How, exactly, does a woman ‘slip’ out of history?

Summary

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Podcast Summary

This is History: History’s Greatest Fails

Episode: How, exactly, does a woman ‘slip’ out of history?

Date: April 21, 2026
Hosts: Dan Jones & Elizabeth Day

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Dan Jones and Elizabeth Day confront the enduring question of how women are written out, overlooked, or deliberately erased from history. Focusing on institutional, cultural, and narrative failures, they explore why female figures often vanish from the historical record, who is responsible, and what contemporary historians can—and can’t—do to recover these lost stories. Through lively, humorous debate, they delve into the fascinating stories of three overlooked women: Hatshepsut, Joanna Ferrer, and Ada Lovelace. Alongside, they reflect on the mechanisms of remembrance, the biases embedded in records, and the pitfalls of reading modern values into the past.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Are Women Forgotten in History? (01:18–07:13)

• Dan and Elizabeth debate whether the scarcity of women in history stems from the biases of male historians or from patriarchal societies themselves.
  • Dan’s view: Two main schools—either historians are sexist, or most societies have excluded women from spheres where "history" is made (military, political). Suggests both factors contribute.
  • Elizabeth’s rebuttal: Challenges the undervaluing of the domestic sphere, arguing that shaping households and raising future generations is profoundly influential.
    • Quote: "The way that you have framed those arguments is gendered... the female influence in what you term the domestic sphere is incredibly important because that is often shaping future humans." (03:42, Elizabeth)
  • Consensus: The failure is both systemic and archival—a product of past societies and the structures of historical remembrance.

2. The Case of Hatshepsut – The Forgotten Pharaoh (07:15–16:59)

• Elizabeth introduces Hatshepsut: Eighteenth Dynasty Egyptian pharaoh who presented herself as male for legitimacy, presided over a prosperous reign, and was later erased by her stepson.
  • Her reign was rediscovered only after hieroglyphs were decoded in the 19th century.
    • Quote: "She became the repository of kingship... by claiming that her mother had intimate relations with the sun God, Amon Ra... a direct claim not only to legitimacy, but to divinity." (08:45, Elizabeth)
• Discussion on gendered power: Even trailblazing women had to perform masculinity or cloak their authority in male imagery.
• Dan draws parallels with medieval chroniclers and the idiom of women "putting on male garb" when usurping power (12:00–13:46).
• The true failure: Not Hatshepsut’s leadership, but the system’s unwillingness to remember or acknowledge her achievements.
  • Quote: "In a way, the failure is the failure of the system to acknowledge that she was a great ruler." (14:43, Elizabeth)
• Memorable tangent: Hatshepsut’s architect, speculation about their relationship, and the digression into ancient Egyptian hummus—showcasing the hosts' playful dynamic (16:12–16:44).

3. Women and the Peasants’ Revolt: Joanna Ferrer’s Fleeting Moment (17:06–28:22)

• Historical context: 1381, major English revolt, led by Wat Tyler and John Ball, with chroniclers and records overwhelmingly male-dominated.
• Joanna Ferrer, a rare female name in the chronicles, played a pivotal role by identifying fleeing royal officials, leading to their execution.
  • Quote: "A woman called Joanna Ferrer who says, look, that's the royal officials trying to get away and they're captured and then they are Gordon beheaded." (20:49, Dan)
• Importance: Her intervention is remembered in a gendered, sometimes negative way—recorded almost as a cautionary tale of chaos.
• Systemic erasure: The very destruction of records by rebels, including women, ironically contributes to their own disappearance from history.
  • Quote: "[Joanna was] destroying something that then became the tool of her own disappearance." (24:50, Elizabeth)
• Caution about hindsight: Both agree on the danger of retroactively assigning modern feminism to medieval actors.
  • Quote: "We can't wish progressive thinking on the past." (25:43, Dan)
• Dan points out that chroniclers’ hostility toward women involved in such events is supercharged—her actions portrayed as aberrant and threatening to both social and gender order.
  • Quote: "To have a woman... being the catalyzing force for what amounts to murder in a kangaroo court, is just like one more example of how depraved these... this whole rebellion is..." (27:37, Dan)

4. Ada Lovelace: A Pioneer Rediscovered (30:17–34:13)

• Ada Lovelace, mathematician, daughter of Lord Byron, collaborator with Charles Babbage; her visionary work on algorithms and early computers was ignored in her lifetime and for a century after.
  • Her contributions only gained recognition in the 20th century, championed by figures like Alan Turing.
  • Gendered double standards: Her late-life struggles with addiction and gambling were harshly judged, “pathetic old drunk,” while her father’s excesses were celebrated.
    • Quote: "Her work was way ahead of its time and the machines had not yet been invented that could put into practice her theoretical, dazzling genius." (32:21, Elizabeth)
• Dan notes her rise as an icon is timely, intersecting modern interest in women in STEM and challenging of gender binaries.

