Song of the Week: “Savage Daughter,” by Ekaterina Shelehova - “I will not cut my hair / I will not lower my voice”
I’ve always loved women with swords, from paintings of Boudica and Joan of Arc in history books to pop culture figures like She-Ra and Xena: Warrior Princess. I gave my maid of honor a sword as a thank you gift for all the ways she helped with our wedding, and in one of my favorite photos of myself as a bride, I’m holding it.
Growing up, my favorite Disney movie was Mulan. We didn’t have a copy at home (no doubt to save my parents from having to watch it every day), but every time we went to my aunt and uncle’s house, I insisted on watching it again. I loved every moment, and I still do: Mulan’s banter with Mushu, her quick thinking in battle, and the ending, when the emperor - and the people of China - all bow to a woman who has been continually ignored, belittled, or shamed.
The scene that always stood out to me, however, was the one where Mulan exchanges the beautiful floral hair comb her parents gifted her for the emperor’s summons to join the army, then uses her father’s sword to cut her hair.
Even as a tiny kid, I felt the weight and symbolism of this moment: Mulan trades her society’s expectations that she will be beautiful and get married for the masculine world of honor, sacrifice, and adventure. Mulan wasn’t just smart and brave, to me: she was better than all of the boring Disney princesses before her who only cared about falling in love.
Today, of course, I have a more nuanced understanding of agency, Disney princesses, and, for that matter, Mulan. I now understand - as do many other viewers - that as someone who would later realize I was queer, Mulan’s struggle to conform to her society’s expectations for her resonated deeply with me. And I now have a much more complex view of violence, and masculinity, and the way we understand strength, than I did when I first saw that scene.
And yet. I can’t help it. Mulan is still my favorite.
The Woman Warrior
Disney’s Mulan, of course, is a western retailing of an ancient Chinese folktale. In the 1976 experimental memoir The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Childhood Among Ghosts, first generation Chinese-American Maxine Hong Kingston intertwines stories of her life and that of her female relatives with retellings of Chinese folktales. In one section of the memoir, “White Tigers,” Kingston relates her mother’s story of Fa Mu Lan, the woman warrior who volunteered to take her father’s place in battle. Fa Mu Lan, she says, is “the sword woman who drives me.” Even as she aspires to be like Fa Mu Lan, however, she feels constant pressure and disappointment: pressure to “save her village” by being the perfect successful immigrant daughter, and disappointment, that her straight As and good behavior cannot measure up to her family’s expectations of greatness.
Kingston’s frustrated relationship to the story of Fa Mu Lan reminds me of an almost universally misused quote that constantly appears on feminist t-shirts, totes, and bumper stickers: “well-behaved women seldom make history.” The quote originates in a 1976 scholarly article by the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich: “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735” (you can read it here, if you so desire). In the article, Ulrich is not praising the so-called “bad girls” of history, or calling for her readers to be rebellious warriors. Rather, she is drawing attention to the lives of ordinary women who had consistently been ignored by male historians because they were not considered worthy of study. Here is the relevant passage, in its full context:
They prayed secretly, read the Bible through at least once a year, and went to hear the minister preach even when it snowed. Hoping for an eternal crown, they never asked to be remembered on earth. And they haven’t been. Well-behaved women seldom make history; against Antinomians1 and witches, these pious matrons have had little chance at all. Most historians, considering the domestic by definition irrelevant, have simply assumed the pervasiveness of similar attitudes in the seventeenth century.
Ulrich’s charge for her readers is to pay attention to the lives of ordinary people: to find the meaning and richness in the domestic, the quiet, and the overlooked. Must a woman be extraordinary, she asks us, to be worthy of celebration? Of remembrance?
Valor Without Renown
This question stays with me as I consider the other woman warrior who has defined my life: Eowyn, from The Lord of the Rings. (Yep, that’s right. Tolkien again. It’s going to be a common occurrence in this newsletter. Skip this section if you don’t want major spoilers).
While Lord of the Rings fans - myself included - frequently joke about or lament the lack of female characters in the books and films, we are almost universal in our admiration of Eowyn as a strong, complex character.
When we first meet Eowyn (played in the films by Miranda Otto) in The Two Towers, she is isolated and depressed, facing the decrepitude of her uncle King Theoden, the death of her beloved cousin Theodred, and the creeping manipulation of Wormtongue. Constrained by her society’s expectations for women even as it feels like the world is ending, she is desperate to do something - anything - to fight for the people she loves.
