Normal women : 900 years of making history / Philippa Gregory.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Lively, timely and gloriously energetic. Each page bursts with life, and every chapter swirls with personalities left out of traditional narratives of Britain's past. Philippa Gregory has produced something rare and wonderful: a genuinely new history of [Britain], with women at its beating heart." --Dan Jones, New York Times bestselling author of The Plantagenets

"You've devoured her novels, but now Gregory shows off chops as a historian. . . . An amazing read." --The Los Angeles Times

The #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus--a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history.

AN INDIE BESTSELLER

Did you know that there are more penises than women in the Bayeux Tapestry? That the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was started and propelled by women who were protesting a tax on women? Or that celebrated naturalist Charles Darwin believed not just that women were naturally inferior to men, but that they'd evolve to become ever more inferior?

These are just a few of the startling findings you will learn from reading Philippa Gregory's Normal Women. In this ambitious and groundbreaking book, she tells the story of England over 900 years, for the very first time placing women--some fifty per cent of the population--center stage.

Using research skills honed in her work as one of our foremost historical novelists, Gregory trawled through court records, newspapers, and journals to find highwaywomen and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The "normal women" you will meet in these pages went to war, ploughed the fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They rode in jousts, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, and built ships, corn mills and houses. They committed crimes or treason, worshipped many gods, cooked and nursed, invented things, and rioted. A lot.

A landmark work of scholarship and storytelling, Normal Women chronicles centuries of social and cultural change--from 1066 to modern times--powered by the determination, persistence, and effectiveness of women.

*INCLUDES ILLUSTRATIONS THROUGHOUT AND A FULL-COLOR INSERT*

"An expansive, inclusive and elegantly woven nonfiction account of the lives of women in England from the Norman Conquest to the modern day. To describe it as merely a retelling is to undermine a core principle: This is a history of women in England, yes, but it is also a history of England, full stop. . . . At more than 500 pages, with extensive endnotes and a 30-page index, Normal Women is a behemoth you may be inclined to skim, until you realize you're actually luxuriating in every word." --The New York Times

