I Don't Know Them

Strong women. Where do I even begin? Is the American Revolution too late?

Sybil Ludington of Connecticut was only sixteen years old when she hopped on her horse and rode into the night, warning American militiamen that the British were coming. She carried only a stick to defend herself against any stripe of hooligan, as well as the gun-wielding English. Sybil rode twice as far as Paul Revere, but no one has ever heard of her.

I could go back much further. How about the Viking warrior whose tenth-century grave was unearthed in 2017? The body, which was buried with a shield, multiple weapons of war, and two horses, was assumed to belong to a man. Instead, researchers who studied the bones were as shocked as anyone else to announce it was actually a woman.

Let me just say that, as a fun fearless female who grew up in the girl-power 90s, I hate the words “stay strong” and anything that could be swapped for it.

“Keep your head up!” “Hang in there!” “Think positive!”

They didn’t bother me until my attorney husband informed me he was divorcing me in 2015 and intended to take my three-year-old daughter with him. I fought it, of course—but it was soul-crushing. I couldn’t open my mail without cracking open a beer or a bottle of wine first, knowing there was going to be yet another notice for yet another court date. Later, when it became clear he was going to get his way—at least temporarily—I stepped it up to doing shots.

“Stay strong”? My goal was to wake up and survive. These hackneyed phrases induced in me the cognitive equivalent of a gag reflex.

Martha Corey. She was the last woman killed in the Salem Witch Trials. No one ever suspected the mild-mannered homemaker was a witch—until she expressed skepticism about the existence of witches and suggested the accusers were lying for personal gain. For this, she was hanged—and then she turned out to be right. Contrary to the religious mass hysteria of her day, people can’t cast spells and there’s no such thing as a witch.

Sojourner Truth: this may be a name you’ve actually heard. Born into slavery, she escaped after her five-year-old son was sold to another master. Once free, Sojourner Truth sued for custody of her son and won. This towering woman, who was well over six feet tall, was once jeered by a crowd of men who accused her of being a man in disguise. Truth, for lack of a better term, whipped out the goods. By flashing them her breasts, she showed the hecklers she was unashamed of her body and unphased by their insults, which shut them up immediately.

Six years later, I still hate the “strong woman” stereotype. People use it in a way that suggests women who end up in vulnerable positions—as battered wives or victims of discrimination or sexual harassment—somehow deserved it on account of a character flaw. Surely a “strong woman” would put on her “big girl pants”—another phrase I detest—and demand a stop to the situation, right? As we’ve seen again and again throughout history, that’s not always how it works. Women who do speak up for themselves are often labeled whacko. Martha Corey was executed for it. And what about Franca Viola, the Italian woman who, in the regressive 1950s, refused to marry her rapist? Italy had a centuries-old cultural tradition of pressuring rape victims to marry their attackers. In their minds, this was the only way the victim’s “honor” could be restored, especially if the rapist had robbed her of her virginity.

Viola refused to go along with that program, telling her rapist—who had kidnapped her with a gang of fifteen men and held her hostage for a week—“I do not love you, and I will not marry you.” Was Viola celebrated as a “strong woman”? Who are we kidding? Years later, the Italian press was still sneering that she couldn’t get a man. (Viola did marry later in life.)

While I was waiting for the court to finalize my divorce, I decided to start doing research for a historical novel about my real great-great-grandmother, Mamie Chambers, who immigrated to Cleveland in 1888. I used to turn to history when I was unhappy with the present. I liked to imagine an easier, softer time when life was simpler and the world was less cruel. By reading about Mamie’s life, I realized how wrong I was: after her husband-to-be abandoned her, Mamie went to work in a saloon. Because the male owner was often traveling for work, Mamie essentially ran the place alone with a female friend, her future sister-in-law Kate. For daring to run a male-oriented business, Kate and Mamie became the targets of vicious neighborhood gossip. They were accused of running a secret brothel. Why couldn’t they just get married and have babies like the good girls? Mamie eventually did marry and had five children—but she kept the bar. Now, that had to take some toughness.

