Rejected Princesses: Tales of History's Boldest Heroines, Hellions, and Heretics

by Jason Porath

  For reference’s sake, in recent years there’s been a popular fictional character with almost the same danger-detecting abilities. You may have heard of him. His name is Spider-Man. He is not real. Tubman was. She was also illiterate, uneducated, narcoleptic, and unstoppable.

  When the Civil War broke out, Tubman made a beeline down to South Carolina—the heart of the South—to assist the Union army. She first worked for them as a nurse and was later put in charge of an entire scouting group. Her work was quite controversial, however: the question of whether the Union army should accept black recruits at all was the subject of much debate, but having a black woman in a position of power was unheard of. Luckily, she got a chance to prove herself—as did many black recruits when Union ranks were opened to them in 1863.

  Also in 1863, Tubman guided three steamboats on a nighttime raid of southern plantations along the Combahee River. This was unbelievably daring: the area in question was rife with underwater mines, and the shores of the river were home to some of the most elite forces of the Confederacy. But Tubman, by befriending local slaves, mapped out all the mines and led a successful raid. They seized thousands of dollars in supplies, torched a number of plantations, and rescued nearly 800 slaves* in one night, without suffering a single casualty.

  Unfortunately, life was not as kind to her after the war. Despite her status as a war hero, Tubman began to suffer discrimination as early as the train ride back to her home, now in New York. Faced with a conductor who didn’t believe her military-issued ticket was the genuine article, she was forcibly removed from her seat and tossed in one of the rear cars. This was no small struggle: upwards of four people were brought in to remove her, and her arm was broken in the process, an injury that took months to heal.

  She lived out the rest of her life doing humanitarian and women’s suffrage work, putting almost every dollar she earned toward helping others. She therefore spent most of her later years in poverty—exacerbated by the government taking over three decades to pay her for her service during the war. Ever the one to think of others, one of her last statements to those visiting at her deathbed was, “I go to prepare a place for you.”

  The same year Harriet Tubman died, Rosa Parks was born.

  Anne Hutchinson

  (1591–1643, UNITED STATES)

  New England’s Rebel Preacher

  Here is a list of things the Puritan leaders of early Boston disliked, in ascending order of hatred: cold weather, Native Americans, Protestants, women talking back, Satan himself, and Anne Hutchinson.

  The heroine of this story was guilty of falling into at least two of the last three categories. Although if you’d asked the magistrates running her trial, they’d claim she fell into all three.

  Let’s take a step back to the Boston of the 1630s. The first thing to know is that it was crazy religious, with heavy emphasis on crazy. Everyone knows that the Puritans left England to practice their religious beliefs, but often the beliefs themselves are glossed over. Well, no more, dear reader! I present to you some of the fine religious freedoms put forward for 17th-century Boston:

  • Women were not allowed to wear fur, lace, or colorful cloth.

  • All women were required to wear veils.

  • Public funds paid for church.

  • Church attendance was mandatory.

  Now, some of these “freedoms” became laws, while others (veils) were just debated, but the fact of the matter is this: here was a community of people who put “ministers” at the top of their list of supplies for the one-way trip to America.

  In the middle of this hotbed of holiness sailed Anne Hutchinson. Anne, despite a total lack of formal education, nevertheless knew the Bible so well that she argued with a preacher the entire voyage over. In this regard, she took after her father, a clergyman who so frustrated the Bishop of London that he was put on trial for blasphemy. During the trial, he further needled the bishop until the man exclaimed, “Thou art a very ass, an idiot, and a fool.” In her approach to legal defense, Anne would follow in her father’s footsteps.

  Anne went about her work quietly and cleverly. Instead of directly ministering to whoever would listen, she began a women-only study group—to which the male powers-that-be were totally blind. Further, she took advantage of the church’s mandatory sermons: the town preacher would pose thought-provoking questions in church, and Anne would actually provide answers in her group.