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Introduction (1)
• Part 1 1066-1348 Doomsday
• Doomsday (5)
• Country (13)
• Abbeys and Convents (14)
• Towns (17)
• London (19)
• Women's Status (21)
• Women's Work (26)
• Women at War (43)
• Crime and Punishment (49)
• Violence Against Women (52)
• Marriage (56)
• Women's Love and Sexual Desire (59)
• The Nature of Women (63)
• Part 2 1348-1455 Women Rising
• The Great Pestilence (67)
• The Peasants' Revolt (73)
• Women Rising (77)
• Pushback (82)
• Marriage (84)
• Single Women (87)
• Prostitution (88)
• Women Loving Women (89)
• The Nature of Women (91)
• Courtly Rape (97)
• Part 3 1455-1485 Women at War
• Women at War (101)
• Women's Work (103)
• Marriage (105)
• Prostitution (107)
• Part 4 1485-1660 Becoming a Weaker Vessel
• Religious Change (109)
• Religious Protest (113)
• Women Who Died for Their Faiths (116)
• Religious Exiles (120)
• Preachers (122)
• 'Weaker Vessel' (124)
• Manly Qualities (131)
• An Unkingly King (139)
• She-soldiers (140)
• Hard Times for Poor Women (147)
• Violence Against Women (150)
• Prostitution (153)
• Women Enslaved (155)
• Upper-class Women's Work (157)
• Middling-class Women's Work (162)
• Labouring Women (163)
• Education (165)
• Medicine (170)
• Witchcraft (173)
• Faiths (179)
• Women at Play (180)
• The Invention of 'Women's Work' (181)
• Protest (187)
• Petitions (197)
• Marriage (200)
• Widows (204)
• Single Women (205)
• Women Loving Women (206)
• Part 5 1660-1764 Locked Out and Locked In
• Land Grab (207)
• Protest (210)
• Power Grab (213)
• Political Protest (217)
• Work (221)
• Education (228)
• Exclusion (229)
• Prostitution (236)
• Slaves and Slave Owners (237)
• Literary Work (240)
• Sport (245)
• Romanticism (247)
• Love and Marriage in Novels and Life (250)
• Women's Love for Women (256)
• Female Husbands (263)
• Cross-dressing Women (267)
• Single Women (276)
• Crime and Punishment (277)
• Witchcraft (283)
• Violence (284)
• Health (286)
• Part 6 1765-1857 Making a Lady
• Slavery (291)
• Servitude (301)
• Slaves Protest Against Slavery (302)
• Elite White Women Protest Against Slavery (306)
• Working-class White Women Protest Against Slavery (308)
• 'Breadwinner Wage' (310)
• Women's Work (314)
• Education (329)
• Health (330)
• Separate Spheres (332)
• Sex (332)
• Women Divided (336)
• Elite Women Protests (340)
• Working Women Protests (344)
• Crime and Punishment (358)
• Rape (365)
• Sport (366)
• Defining Girls and Training Ladies (367)
• Young Victoria (369)
• Marriage (371)
• Single Women (377)
• Sapphism (378)
• Women Representing Themselves as Men (382)
• Female Husbands (385)
• Part 7 1857-1928 Separate Spheres
• Protest (391)
• Women Against the Vote (402)
• Women for the Vote (404)
• Working-class Protest (409)
• The Nature of Women (420)
• Single Women (431)
• Women Loving Women (432)
• Female Husbands (439)
• Marriage (441)
• Victoria, Wife and Empress (442)
• Sport (445)
• Work (454)
• Part 8 1928-1945 Into the World
• Women Get the Vote (477)
• Work (482)
• Health (485)
• Women Loving Women (487)
• Women at War (489)
• Women Loving Women at War (498)
• Women Dressing as Men … and Becoming Men (499)
• Protest (500)
• Demobilisation (501)
• The Last Witch (502)
• Part 9 1945-1994 A Woman Today
• Women Endangered (503)
• Rape (517)
• Work (523)
• Women in Authority (528)
• Protest (533)
• Women Divided (537)
• Immigration (539)
• Health (541)
• Sport (543)
• Wealth (544)
• Women Loving Women (545)
• HeteroSex (548)
• The Nature of Twentieth-century Women (549)
• Spiritual Equality (557)
• Afterword (561)
• Notes (581)
• Acknowledgements (633)
• List of Illustrations (635)
• Select Bibliography (641)
• Index (651)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Kirkus Book Review

The bestselling, prolific historical novelist presents "a huge book about women." Gregory brings her extensive knowledge of women in society over the centuries to a vast sociological study of the lives of "regular" women throughout the past 900 years. A tour de force of research, the book chronicles the role of women in British society by era, starting with William the Conqueror's Domesday Book, commissioned in 1086, up until 1994. In each period, the author presents sections on women's health, marriage, work, crime, punishment, immigration, rape, and "women loving women." The overall sense reading this dense social history is that "normal" women, in spite of men's belittling characterizations, made indelible contributions to the British Empire while rarely reaping the benefits. The author keenly delineates the different lives of women by class, such as the arduous life of working women versus aristocratic women, who, though rich in material possessions, were still affected by inadequate diet, constrictive clothing, poor ventilation, and mental strain from severe societal oppression. A familiar, depressing refrain over the centuries is the meager material compensation for women's work and their deliberate exclusion from "profitable work, from education, from training, from the guilds and trades, and from the professions and from authority." Particularly enlightening is Gregory's exploration of Victorian society, from mining strikes, to campaigns for women's suffrage, to the outrageous hypocrisy of Queen Victoria serving as both a steely emperor and docile wife opposed to women's rights. Gregory also examines "Sapphism," "Female Husbands," and other similar topics suggesting that sexual transitioning was more frequent to women seeking greater roles and autonomy in society than previously regarded by historians. The author concludes in 1994, when the Church of England finally ordained women as priests. A highly instructive, exhaustive study that reveals the realities behind "ideal" or "inferior" designations of women. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.