As Eowyn’s people prepare for impending war, she briefly crosses swords with Aragorn:
“You have some skill with a blade,” Aragorn says.
Eowyn is defiant. “The women of this country learned long ago: those without swords can still die upon them. I fear neither death nor pain.”
Aragorn takes this in. “What do you fear, my lady?” he asks.
She hesitates. “A cage,” she says finally. “To stay behind bars until use and old age accept them, and all chance of valor has gone beyond recall or desire.”
Eowyn spends the rest of the film trying to use her sword, and being turned away: first when raiders attack, and later when her people are preparing for a siege. As the invading army closes in, she laments to Aragorn that she is being sent to the caves with the refugees to organize food and first aid. “What renown is there in that?”
“A time may come for valor without renown,” Aragorn replies.
Of course, in Return of the King, Eowyn finally gets her big moment of valor: much like Mulan, she disguises herself as a man, rides into battle, and - overcoming her overwhelming terror - fulfills a prophecy and kills the Witch-King, arguably the second-most-powerful force for evil in the world.
It is - and I cannot overstate this - incredibly awesome. Go ahead, rewatch it below. You know you want to.
Awesomeness aside, though, why have I recapped the majority of Eowyn’s storyline? Doesn’t her big violent warrior moment kind of undercut the whole “valor without renown” thing?
While I said above that Lord of the Rings fans are almost universal in our love for Eowyn, we are more divided in our opinions concerning her ultimate fate: marriage, and a quiet life away from the battlefield. Is this the cage she so fears?
After Eowyn kills the Witch-King, and comforts her uncle King Theoden as he dies, she collapses and is taken to the Houses of Healing, where she hovers on the threshold between life and death. Even after Aragorn heals her physical injuries, Eowyn still struggles to find hope and purpose: a struggle she has in common with Boromir’s younger brother, Faramir. The two of them fall in love as they heal, and we last glimpse them together at Aragorn’s coronation.
In the book, Tolkien gives us more context. As Eowyn and Faramir grow together in the Houses of Healing, Tolkien tells us “suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone upon her.” After years of depression and fear, Eowyn has hope again: hope for a world in which her people are safe, and evil is defeated, and the ones she loves do not die in front of her as she looks helplessly on.
“I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,’ she said; ‘and behold! The Shadow has departed! I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.”
And so she marries Faramir: the man who, echoing the World War I veteran Tolkien, declares: “I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
And so Eowyn hangs up her sword.
Eshet Chayil
As many of the readers of this newsletter know, I wrote my dissertation about the writer Rachel Held Evans, who created community and gave platforms to people who had historically been silenced or oppressed by evangelical Christianity. Tragically, Rachel died in 2019, at the age of 37, leaving behind two children under the age of five.
Years earlier, she wrote a book called A Year of Biblical Womanhood (2012), documenting her attempts to follow the Bible’s teachings for women for an entire year.
In April, she focused on the “Proverbs 31” woman: the woman described in the Biblical passage that begins “Who can find a virtuous woman?” After trying and failing to do everything the woman does, from rising before dawn to making clothes for her family, Rachel complains to a Jewish friend that the passage feels more like a to-do list than anything inspiring.
That, her friend replies, is because she - and so many Christians - misunderstand the passage. In the Jewish tradition, the passage is seen not as an unattainable standard women should be held to, but rather an example of a husband praising his wife for the incredible things she already does. “Virtuous woman,” her friend says - eshet chayil in Hebrew - would perhaps better be translated as “woman of valor.”
Following this example, Rachel began proclaiming “eshet chayil!” to her friends to recognize them for their accomplishments, large and small:
Before long, I overheard friends repeating the blessing to one another in response to news of pregnancy, promotions, finished projects, and final cancer treatments. I saw it exchanged in tweets and on Facebook walls. Readers sent me links to dozens of articles about women of valor from around the world who had built hospitals in Africa, launched successful micro-financing initiatives in India, been elected to public office in Afghanistan, and staged protests in Egypt. Never before had I considered how many acts of raw bravery occur every day in the lives of women.
When Rachel died in 2019, many of her friends and readers got tattoos of the phrase “eshet chayil” to remember her legacy.
Three years later, the day after I defended a dissertation documenting the community she helped to build, I did too.
When it comes to women of valor, what should I add to my syllabus?
I want to hear from you, whether it’s in the comments on this post or in emails to me directly at roschmansyllabus@substack.com!
literally “against the law”