5. Reflections on Historical Judgement and Intersectionality (34:21–38:45)

• Elizabeth emphasizes: Recognizing historic patriarchy does not mean excusing it today; awareness of gender intersects with race, class, ethnicity, and other biases.
  • Quote: "...so important...to remember those women who were not only disadvantaged in the historical record by their gender, but also by lots of other intersections..." (34:51, Elizabeth)
• Dan and Elizabeth discuss the blurry line between historical analysis and modern moralizing. Both caution against simple finger-wagging at the past (35:34–36:33).
• Elizabeth champions the approach of anthropologist Clifford Geertz, advocating understanding history "from the ground up" through cultural context.

6. Conclusion: Types of Failure Discussed (38:45–39:12)

• Elizabeth’s summary: Three categories of historical failure:

  1. Failure of memory (e.g., Hatshepsut’s erasure)
  2. Failure embedded in structural power (e.g., Joanna Ferrer)
  3. Failure of contemporary imagination to recognize visionary ideas (e.g., Ada Lovelace’s delayed recognition)

• Parting note: “People will catch up with us eventually.” (38:45, Dan)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the nature of domestic roles in history

"The way that you have framed those arguments is gendered... the female influence in what you term the domestic sphere is incredibly important because that is often shaping future humans."
—Elizabeth Day (03:42)

On Hatshepsut’s legitimacy

"...there was this idea that being a pharaoh was almost like occupying the White House, that there was a sort of power repository, and you were the symbol of that on earth."
—Elizabeth Day (09:38)

On the erasure of women

"In a way, the failure is the failure of the system to acknowledge that she was a great ruler."
—Elizabeth Day (14:43)

On retroactive feminism

"We can't wish progressive thinking on the past."
—Dan Jones (25:43)

On intersectionality in historical erasure

"...so important when we're talking about this topic, to remember those women who were not only disadvantaged in the historical record by their gender, but also by lots of other intersections..."
—Elizabeth Day (34:51)

On how history is judged

"...it's impossible as human beings to remove our reaction towards the morality of those times. And it would be sort of deranged and demented not to pass comment on it."
—Dan Jones (35:30)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• 01:18 — Opening debate: why are women left out of history?
• 07:15 — Introduction to Hatshepsut and her story
• 13:46 — The gendered memory of female power (and digression on hummus)
• 17:06 — Introduction to the Peasants' Revolt and Joanna Ferrer
• 24:50 — The paradox of record destruction and self-erasure
• 28:22 — Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent: sexism in medieval chronicles
• 30:18 — Ada Lovelace’s life and delayed acclaim
• 34:21 — Intersectionality and the limits of historical judgment
• 38:45 — Three types of historical failure summarized
• 39:12 — Teaser for the next episode

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Final Thoughts

Through three vivid case studies and spirited debate, Dan and Elizabeth illustrate the deep-rooted mechanisms by which women's stories slip out of history—sometimes deliberately, sometimes by accident, often by a mix of both. They urge listeners to recognize both the progress made and the challenges remaining, while resisting the urge to flatten the past into modern terms. This episode is both a call to recognize structural failures in remembrance and a celebration of the rediscovery of history’s forgotten women.

Transcript

[Elizabeth Day]

Were you taught by many women historians?

[Dan Jones]

Helen Castor was my mentor. The great medievalist?

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes.

[Dan Jones]

In fact, medieval history has a great tradition of female scholars.

[Elizabeth Day]

I had some sessions with Helen Castor as well.

[Dan Jones]

Did you?

[Elizabeth Day]

Yeah.

[Dan Jones]

Really? She was very. Was she still very cool?

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes.

[Dan Jones]

But I remember being 18 years old and Helen Castor, the great medievalist, was sort of 29, 30 years old, and was the most sort of sophisticated and cool and brainy woman I'd ever seen in my life. And. And I was just like, completely bowled over and unable to speak in her presence.

[Elizabeth Day]

Does she know this about you?

[Dan Jones]

Yeah, I've told her this.

[Elizabeth Day]

That's so sweet.

[Dan Jones]

Yes. We're still good friends now, so.

[Elizabeth Day]

Women.

[Dan Jones]

So I think we've covered women.

[Elizabeth Day]

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[Dan Jones]

hello, this is History's Greatest Fails with me, Dan Jones. I'm a historian, broadcaster and author.

[Elizabeth Day]

And I'm Elizabeth Day, a fellow author and podcaster.

