When Ainslie Harvey read that women make up just 0.5% of written history, first she got mad, and then she decided to try and even the odds a little bit. As the creator behind Hot History Club on TikTok (or Instagram, for those of you who are elder millennials like me), Harvey has now turned her attention to compiling the stories of some of history’s more scandalous women into book form, and challenging the often male-authored versions of them that have become the status of legends. Women like Cleopatra, Marie Antoinette, Mata Hari and Eleanor of Aquitaine; those who ‘annoyed male historians so much they had to write it down.’ The result is Sisters of Scandal, a book which aims to make the study of history (and the correcting of the historical record when it comes to women) a little more interesting than it may have seemed when you were studying it “in a dusty old demountable at school.”
But if internet speak, and constant pop culture references interrupting the flow of your reading will annoy you, beware – while this book is extremely interesting, it’s hard to forget whilst reading it that it is born of a project that started online, with Harvey peppering her prose with the hashtags, comparisons to modern celebrity culture, and wry and risqué observations that made her content popular in the first place. The juxtaposition of thoughtful and clearly researched prose accounts of each woman’s life with sentences such as “Adolf Hitler was to Unity Mitford what Justin Bieber was to twelve-year-old girls in 2010” (p25) may at times prove too jarring for some readers.
Despite this, Sisters of Scandal is more than just a gift book full of short biographies and nice pictures of historical badasses. Harvey has categorised her subjects into themes: The Femme Fatale, The Rulers, The Warriors, The Artists and The Socialites. She moves through time within each of these sections, showing us that when it comes to the women we think we know, such as Cleopatra, we’ve been fooled into accepting a version of the charismatic Egyptian Queen that was built on rumours started by her enemies to discredit her.
Alongside these corrections to popular opinion, Harvey also includes the stories of those women whom the historical record has attempted to hide, such as the woman who revolutionised the pirate trade of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Ching Shih or 16th century warrior queen of Ndongo, Njinga Mbande. While the historical record is slim when it comes to women’s stories, it is even slimmer when it comes to the stories of women who were not white or from wealthy backgrounds, and Harvey acknowledges the challenges faced in research here.
As it stands the list of names included is overwhelmingly loaded towards royals, socialites and rich eccentrics, but as the book explains, due to the perils of womanhood throughout history, at times it has only been because of the privileges of such positions that women’s stories have been deemed worthy of recording at all – even if the way they are described is intended to discredit them.
I would perhaps have liked to see the book have more in the way of in-depth discussion about historiography and women’s history, and more said on the challenges of Harvey’s research generally. The sections for each woman constitute reasonable sized chapters, but surely there would have been room if all of the references to Zendaya and Harry Potter were taken out. That’s not shade on Zendaya by any stretch, but one can’t help but wonder if the modern pop culture references will date this book, which otherwise could have had a long shelf life.
The format is a little like Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, but for adults, and Sisters of Scandal would make either a fascinating coffee table book to be dipped in and out of (and discussed with your houseguests) or great solo reading. Despite the odd, confusing typo, such as when Eleanor of Aquitaine’s uncle is described as both Raymond and Richard on page 65, Harvey really does do what she promises, making history less dry and more accessible for a reader who might never have been keen on it before.
On top of this, for those readers who already love history, she has assembled a cast of subjects beyond those you may have already read about, and if you can forgive the occasional interjections that skate dangerously close to being on the nose, you’ll find this book to be compelling and insightful.
Harvey’s voice is unapologetically her own, sassy and a little crude, which is entirely the point. Modern readers will likely find her approach empowering, but it’s maybe not one to share with your Nan.
Or maybe it is, who knows! Your Nan might be a badass too.
FOUR STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Ainslie Harvey’s Sisters of Scandal is out now through Affirm Press. Grab yourself a copy from your local bookstore HERE.