  In short order, her growing popularity put her on the radar of the local magistrates. By this point, she was doing “study sessions” twice a week, and women were bringing their husbands, who in turn started asking pointed questions in church. The governor, John Winthrop, was not a fan: he thought that Anne was a witch, and that the devil had taken over her soul and was using her to subjugate men by establishing “the community of women” to foster “their abominable wickedness.” So yeah, she wasn’t on his Christmas card list.

  Winthrop put her on trial, but it was there that her true cleverness shone through. After the panel’s initial bloviating, Anne calmly asked what she was on trial for. She knew it couldn’t be for contempt, since she, as a woman, had no public role. She couldn’t be disenfranchised because she couldn’t vote. Even her most visible crime, leaving church in the middle of a sermon, was easily characterized as “feminine distress”—a tactic that stopped the menses-fearing panel of men dead in their tracks.

  In this way, she turned her weaknesses into strengths, which only complemented her tremendous physical endurance. The weather during her trial was deathly cold—literally, someone had frozen to death just the week before. The courtroom had no fireplace (although the magistrates were given beds of heated coals). Anne was made to stand the entire time. And she did all of this while pregnant with her sixteenth child. Yep, sixteenth.

  The best part? She crushed it. As the trial predictably fell into a game of quote-the-Bible, this uneducated woman debated a panel of Cambridge-educated lawyers into silence. She argued so hard that she actually fainted in the middle of the trial, only to begin arguing again as soon as she was revived. In the end, the only point the panel could make was that her behavior was not “comely in the sight of God.”

  Unfortunately, it is at this point that Anne’s arrogance got the best of her: she began to lecture the panel on the Bible, in full view of everyone.

  Historian Eve LaPlante argues that no matter how Anne’s trial went, her ensuing banishment was a foregone conclusion from the beginning. But even if that isn’t true, her high-profile schooling of the panel of magistrates certainly didn’t exactly make them turn the other cheek.

  After the trial (and a short house arrest), Anne left Boston and walked (still pregnant, mind you) 40 miles to a new city. Several years later, she and her extensive family were all, save one, killed in a horrific Native American raid, in a tragic case of mistaken identity. This act is made all the more tragic by the fact that she had publicly opposed raids on nearby Native American tribes while in Boston—and more importantly, she had convinced a huge number of would-be soldiers to oppose them as well.

  The magistrates decided that the root cause of the problem was a shortage of preachers. To remedy that, and to prevent future Anne Hutchinsons, they founded a college: Harvard University.

  Petra “Pedro” Herrera

  (LATE 19TH CENTURY–EARLY 20TH CENTURY, MEXICO)

  The Soldadera Princess

  Gentle reader, staring at you from the illustration for this entry is Colonel Petra “Pedro” Herrera: Mexican revolutionary, demolitions expert, and leader of an all-female brigade that boasted hundreds of women.

  Here’s the Mexican Revolution in one oversimplified paragraph: It’s the 1910s. President Porfirio Diaz is being a jerk. Revolutionaries (Pancho Villa, Zapata, others from the “Bad Boys of the Revolution” calendar series) pop up and say, “Hey, stop being a jerk and step down already.” Bam, war.

  Most of the soldaderas (women embedded with the armies) were covering the minutia that the “let’s
go fight already” soldiers hadn’t thought through—like eating. With the war swallowing up town after town, increasing numbers of women and children joined up with the growing armies, although not always by choice—some were straight-up kidnapped. The end result made the armies appear to journalists of the time like “an immense picnic.”

  Petra Herrera, though, was not about to cook or clean. Petra was there to kick butt.

  Disguising herself as a man (Pedro) in order to be eligible for battlefield promotions—a commonplace tactic among female soldiers of the time—Petra established her reputation with the revolutionaries through solid leadership, good marksmanship, and, you know, blowing up bridges. Eventually, she became so popular that she dropped the “I’m a man” pretense. Afterwards, she started wearing braids and fighting under her own name. By 1914, she was a captain under Pancho Villa, commanding 200 men.