[Dan Jones]

We're old friends, I guess, and fellow history graduates. And in this podcast, we're going to dig into failures of historical proportions to understand why fail. Now, this week, Elizabeth, we're not exactly looking at who's made history, we're looking at who's been left out.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, we are going to chat all about forgotten women, why they've been forgotten, why they've been overlooked, and where the failure really lands. And we've been chatting about this offer, haven't we, like what the failure actually is, whether it's systemic, whether it's archival, whether it's in the reputation of the women themselves. And I think, just to be entirely Switzerland about it, it's a combination of all the above.

[Dan Jones]

Well, of course, that's the great historian's answer, but we should probably, before we start delving into this topic, lay out what the parameters of this debate are, because at the moment, I think that history is in a remarkably good place when you look at the history of the discipline itself, which is to say that we're positively trying to understand the lives of women throughout history, to retell those stories or to tell them afresh in many cases, stories that haven't been told before. But there's There are, as I see it, and you tell me what you think, two schools of thought at play. And it's worth sorting out where. Where we stand on these. On the one hand, there's the thought that the reason that we don't hear about women as much as we should in history is because, in the main, historians are massively sexist and have left out stories of women because they sort of don't care or because their preoccupations have been traditionally political, military, in which these are sort of gendered roles typically throughout society. So that's probably caricaturing one approach. And the other approach is to say that, well, in fact, most societies throughout human history have been aggressively patriarchal, and within those realms, actually, women have been excluded from the typical realms where one makes history. And so looking for women's stories in history is. Is harder by necessity because actually these. Most of the societies in the past have excluded women from all but domestic roles.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes. The way that you have framed those arguments is gendered, because you are making the assumption to my mind there that a quote unquote, domestic role isn't as impactful as a political or military role. And if I were to take your argument at face value, and if I were to agree with it, which I'm not sure that I do, I would counter that actually the female influence in what you term the domestic sphere is incredibly important because that is often shaping future humans. It's running a homestead, if you're going right back. It's also helping with the hunter gathering. So actually it's a huge part of the fabric of any society. Yes, yes. Jones. Jones.

[Dan Jones]

Pembroke.

[Elizabeth Day]

You had your hand raised, please, miss. Yes, you may.

[Dan Jones]

Thank you. I agree that the domestic role is in itself important. I would suggest there might be a difference between running a home and invading a continent in terms of the historical record one creates and in terms of the impact on the number of lives. And these are to some degree the currency of history. Now, that's. So what we've got to try and do is find a balance between these two things. And I will just mansplain one more bit of feminism to you before we get stuck into the meat of the show.

[Elizabeth Day]

And I'll just sit here knitting pink

[Dan Jones]

kittens if you knit. But do keep quiet unless I ask you to speak. The one thing that I sometimes take issue with in this sort of loading of the argument towards this is all historians being sexist and excluding women from history is to say that when you load all the blame onto the historical profession and sometimes that ends up with a. With people try trying to make out that all societies have really been sort of societies in which women can do many important historical things, and it's just the fault of the seer. And I think that sometimes that can take away from the genuine progress towards a journey we're still on equal gendered equality that's been going on in Western societies since the, let's say, the beginning of the 20th century, that it can sort of diminish the real change and progress that's happened since then.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, and I agree with you to a point in that I think historians are doing a great job at course correcting. But it's not just historians that we are blaming when we look at this. It's also the keepers of records. It's also the heads of households and government institutions who routinely would undervalue or marginalize a woman's role or ability to contribute. So I think we're sort of saying similar things, but I think I'm picking up on a little bit of defensiveness, Dan, because you are our resident historian, and I want to reassure you that I'm not blaming historians per se, because also, as you rightly point out, historians are a product of their society as much as any of us is. So with that preamble, we'll find some consensus by the end of this. But should we get into the women that we're looking at specifically for this episode?

[Dan Jones]

I think that's a very good idea.

[Elizabeth Day]

So we've got three women who we feel in certain ways are either overlooked or have been forgotten, at least for a period of time. And we're going to kick off with my personal favorite, Hatshepsut.

[Dan Jones]

Easy for you to say.

[Elizabeth Day]

Now, Hatshepsut is a female pharaoh from Egypt's 18th Dynasty. And as you all know, Dan, those dates translate for her ruling as Pharaoh from 1479 BC until 1458 BC. And she has fascinated me ever since I was lucky enough to go to Egypt, which was about a year ago. Okay. And I had never heard of her. And we had this incredible female tour guide who took us to her extraordinary mortuary temple in Luxor. And first of all, I was just blown away that you are able to walk across flagstones that are 3,000 years old. And the female tour guide told us the story of Hatshepsut. And she also told us how to pronounce her name. She gave me a fail safe way of doing it, which is to say to think of hat. Cheap suit, right? So Hatshepsut never.

[Dan Jones]

You would Never catch me wearing a suit. So by definition, not a cheap suit.

[Elizabeth Day]

Weirdly, we had this conversation before we came on air. Listeners and viewers, that Dan, I've never known him to wear a tie, and yet he owns 30.