It also took courage for Sophie, my other great-great-grandmother on the other side of the family, to leave her abusive husband after the Catholic church told her it was a sin to divorce him. (Apparently, getting drunk and beating your wife was peachy keen.) Sophie, a Polish immigrant who spoke minimal English, waited until her husband was in the bathtub, then snatched his clothes and her babies. Knowing he wouldn’t chase after her naked, she left and never returned.

If you want to read about tough women, the lesser-known history of World War II is full of them. Unfortunately, many had to accept death as the price for their heroism. In Navahrudak, Poland, ten Catholic nuns were killed by the Gestapo after they offered to die in place of Jewish villagers. They were led into the woods, shot, and buried in a mass grave. Sara Salkahazi, the founder of founder of Hungary’s Catholic Women’s League, was executed for the crime of hiding Jewish women and children at her convent. Salkahazi and scores of other victims were shot and tossed into the Danube River. Today, sixty pairs of iron shoes along the riverbank commemorate the victims.

Violet Gibson was a Dublin debutante and the daughter of a well-regarded Irish politician. Unfortunately, Gibson’s stifling lifestyle took a toll on her mental health, and in 1925 she attempted suicide. After being released from an asylum, she decided to cheer herself up by traveling to Italy—and shooting fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the face. The world would have been a much better place had Gibson succeeded, but for her efforts, this “strong woman” was shipped back to the mental institution.

Speaking of tough girls with guns, Franceska Mann was a professional ballerina from Poland who was sent to Auschwitz with other Polish Jews in 1943. As they were herded into a gas chamber, this demure little dancer decided she wasn’t going down without a fight: she grabbed a Nazi officer’s pistol and shot him dead, provoking the other female prisoners to riot. After her husband was murdered by Nazi stormtroopers, Russian housewife Lyudmila Pavlichenko joined the Red Army as a sniper. She was such a skilled sharpshooter she earned the nickname “Lady Death.” When asked how many men she had killed, she replied, “I have not killed any men, only fascists.”

(But in case you’re wondering, the real answer is: about three hundred.)

Eventually, I did decide to put my big girl panties on, and go to rehab. That probably doesn’t sound like a “strong woman” to many. After all, who is weaker than someone who’s become a slave to drugs and alcohol? But, as I discovered, it takes courage to admit you have become a slave and try to break free. As one of my friends there kept reminding me, “Remember, good moms go to rehab.” Tearing into the mail stone-cold sober before the panic sets in takes a lot more guts than doing three shots of cheap watered-down vodka first.

Today, my daughter is nine, only a little older than Sarah Grimké when she saw an overseer whipping a slave and decided to run away to a place where slavery didn’t exist. Grimké and her younger sister, Angelina, were daughters of a wealthy South Carolina judge who owned hundreds of slaves. Both women could have lived pleasant mediocre lives as Southern belles, sipping sweet tea on the wraparound porch in their big crimoline skirts. Instead, they became outspoken abolitionists. In 1939, they published “American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses,” which was so appalling it helped light the fire under the anti-slavery movement.

My daughter and I have a great bond now. In our free moments, I like to teach her about history. I showed her my collectible Southern Belle Barbie doll and told her it was modeled on one of the Grimké sisters. (It wasn’t, but it was a great conversation starter about these remarkable women.) I keep a mental list of women whose names didn’t end up in the history books, but whose stories inspire me on days I feel anything but inspired. As for my daughter, Catherine, she said she admires Ruby Bridges, the six-year-old girl who became the first black student to attend an all-white elementary school after courts forced Louisiana to desegregate. Unlike many of the women I admire, Ruby Bridges is alive and well. In fact, she’s only sixty-seven years old—two years older than Catherine’s grandmother.

I don’t know them, but I owe them.

I’ll spare you the cliches, but I will raise a toast to the strong women everywhere.