I read a lot of science fiction, as I find imagining the future is a good way of examining our past and present. As Cory Doctorow points out in his latest Locus column, explaining something to a Martian is a great tool for disentangling the mess of practical arrangement and moral judgment that tend to lead to our way of life. So today I’d like to look at an aspect of women’s history by starting from the future.
“Looking Through Lace” by Ruth Nestvold is a science fiction short story which I first encountered in Sex, The Future, & Chocolate Chip Cookies, the first James Tiptree Award anthology. Let’s take two steps back: James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of science fiction author Alice B. Sheldon. As it was not known until ten years into her writing career that Sheldon was a woman, she did a lot to break down perceptions and prejudice about “typically male or female” writing. The award bearing Tiptree’s name has been given out annually since 1991 to works in science fiction or fantasy which expand and explore our understanding of gender. I have read many delightful and thought-provoking pieces of writing as a result of the Tiptree award and would highly recommend books and stories which have been shortlisted or won it. One final warning before we move on: if you are planning to read “Looking Through Lace”, do it now – this post will contain spoilers.
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Great, you’re back.
“Looking Through Lace” starts as a somewhat predictable feminist first contact story: an all-male first contact team encounters a matriarchal society. A female linguist (Toni) is quickly brought on board as the matriarchs refuse to have anything to do with the men on the team. The set-up is not dissimilar to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Ruins of Isis”.
At a first glance, the new culture appears to be purely oral – the contact team can’t find any evidence of written records. At the same time, the women appear to be very involved with a kind of needlework, not unlike crochet or lace making. They even bring their crochet into meetings, and finished pieces of lace are often displayed on walls as decoration. Men, it is said, are not permitted to make lace – it is not manly.
What emerges eventually is that the “lace” is actually writing – and that discovery made me physically sick. The story is set up perfectly for maximum impact: from the first contact team’s condescending attitude towards what they see as a typical female activity of lace making, their incomprehension of why men would want to engage in this in the first place, to the reversal of gender roles compared to our own history – for me everything was lined up perfectly for an insight to hit me like lightning.
For me personally, language is a key part of my identity – I am fluent in three. The subset of language that is written is hugely important in my life: I earn my living (indirectly) reading and writing things. A lot of the time – like right now – I interact with the world through reading and writing. When I’m sad, or angry, or frustrated, I write; when I’m happy, I write. (It gets me into trouble sometimes.) When I want to know something, I read up on it; when I want to relax, I read; when I want to think, I read! If I was not allowed to read and write, I would not be me: I would be materially and spiritually poorer, I would quite literally not be the same person.
This is why “Looking Through Lace” had such a powerful impact on me: it pointed me at our own history, at the countless generations of women who were not allowed to learn to read or write, whose history was taken away from them – and from us – because they had no way of recording it.
So today I would like to celebrate just a few of the remarkable women who – despite everything – did manage to write, and whose voices have remained with us through the ages.
Claudia Severa was not a philosopher, or theologian, or social commentator, or writer of fiction. What she wrote was “I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail.” The reason this is remarkable is that it is the oldest known Roman document written by a woman. It was found in a Roman fort called Vindolanda, about 30 miles from where I live. The Vindolanda tablets give us a remarkable insight into life on the borders of the Empire around 100CE. They show a bustling town, more than a military fort, where officers’ wives lived with their husbands, wrote to each other, and invited each other to birthday parties. The tablets are exhibited at the British museum, yet looking at its description of the Vindolanda tablets, you would hardly know this document existed.
Heloise was a 12th-century French nun, whose lengthy correspondence with her former lover Pierre Abélard ranges from emotional to spiritual and philosophical matters. The telling of Heloise’s story often focuses on her romantic relationship with Abélard, sidelining her contributions to medieval theology.
Sei Shōnagon was a Japanese courtier and social commentator in the late 10th and early 11th century. She is known as the author of the “Pillow Book”, a remarkably readable and at times extremely witty collection of diary entries, musings, observations and poems. As well as being supremely entertaining, Shōnagon gives us a brilliant insight into life at the Emperor’s court. Here is an excerpt from the Penguin edition translated by Ivan Morris:

A good lover will behave as elegantly at dawn as at any other time. He drags himself out of bed with a look of dismay on his face. That lady urges him on: “Come, my friend, it’s getting light. You don’t want anyone to find you here.” He gives a deep sigh, as if to say that the night had not been nearly long enough and that it is agony to leave. Once up, he does not instantly pull on his trousers. Instead he comes close to the lady and whispers whatever was left unsaid during the night. Even when he is dressed, he still lingers, vaguely pretending to be fastening his sash.

We learn so much about relationships between men an women in Shōnagon’s society from this one passage! Shōnagon comes across as confident, empowered, often opinionated, highly intelligent. She is an absolute delight to read.
Murasaki Shikibu was a contemporary (and rival) of Sei Shōnagon’s. Murasaki is known as the author of The Tale of Genji, generally regarded as the world’s first novel.
These four women for me showcase the full spectrum – from writing about “women’s things” which our culture doesn’t value (Claudia Severa’s birthday party invitation), right through to playing on the big stage – writing novels and making contributions to philosophy and theology. We should celebrate them and treasure them, along with the few other women whose words still reach us through the ages. We should, above all, be aware of how privileged we are to live in a time where reading and writing is not considered “un-feminine”, and we should be aware that there are still parts of the world today where wanting an education is life-threatening for a girl. We have a duty to those who have gone before us, both recorded and unrecorded, and to our less fortunate contemporaries to remember, to raise awareness, and to keep writing. This is what Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day are all about.