[Dan Jones]

So really, he's only roughly 30.

[Elizabeth Day]

Roughly? You didn't say roughly. Actually, you were very precise about it, which is weird.

[Dan Jones]

Course correcting now.

[Elizabeth Day]

Okay. Anyway, Hatshepsut, she was the daughter of a pharaoh. She wasn't the first female pharaoh. That was someone else whose name is very difficult to pronounce. But she came to the throne as a regent for her infant stepson. So the first part of her reign, she was sort of looking after the throne for her stepson. And then what happened was she either got a chase for power, or she thought that she could do it better, or it just seemed like the most sensible thing to do. And she became the repository of kingship. And what's fascinating about her is that she decided to present herself as this traditional figure of kingship, which meant that a lot of the hieroglyphs that we see on the walls of her temple show her dressed as a man. There's a monument to her in Cairo Museum where she's sporting a fake beard. And in ancient Egyptian times, it was a bit like the divine right of kings that we had in England. Pre civil war, there was this idea that being a pharaoh was almost like occupying the White House, that there was a sort of power repository, and you were the symbol of that on earth. And what I find really fascinating about her is that she was clearly an impeccable strategist. She realized that certain people wouldn't accept her as a female ruler. So she sets about presenting herself as that, and she sets about telling the story of how she came to occupy this position by claiming that her mother had intimate relations with the sun God, Amon Ra. Amun Ra, arguably the most powerful God, the sun God from which all life stems. So claiming to be his daughter was a direct claim not only to legitimacy, but to divinity. And I find that pretty fascinating for multiple reasons. But one of them is this is sort of 15 centuries before Christ. But clearly that kind of story of conception and legitimacy takes root at this very early stage. And the reason that we know little about her is not that her reign was unsuccessful, far from it. She actually presided over a period of peace and prosperity. It was an era of consolidation. She led a number of very successful trading expeditions, all of which is memorialized on the walls of her extraordinary temple. Yes, her stepson, when he eventually took over the throne Thutmose, he defaced all of her statuary and all of the hieroglyphs. So when you go to her temple, you can decode what's happening, but very often her face is sort of scratched off the surface. And so for many, many thousands of years, her legacy was lost. And it was only really rediscovered when we started being able to decode hieroglyphs in the 1820s. And that's Hatshepsut.

[Dan Jones]

Well, and that's a remarkable story, and I think it's. And very well told, may I say. I was gripped. There's this sense that she's been written out of the run of pharaohs and that the very fact that there was this powerful female pharaoh was forgotten for a long time. And it's finding where that, I mean, that clearly springs from the norms of the day. Right. That there was an acceptance, an uneasy acceptance that in certain circumstances women could assume power, but that that power role was delineated by gender. And so even to be a female ruler, one had to sort of. You see this in the Middle Ages quite a lot. It's used by chroniclers as. As a metaphor. If any woman assumes a sort of a male political role, chroniclers will say she put on male garb. And sometimes. And often that's portrayed in a sort of picturesque way, might be Eleanor of Aquitaine, the first Plantagenet queen, escaping, dressed in male garb while she'd taken control of her own life and ridden away from the court of the French king. Chroniclers will use this phrase, and then it's often illustrated as her literally putting a man's suit of armor on kind of Joan of Arc style and riding across the countryside. I always wonder whether this is just an idiom, saying she was assuming this gendered male role to do something as radical in those days as riding on her own. And I suppose something similar is going on in Egypt with hats, hat, cheap suit. Thank you for that aid memoir. She's stepping into this power role, but everything is delineated and defined by the male power structures that are going on.

[Elizabeth Day]

Definitely. And I think the way that she was remembered or not, the way that she was raised out of contemporaneous history, is also to do with the way that she defied traditional male authority by not waging loads of wars. And in a strange sort of way, I imagine that was seen as a kind of failure of its time. Well, what are you doing if you're not waging a war? But actually, for me, and the fascinating thing about ancient Egypt and The fascinating thing about so much of history is that we can never fully know the truth, but particularly with ancient Egypt, because whilst a lot of it remains, a lot of it is mystical and impenetrable and she is someone who is this mysterious figure who you can put your own narratives into. So that idea of her existing beyond gender and that idea of her being a feminist heroine is obviously particularly appealing for me in modern times.

[Dan Jones]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Day]

And also the fact that she, from my perspective, oversaw this reign of prosperity and peace shows me at her most powerful female point. And in a way, the failure is the failure of the system to acknowledge that she was a great ruler.

[Dan Jones]

I've become distracted because I'm thinking about the TV show Sam and Cat. Have you ever seen Sam and Cat?

[Elizabeth Day]

No.

[Dan Jones]

It's one of the shows that launched Ariana Grande's career.