  Her crowning achievement was to sack the city of Torreón—in the biggest fight in the war to that date—which gave Pancho Villa access to heavy artillery, a half million rounds of ammunition, and armored rail cars. And yet, Herrera was not given much, if any, credit for her work. Now, mind, she’s not mentioned in the official documentation on this, but according to another soldier in the battle, “she was the one who took Torreón, she turned off the lights when they entered the city.” And yet, she was not promoted to general afterwards.

  In response, Herrera said, “I’m out.” She left Villa’s forces and made her own—an independent all-female brigade. By the end of the war, it was estimated to comprise around 300 to 400 women. She looked after her women like a mama bear. A mama bear with a rifle and ammo bandolier. Petra wouldn’t let men sleep in her camp, and she enforced that rule by staying up late and using any male soldier who disobeyed as target practice.

  At the end of the conflict, she asked again to be made a general and was denied. She was made a colonel, and her brigade was disbanded. Soon after, she was killed by a band of drunken men while working as a spy.

  As cool as she was, Petra was not unique in being an amazing soldadera. There were so many distinguished women in the Mexican Revolution, it’s hard to pick just one to represent them. Some others:

  • Petra Ruiz (who also disguised herself as a male named Pedro) was nicknamed “Echa Balas” (Bullets) and was known for her temper as well as her skill with knives and guns. One account tells of soldiers arguing over who would be first to rape a young girl, only to have Ruiz show up, demand the girl for herself, and upon winning her, let her go.

  • Rosa Bobadilla, when widowed by the war, took up arms and fought in 168 battles—surviving them all.

  • A woman named Chiquita rode into an enemy camp, saying she was a trained nurse. Hours later, she was skipping town, having stolen papers, documents, and maps.

  • When US president Woodrow Wilson sent an army into Mexico, 13-year-old Elisa Grienssen rallied the women of Parral to kick them out. They surrounded the American commander (who was apparently already leaving, but taking his sweet time with it), throwing rocks and sticks and shouting, “Viva Villa, Viva Mexico!”

  Unfortunately, for most of Mexico’s postwar history, soldaderas were largely memorialized through folk songs that didn’t do them justice. In the most famous of these songs, “La Adelita,” the eponymous Adelita follows the army because she is in love with the sergeant. Although certainly that sort of thing happened, love wasn’t exactly the prime motivator for Petra “make me a freakin’ general already” Herrera.

  • ART NOTES •

  Because Petra dressed as a man for much of her career, she is seen here in a period-accurate officer’s outfit. She has an officer’s sword and characteristic ammo bandolier and is unfurling her braid from her hat in a nod to her “guess what? I’m a lady” reveal. Her revolver is a copy of the one that Emiliano Zapata used (a Mexican Smith & Wesson replica).

  The soldaderas below her are in outfits more typical of the standard soldadera representation. Together, their different tones comprise the colors of the Mexican flag.

  The setting is an actual Mexican bridge from the time, but it was clear on the other side of Mexico from where she operated (mostly Durango and Chihuahua).

  A’isha bint abi Bakr

  (614–678, SAUDI ARABIA [ARABIA])

  Mother of the Believers

  Hoo boy. Here we go.

  It’s safe to say that A’isha bint abi Bakr is one of the most controversial figures in all of Islamic history. The youngest and most beloved wife* of the Prophet Muhammad is, on the one hand, the source of a huge percentage of Islamic teachings, a model for spirited women everywhere, and a revelatory figure for the Prophet himself—and on the other hand, she is a divisive military leader at the center of an Islamic schism that has persisted for 1,300 years and counting.

  A’isha was the daughter of the Prophet’s best bud, Abu Bakr, a man who, like A’isha, was either Allah’s anointed messenger or Satan’s slimiest scoundrel, depending on who you ask.* After the Prophet’s death, Abu Bakr was next in line to lead the Muslim people. While he would have probably been at the top of the list regardless, his personal stock had been bolstered greatly through his daughter’s marriage to the Prophet—and her status as the Prophet’s favorite wife.

