Normal Women

Did you know there are more penises depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry than women? Did you know that the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt was initiated and driven by women protesting a tax on women? Did you know that the famous naturalist Charles Darwin not only believed women were inherently inferior to men, but that they would evolve to become even more inferior? These are just some of the astonishing discoveries you will encounter in Philippa Gregory’s “Normal Women.” In this ambitiously groundbreaking work, she tells the story of England over more than 900 years, placing women—50% of the population—at center stage for the first time. Drawing on her research skills as one of the most distinguished historical novelists, Gregory sifts through court records, newspapers, and diaries to find female bandits and beggars, murderers and brides, housewives and pirates, female husbands and hermits. The “normal women” you will meet in these pages went to war, plowed fields, campaigned, wrote, and loved. They jousted on horseback, flew Spitfires, issued their own currency, built ships, mills, and houses. They committed crimes or treason, worshipped gods, cooked and nursed, invented things, and rioted—frequently. This landmark work of scholarship and narrative, “Normal Women,” documents centuries of social and cultural change—from 1066 to the modern era—driven by women’s determination, persistence, and effectiveness.

Philippa Gregory CBE (born January 9, 1954) is a British historical novelist who has been publishing since 1987. Born in Nairobi, then the capital of the Kenya Colony and Protectorate, she was the younger daughter of Elaine (Wade) and Arthur Percy Gregory, a radio operator and navigator for East African Airways. When she was two, her family moved to Bristol, England. She studied history at the University of Sussex and earned her doctorate at the University of Edinburgh, where she is a Regent and was named Alumna of the Year in 2009. Gregory wrote her first novel, “Wideacre,” while completing her doctorate. She is best known for “The Other Boleyn Girl” (2001), which won the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2002 and was adapted into two films. Audio File magazine has called Gregory “the Queen of British Historical Fiction.” As one of the most successful historical novelists, Gregory now applies her narrative skills and historical research expertise to nonfiction, with “Normal Women” representing her magnum opus—a radical feminist history rewriting 900 years of British history, bringing women from the margins to the center.

The core premise of “Normal Women” is simple yet revolutionary: history has always been made by women and men together, but historical writing has focused almost entirely on men. Kings, generals, statesmen, philosophers, artists—history’s “great men” are almost all male. Women, when they appear, are usually as wives, mistresses, mothers—supporting players defined by their relationships to great men. Even exceptional women—queens, saints, reformers—are often treated as exceptions, “not like other women.” And the ordinary women who made up half the population—peasants, workers, merchants, artisans, mothers, activists—have disappeared almost entirely from historical records. Gregory’s project is to correct this massive omission, showing that ordinary women not only existed in history but actively shaped it.

The book is organized chronologically, beginning with the Norman Conquest of 1066 and ending in the late twentieth century. For each period, Gregory examines women’s legal status, economic roles, social norms, and political participation. She uses extensive primary and secondary sources: court records, wills, account books, letters, diaries, parliamentary records, newspapers, memoirs. She has excavated overlooked archives, finding stories of women forgotten by history—their work, struggles, achievements, and resistance.

Gregory begins with the Bayeux Tapestry—this famous 11th-century embroidery depicting the Norman Conquest. She points out a startling fact: the tapestry depicts more penises (in decorative nude male figures on the margins) than female figures. This fact itself symbolizes women’s absence from historical records—even in an artwork almost certainly created by women (medieval embroidery was almost entirely women’s work), female representation is less than male genitalia. But Gregory goes on to show that despite their absence in visual representation, women were vital to social and economic life in Norman England. In the medieval period, women were essential to agricultural labor—they plowed, sowed, harvested, tended animals. They dominated textile production, one of the most important industries in the medieval economy. They ran alehouses, bakeries, taverns. They worked as midwives, healers, herbalists. Some women became merchants, landowners, even guild members. Widows, if they inherited their husband’s property or business, could achieve considerable economic independence and power. Gregory documents women like Margaret Paston, a 15th-century landowner who managed estates, engaged in legal battles, negotiated marriages, and left a rich correspondence revealing the life of a capable, powerful woman.

But Gregory also doesn’t romanticize medieval women’s lives. Their legal status was severely subordinate to men. Married women were legally “covered”—their legal identity absorbed into their husband’s, unable to own property, sign contracts, or testify in court (except in special circumstances). Women were excluded from most formal positions of power—they couldn’t serve as judges, jurors, members of parliament, or priests. Violence against women was pervasive and rarely punished. Rape laws nominally existed but were seldom enforced, with victims often blamed for seduction or consent. Domestic violence was seen as a husband’s right to “discipline” his wife. Women were expected to obey—first their fathers, then their husbands.

Gregory pays particular attention to the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, one of the largest popular uprisings in English history. She reveals a long-neglected fact: this uprising was initiated and driven by women. The spark was a poll tax that charged every adult the same amount, regardless of income or wealth. This regressive tax hit the poor disproportionately hard, and women especially so, since their wages were typically half that of men. Worse, tax collectors often sexually harassed and assaulted women, claiming they needed to “examine” whether they were truly adults subject to taxation. Women’s rage ignited the uprising—they attacked tax collectors, burned records, led communities in revolt. Although the uprising was ultimately suppressed, it forced rulers to recognize they couldn’t indefinitely exploit and abuse the people—including women.