[Elizabeth Day]

Oh, yes. Wasn't Jennette McCurdy on it as well?

[Dan Jones]

I don't know.

[Elizabeth Day]

That's by the by. Anyway, listen to her episode of how to Fail. Should you be interested right now?

[Dan Jones]

In Sam and Cat, there was a running joke, I think, about. No, it can't have been about the War of 1812. There was running jokes about American history and I'm sure Ariana Grande often dressed up as Abraham Lincoln and had a fake beard. And I'm just thinking about it.

[Elizabeth Day]

You've been distracted by that.

[Dan Jones]

The fake beard got me. Yeah. As fake beards are supposed to do.

[Elizabeth Day]

The other thing that I like about Hatsheps, and it's not strictly relevant, but she had this very close relationship with her architect who built this phenomenal temple. And there are sort of various mentions of him within the walls of the templ. He was unmarried, which was very, very unusual for the time. And I like to think of them if they didn't have a romantic relationship. I like to think of them as close confidants. And again, I find that you're trying

[Dan Jones]

to say gay best friend here, I think, aren't you?

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes. Space.

[Dan Jones]

Yes. So your fantasy of ancient Egypt.

[Elizabeth Day]

I know.

[Dan Jones]

I think this might take in some of my fantasies. Ariana Grande dressed as Abraham Lincoln in a pyramid with her gay best friend.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yeah. Guaranteed sunshine. Done loads of hummus.

[Dan Jones]

Hummus, yeah. Egyptian.

[Elizabeth Day]

Well, it's from that general area of the world. There's a whole. We could do a whole episode on hummus, to be honest, like the Hummus Wars. But yes, when we went to Egypt, I did have a lot of delicious hummus. Anyway.

[Dan Jones]

Chickpea based.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yeah. Of course, it's not Baba Ghanoush aubergine based.

[Dan Jones]

Did I say it was baba ghanoush? No, I just think it could have been, baby.

[Elizabeth Day]

This is a typical historian. You are writing the chickpea out of history by positing the question that hummus could be made out of anything else.

[Dan Jones]

I like a fucking chickpea.

[Elizabeth Day]

All right, all right.

[Dan Jones]

I'm quite good at making hummus.

[Elizabeth Day]

Oh, good.

[Dan Jones]

Yeah.

[Elizabeth Day]

Okay, should we move on to.

[Dan Jones]

No, let's stick with hummus. No, let's move on to the Peasants Revolt, because that's next on our list.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes,

[Dan Jones]

when you consider medieval history like I do, you realize that a great deal of change hinges on leaps of faith, something England's King Henry VI largely did not do. Now, he might have been better suited to selling stained glass windows, and he would have been unstoppable if Shopify was around in his day. It's a commerce platform that helps you make that leap to get your business into the world. Henry would have loved Shopify's inbuilt design studio, where he could have sampled hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful online store. Plus, this shy king would have had plenty of AI tools at his disposal, helping him elevate his product descriptions page headlines and product photography. So make that leap. Turn what if into with Shopify today. Sign up for your £1 per month trial today at shopify.co.uk dynasty. Go to shopify.co.uk dynasty. That's shopify.co.uk dynasty. You know what? You got to feel sorry for King Henry VI because he wouldn't be anybody's personality hire. And he was just as bad at HR as at Kingship. He's the guy who forced all his warring nobles to hold hands in the Love Day Parade. If only Plantagenet England had Indeed sponsored jobs. With Indeed, you can spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all the right boxes. Less stress, less time, more results when you need the right person to cut through the chaos. This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs and listeners of my show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job. The premium status it deserv@ Indeed.com thisishistory just go to Indeed.com thisishistory right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.comthisishistory Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for indeed sponsored jobs. Pen's Revolt let's set the scene. Imagine this. It's 1381 Richard II is the king. He's a teenager. He's been king for four years. His, his grand. He inherited the throne from his grandfather Edward III because his father, the Black Prince said everything's going to shit. Any listeners who want the the full gen on this can either read my book about the peasant royals or go back to season Season 7 of a dynasty to Die For. We cover the peasant's role but so all the reasons why everything's going to hell in a handcart in England are contained therein. But let's just. In order to raise money for a failing government, the English government run by Richard II's Uncle John of Gaunt, has levelled a lot of poll taxes. And there is the first poll tax riot in English history. And so the commons, the ordinary people of Essex and Kent to begin with, rise up in their various villages and towns, start protesting against royal government. These protests coalesce. There's a big march to London. They camp on Blackheath and then lots of men, Wat Tyler, the military leader, John Ball, the sort of spiritual leader and the preacher, take, take control of this rebellion, execute the Archbishop of Canterbury who's also the Chancellor, they execute the treasurer, they burn down the Savoy, they really trash the place for three days until eventually Mayor William Walworth kills Wat Tyler and the rebellions dispersed. That's a very quick like breeze through.