  Let’s get this out of the way up front—A’isha was young when they married. Way too young. Most sources claim she was six when engaged and nine when married, although some claim she was as old as 12 or 14. While that’s hardly atypical for most cultures in human history (it’s standard for many women covered in this book), it sounds shocking today. But seeing as this issue has been debated endlessly in virtually every medium in human history, not to mention that it has little to do with who A’isha actually was, this book is going to leave it at that.

  So what kind of a person was A’isha? In a word: lively. In her youth, she was not slow to remind her fellow wives that she was the Prophet’s favorite, that she was the only one who’d been a virgin when married, that the Prophet got revelations only in her presence . . . you get the point. Bottom line: she was clever, quick-witted, and all too happy to let you know it. But as she matured, especially in the years following the Prophet’s death, she came into her own as a leader.

  One of the biggest turning points in A’isha’s personal evolution was an episode called “The Incident of the Lie.”* Following a raid the Prophet led on a nearby tribe, A’isha was accidentally left behind. She had left to look for a necklace she’d dropped, but she weighed so little that when her servants hefted up her carriage onto a camel, they didn’t realize she wasn’t in it. Stranded in the desert, she got help in rejoining her husband from a strapping young lad named Safwan. Whereupon rumors quickly spread that she’d cheated on the Prophet with Safwan.

  Now, these rumors were bogus. Various people, including relatives of the Prophet’s other wives, were jockeying for political power,* and the rumors originated from them. With nobody defending her (not even her parents), and unable to prove her innocence herself, A’isha was totally isolated. The Prophet, unsure whom to believe, at one point consulted his son ‘Ali, who counseled him to ditch A’isha: “There are many women. You can easily replace one with another.”

  ‘Ali was so convinced A’isha was lying that he at one point beat her servant in an attempt to get the truth. Suffice to say, A’isha and ‘Ali did not get along.

  In the end, A’isha’s reputation was salvaged by a deus ex machina—literally. The Prophet got word from Allah that she was innocent. The rumor-spreaders were punished,* A’isha got pissed off enough to literally build a wall between her apartment and ‘Ali’s, and that was that. Or . . . not.

  Matters grew even more complex after the Prophet’s death. Nobody was quite sure who should lead next, and eventually ‘Ali was made leader—a move A’isha could not have disagreed with more.* This culminated in a clash between her supporters and his, known as the Battle of the Camel: the first episode of Muslim-on-Muslim violence in history. Although she personally led 3,000 men int
o battle (on a war camel!), A’isha was eventually overcome and ceded authority to ‘Ali.

  This conflict became the basis of a major break in Islamic tradition. Some followed A’isha and took her many subsequent teachings—as favorite wife, she knew the Prophet’s private customs better than anyone—as the basis for the religion. The others felt that she and her father had lied to everyone and tried to usurp power from ‘Ali, who was the rightful successor. People fight about it to this day (see the footnote on Abu Bakr a few pages back).

  Complicating the matter further is the fact that none of this was written down until 150 years later! Who knows what changed over a 15-decade-long game of telephone? By the time the story was put to parchment, the social standing of Muslim women was in a very different place. Anecdotes such as A’isha’s explosive reply to someone’s implication that women, dogs, and donkeys all could break prayer—“are you calling women dogs?!”—was not given the same cultural weight. Some stories were taken as legitimate, and others were dismissed.

  According to most sources, A’isha spent the remainder of her life teaching, nursing, mediating, and advocating for women. In all, she left 2,210 hadiths—the teachings that are the bedrock of Islamic tradition—placing her as the fourth most prolific hadith imparter. Her lessons ranged from proper prayer technique to admonitions for men to wash their genitalia, to passionate anti-cootie rhetoric—basically saying that men could in fact eat, drink, and pray around women while they were on their period.

  Obviously, this book cannot hope to comprehensively cover a figure as hotly debated as A’isha. There are many stories and anecdotes that could easily flip her (or ‘Ali, or Abu Bakr, or almost anyone) from hero to villain and back. This author highly recommends that anyone with an interest in further particulars of A’isha’s story read up on their own. While entire libraries of books have been written on her, the bibliography in the back of this book lists a few to help you get started.