The Reformation and subsequent religious turmoil provided some women with new opportunities while also bringing new restrictions. Protestantism’s emphasis on personal relationship with God and reading the Bible enabled some women to claim religious authority. Women became radical Protestants, preachers, martyrs. But Protestantism also reinforced patriarchy—the husband was head of the household, the wife was to obey. Puritanism, while theoretically valuing women’s spirituality, in practice imposed strict controls on women’s behavior and expression. The 17th-century Civil War and Commonwealth period witnessed an explosion of female political activism. Women joined various radical factions—Levellers, Diggers, Fifth Monarchists—demanding religious freedom, political equality, and economic justice. Women wrote petitions, organized protests, published pamphlets. But with the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, these radical voices were suppressed, and women were pushed back into subordinate positions.

The 18th century saw growth in female education and literacy, at least among the middle class. More women could read and write, and some became published authors—novelists, poets, playwrights, political commentators. Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” (1792) was a groundbreaking work of feminist political theory, arguing for women’s rational capacity and right to education. But this was also the period when “separate spheres” ideology consolidated—the belief that men belonged to the public sphere (politics, commerce, intellectual life), women to the private sphere (home, children, emotional labor). Women were idealized as “angels in the house,” pure, gentle, devoted to husband and children, but thus excluded from public life.

The 19th century was a period of enormous contradictions. Industrialization brought dramatic social and economic change. Working-class women entered factories, mines, and workshops in large numbers, working long hours in terrible conditions for meager wages. Childcare and housework combined with paid work became an exhausting double burden. Meanwhile, middle-class women were increasingly confined to the home, expected not to work (because they didn’t need to economically) but to focus on creating comfortable homes and raising children. This “angel of the house” ideal reached its Victorian peak—women were to be pure, pious, submissive, and domestic. But Victorian women also began organizing to demand rights. The first wave of the feminist movement emerged, demanding education, property rights, employment opportunities, and most famously, the vote. Suffragists—from moderate constitutionalists to militant activists—campaigned for decades. They marched, petitioned, lobbied, vandalized, hunger-struck. They were mocked, attacked, arrested, force-fed. But they persisted, eventually winning the vote in 1918 (for women over 30) and 1928 (for all adult women).

Gregory also reveals the extraordinary diversity and creativity of historical women. She documents “female husbands”—women who lived and worked as men, sometimes marrying female “wives.” She documents women pirates like Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who plundered ships in the 18th-century Caribbean. She documents female highway robbers like Mary Frith, who robbed travelers on the roads in the 17th century. She documents female inventors, scientists, explorers—all pursuing their passions in a society that told them these activities were unsuitable for their sex.

The 20th century witnessed enormous advances in women’s rights: the vote, property rights, divorce rights, contraception and abortion rights, equal pay (at least nominally), anti-discrimination laws. Two World Wars temporarily opened traditionally male occupations to women—factory workers, nurses, even fighter pilots (like the women who flew Spitfires). After the wars, many women were pushed back into the home, but seeds had been planted. The women’s liberation movement of the 1960s and 70s challenged remaining restrictions, asserting sexual freedom, economic independence, and political power.

But Gregory also emphasizes that progress has been uneven, incomplete, and sometimes reversible. The gender pay gap persists. Women still bear a disproportionate share of unpaid care and housework. Sexual violence remains pervasive. Women are still underrepresented at the highest levels of politics, business, and academia. And in the 21st century, new forms of misogyny have emerged—online harassment, “incel” communities, violent threats against feminists. Women’s rights, from abortion to bodily safety, are under attack in many places.

Gregory’s argument is that understanding this history—900 years of struggle, achievement, setback, and continued resistance—is essential for contemporary feminism. Ordinary women have always been making history, even when their contributions were erased or minimized. They have always been working, fighting, inventing, writing, loving, and resisting. They have always been agents of change, even if history books rarely acknowledged this. By excavating and telling these stories, Gregory not only corrects the historical record but provides inspiration and validation for contemporary women—you are not the first to fight, and you won’t be the last.

As a historical novelist, Gregory excels at storytelling, making “Normal Women” both scholarly rigorous and highly readable. She weaves personal narratives—medieval brewers, Tudor rebels, Victorian factory workers, wartime pilots—making the distant past feel vivid and relevant. She also doesn’t shy away from ugly truths—the violence, exploitation, and systematic oppression women faced. But her tone is ultimately empowering: despite enormous obstacles, women persisted, adapted, and resisted, and their collective action shaped the course of history.

“Normal Women” stands as a significant contribution to feminist historiography—the project of rewriting history through a gendered lens. For too long, history has been dominated by “his story”—men’s actions, men’s wars, men’s achievements. Feminist historians have challenged this, insisting that “her story” matters too, that ordinary women’s lives and labor are as central to history as kings and generals. Gregory’s book is part of this tradition, standing alongside Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” Gerda Lerner’s “The Creation of Patriarchy,” and other works that have sought to bring women from the margins to the center of history.

For readers everywhere, this book has universal resonance. While it focuses on English history, the questions it raises are cross-cultural: What roles did women play in history? Why have their contributions been systematically minimized or erased? How can we excavate and tell women’s history? Every culture has its own rich but often neglected women’s history—from ancient female warriors and poets to modern revolutionaries and reformers. Gregory’s approach—sifting through archives, finding forgotten voices, rewriting dominant narratives—can serve as a model for excavating and celebrating women’s history everywhere.

Philippa Gregory, with her narrative gifts as a historical novelist and her rigor as a historian, has created a work that is both a landmark of scholarship and a compelling read. “Normal Women” is essential reading for anyone interested in women’s history, British history, or simply understanding how women have shaped the world we live in. It is a celebration of women’s contributions, a correction of historical omissions, and a call to continue the fight for gender justice. In an era when women’s work and achievements are still often overlooked or devalued, Gregory reminds us: ordinary women have always been extraordinary makers of history, and their stories deserve to be told, heard, and remembered.