[Elizabeth Day]

Well done.

[Dan Jones]

Now at a critical point in this when the Archbishop of Canterbury and Chancellor Simon Sudbury is in the Tower of London, Richard ii, who is out at Mile End negotiating with the rebels, says that the rebels can kill traitors. So a number of the the government officials who are in the Tower tried to escape, but they're spotted by a woman called Joanna Ferrer who says, look, that's the royal officials trying to get away and they're captured and then they are Gordon beheaded. So there's this key moment in the rebellion where a woman's voice is heard. And this is interesting for two reasons. It's pretty much the only woman's voice that's heard in this rebellion in the records that are certainly kept by the chroniclers. And it happens at a key moment, but it's also presented in such a way that there's even in its retelling there's something sort of sneaky about the fact that the officials were about to get away and then they were like ratted on.

[Elizabeth Day]

And my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm sure you will, was that of course there was an element of riotous mob like behavior in The Peasants Revolt, but that actually there was a bit of strategy in terms of them going after historical records, like they wanted to destroy records of oppression and Joanna was part of that.

[Dan Jones]

I suppose the one thing that I would say about the Peasants Revolt is that this, this is a rebellion that, I mean, in many ways seeks to just strip away social hierarchies like Per Se. I mean, what you find there are these localized incidents of we want to burn all legal records, we want to open all the jails. You know, there's this, this attack on anything that seems to be holding together an outdated social hierarchy. And then there are these, the top level lists of demands that the rebels have. There are two meetings between the rebels and King Richard and his advisors, which include his mother Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, so called. One of these at Mile End. There's a list of demands which are fairly pragmatic, but they're all to do with we want sort of fair price, you know, a fair rate of rent. We want, you know, we want pardons for all the misdeeds that we may have done during this rebellion. And then there's a second meeting at Smithfield, which is the famous one where Wat Tyler is killed, where there's a sort of a fantasy shopping list of demands which is no more lords, no more bishops, you know, just the king and the people.

[Elizabeth Day]

In times of foment and rebellion, because traditional roles are being challenged and traditional systems are being attacked, there is this moment where we can see people in new ways because they are released from the shackles of their. And so again and again you kind of see female rebel leaders, whether it's the Price Sisters and the IRA behind the Old Bailey bombing, whether it's Louise Michel in the Paris Commune of 1871-1872, because it offers this opportunity, because the normal rules don't apply. And I also find it interesting that part of what the Peasants Revolt was trying to do, and part of what Joanna was trying to do was to destroy these legal documents. And actually, part of the reason that we're including her in this episode is because there's no sufficient presence for her in so many of these records that she is sort of destroying something that then became the tool of her own disappearance.

[Dan Jones]

Yes. So I think Joanna is a. A case where there's a. There's a lot going on that we've got to try and pass. And when we're trying to judge how she's fitted into the history of the Peasants Revolt, what the demands of the rebellion were, what the demands of the rebellion weren't which. Which injustices and hierarchies and supremacies. It was challenging and which it wasn't. Two things are going on. Clearly, there are more women involved in this event than we can see in the historical record. But there's a step that we can't take from there, which is to say that actually there's a sort of. You know, there's a feminist part of this.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, yes. And I'm sure Joanna Ferrer. Well, there wouldn't be the language available for this, but she wouldn't see herself as a feminist either.

[Dan Jones]

No. And that. I think that this is where we have to be really careful as historians, that we can't wish progressive thinking on the past.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes. But what we can do is pay tribute equivalent to the tribute that we pay to male leaders of the Peasants Revolt, which we haven't done. And that's not trying to superimpose feminism. That's just a record of fact. And I find it interesting that. Actually, I find many things interesting about what you've just told us. So thank you. Well told story.

[Dan Jones]

Thanks.

[Elizabeth Day]

I'm interested in how much you feel Joanna Ferrar was a good example of female behavior at the time, or how she was acting was contravening what was expected of her gender.

[Dan Jones]

That's a really interesting question. And I think that it's hard in this case to unpick the sort of the latent biases in the sources we have about the Peasants Revolt, which are almost exclusively hostile, because they consist of narrative accounts, which are chronicles, and legal accounts, which are accounts made by the legal profession. And behind then the government taking punitive action against the rebels. There's a sort of. I mean, they're so loaded against the lower orders per se. You know, the idea of the ordinary people rising up is such an offense against not only the law, but the sort of the perceived natural order of things, that to have a woman taking part in this and sort of being the catalyzing force for what amounts to murder in a kangaroo court, as happens to the royal officials, is just like one more example of how depraved these. Yeah. This whole rebellion is that not only was it absolute chaos, but a bloody woman was there shouting, getting people killed. You know, this is.

