Reclaiming Erased Women Through Fiction

In Game of Thrones, Rhaenyra Targaryen, one of the most powerful women in fictional Westerosi history, is either not mentioned at all or barely so in lineage discussions in the first five books of the series. At her peak, she has a legitimate claim to the coveted Iron Throne. Yet it’s not until the sixth book that readers get a sense of her capability and power. This high fantasy version of a powerful woman’s life follows a familiar trajectory for real women. Even in invented worlds, the treatment of women follows a familiar path, one that real history has also done to them. Pure fiction imitated real life, even its mistakes.

(The Tiffany Problem: Navigating Reader Perceptions and Feelings in Historical Fiction.)

Fictional biographies have brought female mythical figures to light: Circe, the Greek sorceress who turned men into pigs, or Briseis, the noblewoman who is captured as a war prize for Achilles. These women were originally written in as noteworthy characters but nearly flat ones.

Recent fiction pushed these women into today’s conversations and made them household names. Historical fiction too often has been the vehicle to bring forgotten women to light. The farther back in time these women breathed, the scanter the breadcrumbs of evidence left behind. For the ancients, it’s a name on a seal, on a vase, unlike the great men who had legends preserved in tablets. The greater the distance back in time the more fiction than fact must be invented to fill in blanks in these women’s true biographies.

There is the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Legend of Sargon, while Queen Kubaba was not treated similarly. And she was the only woman on the Sumerian King List, an extraordinary occurrence given the limited rights granted to ancient Mesopotamian women. Her legacy implies that her power was sourced from her generosity not her leadership abilities. Other tales about her surfaced from brothel-keeper to goddess. But it takes little imagination to conclude that she must have been a remarkable diplomat, administrator, and businesswoman to have managed and maintained her ascendancy. Yet lore from her era reduces her to a woman who rose solely because of generosity, a feminine virtue. Perhaps one day, notable fiction will fill in this breach.

Fiction sometimes is the thing that writes women into public consciousness. The real gift is those who were little known to the general public but a book made them famous. Mary Anning found new audiences through Remarkable Creatures, Katherine Parr through The Taming of the Queen, Hatshepsut through Child of the Morning, Artemisia Gentileschi through The Passion of Artemisia.

Fiction has often succeeded in bringing women to large audiences after scholars recovered them. They appear in the historical record, not as primary subjects, but as incidental characters afforded notice because of their proximity to men. But for women who we know who did at least that one remarkable thing, fiction offers a way to imagine the fuller life behind the scant facts.

Sadly my own experience echoes this point. While researching Sargon of Akkad, I encountered his daughter, Enheduanna, first as a political appointment: a high priestess appointed in Ur to secure an empire’s control because of her relationship to a powerful man, the world’s first emperor. My assumption was that she achieved modest greatness because of her father. After all, at the time I encountered her, she was known mostly only to Assyriologists.

I also learned that she was the world’s first named author. And I soon found out that the works attributed to her were remarkable despite being incomplete. What we have is moving enough. The controversy around her authorship opened up two possible conflicting truths: Either she wrote the hymns or she inspired them. Either way, her significance exceeds the footnote she lived in. And if she can be considered a footnote at all, it is one that opens a conversation. There was no credible version of her story I could imagine that didn’t result in her having a remarkable life and wielding power which she could have only earned. Some of her siblings remain names only on a page. She was either a great author or great inspiration.

Enheduanna is part of an ancient world problem for other leading women. Puduhepa surfaces in the historical record through diplomatic correspondence with Ramesses II, yet she co-signed the oldest surviving peace treaty with her own independent seal, and corresponded with world leaders on equal terms to her powerful husband. Cornelia Africana is preserved because she is the daughter of Scipio Africanus, like Enheduanna, she either authored letters that shaped a historic political reform movement or she inspired them.

In more modern times, scientific achievement was belatedly credited to the true founders. Henrietta Leavitt's discovery of the period-luminosity relationship for Cepheid variables, the tool that gave astronomy its first reliable measure of cosmic distances, was recognized only after Hubble used it to prove the universe is expanding. We meet these women as some man’s context, and much later, as fascinating subjects, or from an oblique angle. These women are still not well known and it doesn’t take much imagination to conclude that fiction might be the vehicle that puts them into modern conversation.

Enheduanna represents a most striking example of this pattern. It was a joy to discover her and imagine her life. She may stand at the origin of authored literature, either the author herself or the inspiration. She should become foundational not incidental. She shouldn’t be her father’s footnote but a focus.

Fiction shouldn’t supplant true history, but it can be the vehicle that invites scholarly attention on women whose voice and spirit should be transmitted across time so that the modern world doesn’t lose the benefit of their example. What may appear as scant mention, may just be that we haven’t looked hard enough, nor imagined deeply.

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