, Matthew de Paris, did not even get her name.

Yet the women of the world have had a history, and the full story has been far more rich and strange than we are ever led to think. The chief aim of this book is to assert the range, power and significance of women’s contribution to the evolution of the human race, its huge-variety in both the public and the private spheres, and the massive female achievement on every level – cultural, commercial, domestic, emotional, social and sexual. Our world past is packed with countless stories of Amazons and Assyrian war queens, mother goddesses and Great She-Elephants, imperial concubines who rose to rule the world, scientists, psychopaths, saints and sinners, Brunhild, Marie de Brinvilliers, Mother Teresa, Chiang Ch’ing.

The lives of unsung heroines also have the fascination of the greatest story never told. Every historical period and place has brought a new slant on the old saga of the re-creation of the human race. From the empress undergoing a month-long accouchement attended by doctors, midwives, ladies-in-waiting, astrologers and poets laureate, to the peasant field-worker stepping aside to give birth crouched over a hole under a hedge, then returning to work with her new-born child swaddled at her back, the renewal of the species has always been the sole, whole, unavoidable and largely unacknowledged gift to the future of the female sex worldwide.

All this is lost when our view of history concentrates on men only, claiming a universal validity for the actions of less than half the human race. That view is a one-eyed sham – fractured, partial and censored. Historians have made a fetish of ferreting around in pipe rolls and laundry lists to track down the dirty linen of great men in preference to the great deeds of unfamous women. Society has glorified golden balls, orbs, swords and maces as symbols of worshipful masculinity, flashy phallic shows to elevate what men most valued about themselves. Each generation has bamboozled posterity for a thousand years with fancy-dress fictions and hollow bluster; among a forest of historical phallacies, the so-called ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German People’, for instance, was none of these things. As Jane Austen demurely remarked, ‘I often think it odd that history should be so dull, for a great deal of it must be invention.’