[Elizabeth Day]

When was she rediscovered, or did she appear from the very beginning?

[Dan Jones]

So she appears in her. She's one of the few women who are featured in a chronicle. I mean, I could. I can think of her and I can think of the King's mother, Joan, the fair maid of Kent, as a. You know, as she is called, highly sarcastically.

[Elizabeth Day]

Why? Sorry? Why is it sarcastic?

[Dan Jones]

Because she's had a lot of husbands.

[Elizabeth Day]

Now, there again, yes.

[Dan Jones]

So she's a great example.

[Elizabeth Day]

Just flagging the sexism.

[Dan Jones]

And here's one. So I think Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, in one sense a target of the rebellion, you know, because with nothing, you know, in terms of the rebellion, there's this moment where she's sort of riding out with her son and, you know, the chariot she's in is kind of attacked by rebels, and this is early in the rebellion, and she's lucky to escape from an encounter with the rebels. She is seen, you know, the eyes. In the eyes of the rebels. She's part of the class. I think that. Although by no means am I a Marxist historian, this is an event you have to give to the Marxist. This is a real class rebellion. She's seen as part of the class that is destroying England. But we can set all that aside and then view her as a historical character who is given this sarcastic nickname, the Fair Maid of Kent, the most loved woman in England, just because she had a few husbands. And here we see that once we take away the sort of the. The class challenge of the peasant revolt, here is a woman judged by completely different historical standards to everybody else in her milieu. I mean, Joan's one of my favorite characters from the Middle Ages, and I've inserted her into, oh, gosh, my novel Lionhearts, and, I mean, she's my favorite character in the whole of that trilogy because she's the most extraordinary woman and really an example of somebody within that sort of broad Plantagenet family of Edward ii who takes control of her life in a way that most other sort of princess, duchess, countess, countesses of that period simply fail to get to grips with the structures around them.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, noted. Let's get onto our final woman that we're talking about this episode.

[Dan Jones]

Let's. Yes.

[Elizabeth Day]

She is called Ada Lovelace.

[Dan Jones]

I've heard of her.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes. Now, you might be thinking, but we know who Ada Lovelace is. Well, we only that relatively recently. In fact, in preparation for this conversation, I listened to Great Lives with Matthew Paris, and they'd done an episode on ada Lovelace in 2013, and Matthew opened the program saying, I'd never heard of her. I was like, gosh, that's extraordinary that a mere 13 years ago, we didn't really have much of an idea of what this extraordinary woman had done. Or at least Matthew Paris didn't. No shade. I love Matthew Paris. So Ada Lovelace is the only legitimate daughter of Lord Byron, and she was raised by a somewhat astonishing mother who also bore a legendary grudge. She was probably a Scorpio because she declined to allow Ada to have any kind of functional relationship with her father. I don't think Ada what possible to

[Dan Jones]

have a functional relationship with her father. I mean, Lord Byron, not the most functional guy.

[Elizabeth Day]

No, but they literally had nothing to do with each other. And to the extent that Ada's mother removed every single portrait, Ada did not even see what her father looked like until she was well into her 20s, apparently. So she was sort of very protected from the idea of him. Anyway. Lord Byron, obviously genius poet, Ada, mathematical genius, and from a very young age was tutored in the arts of mathematics and became friendly with Charles Babbage, who is seen by some as the father of modern computing. But Ada came good when she translated a paper that was written in Italian by an Italian mathematician, and she added three pages of her own notes identifying errors in the Italian mathematician's work legend. And she was the first who could see the capacity of what would become a computer to be not just a tool of arithmetic, but something capable of working with symbols. And her work. And in many ways, I think this is why we've put her in this episode. Not that she was a failure, because, of course, she was utterly brilliant, but because her work was way ahead of its time and the machines had not yet been invented that could put into practice her theoretical, dazzling genius. And so you have to wait till Alan Turing comes along in the 20th century and invents the Enigma machine, and he is the one who does a lot of work in resurrecting her reputation. She was, to my mind, really unfairly treated in popular mythology because towards the end of her life, she suffered from uterine cancer. And we think that's what she died at a very young age. She was in her 30s, but she was clearly in terrible pain and she drank a lot and started gambling. And if a man had been doing those things, you would have thought, yeah, fair enough, he's a bloke. But because it was Ada, she was really unfairly treated for that and sort of dismissed as a pathetic old drunk.

[Dan Jones]

Yes, people didn't say quite the same things about Lord Byron.

[Elizabeth Day]

They did not.

[Dan Jones]

They said other things about Lord Byron. But, yeah, Ada Lovelace is a great character for our time because we're living in. You know, there's a collision of two things. One, the. The. The serious quest and cultural conversation about relationships between women and Men. And secondly, the push of young people in particular towards science, technology, engineering, maths, as we live through a technological. A series of technological revolutions. And so this question of girls being encouraged to study maths and engineering, I mean, push probably beyond the point. That's reasonable. I mean, has something to do with our interest in characters like Ada Lovelace

[Elizabeth Day]

as pioneers, and something to do with our interest in attacking gender binaries and stereotypes with binary.

[Dan Jones]

A computing joke.

[Elizabeth Day]

You can treat it as that if you like. Yes, I will do.

[Dan Jones]

Look, we agreed on something. It's not so fun when we agree. Are we done here?

[Elizabeth Day]

I think we've cured. I think we've sorted everything out. I think we've sorted out the monstrous gender imbalance of the entire historical record. But it's also worth pointing out because we started off talking about patriarchal societies and context. And I know that you didn't mean this, but it's. It's not, it's. I know.

[Dan Jones]

You can't help it.

[Elizabeth Day]

I just want to say, clear, that we're not saying that because a society was patriarchal and accepted as such at the time, that we accept it now.

[Dan Jones]

No, no, no.

[Elizabeth Day]

In the same way that we would not accept a racist society now. And it's so important when we're talking about this topic, to remember those women who were not only disadvantaged in the historical record by their gender, but also by lots of other intersections, whether that's race, ethnicity, religion, social class. And we just want to nod to that because there are so many untold stories.

[Dan Jones]

Yes. There's always this. I mean, history is about comparing, looking for similarity, looking for difference, looking for the. Looking for progress, looking for. What's the opposite of progress? Regression.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, I was about to say. Digress, digress. We've done a lot of that.

[Dan Jones]

One of the grasses, yeah. And the line is always very blurry between. We study societies on their own terms, but it's impossible as human beings to remove our reaction towards the morality of those times. And it would be sort of deranged and demented not to pass comment on it. But there's also a point where history becomes campaigning journalism, where, I mean, this is slightly to stereotype, but there are historians who do this. The job of historian becomes going around the past, wagging one's finger at it for not sharing the mores of today. And that's not by any means limited to studying women in history. It's all sort of power relationships in history.

[Elizabeth Day]

And the issue with that kind of history is that it's using the same defunct Tool to critique the thing. It's critiquing.

[Dan Jones]

Yes.

[Elizabeth Day]

So it's using its own system. And to my mind, you can't ever really look at history truthfully unless you are open to what it's telling you, aside from your own perceptions of what the message should be and what the end goal should be. That sort of teleological view of history is not my bag. I'm more of a fan of Clifford Geertz, who was, as you know, this sort of historical anthropologist who spoke about the necessity of understanding history from the ground up and looking at historical events through these webs of culture.

[Dan Jones]

Oh, I thought you might be. I just want to play one more. One more thought experiment in this, much as we would hope. And there is this sort of. I experienced this. This hope that you go, you look at society like that and let's take the Peasants Revolt and go. Joanna Farah sort of spoke up that actually within that society, that was a massive transgression, not only of the expectation of what women could and couldn't do, but of the expectation of the shape of society in general and that it. We have to remember just how weird we are. That's the moral point.

[Elizabeth Day]

Yes, I think that's a brilliant point. And I also think what you're saying is that we're the anomaly. I mean, we've only been around for a vanishingly small speck of time. By comparison, we're weird, we're all batshit. And that's a great note to end on. But before we end on it, I'd like to summarise the types of failures that we've been looking at during this conversation. I'd love that, because I think they. They land in three categories. There's the failure that occurs not in the achievement of someone like Hatshepsut, but in the memory of how she's remembered or not. There's the structural power that determines whose failure or success gets remembered. So looking at your. Joanna's there, and there's the idea that visionary concepts can appear as failures in their own time, that it takes time to catch up with someone who is thinking ahead of their own society.

[Dan Jones]

People will catch up with us eventually.

[Elizabeth Day]

Eventually, Dan, we can only hope. We are looking forward to. But you joining us next time, aren't we, Dan? What are we going to be discussing next week?

[Dan Jones]

It's going to be all about the inventions and mistakes that have changed history. So we're going to Leonardo da Vinci's cutting room floor, the monastery that accidentally invented champagne and the Chinese lab that Tried to find the elixir of immortality.

[Elizabeth Day]

God, that was a mouthful. Well done. You didn't fail to say that, did you, Dan? That's almost all for us this episode, but if you want more, do listen back to past episodes of History's Greatest Fails, where Dan and I have discussed the legacy of Richard III and the failed romances that have changed the world.

[Dan Jones]

And if you want more of Elizabeth, which of course you do, be sure to listen to her excellent podcast, how to Fail. Elizabeth. Tell us all about it.

[Elizabeth Day]

How To Fail is a podcast that is all about what failure can teach us. So I interview someone every single week about three times. They think they failed in life and what, if anything, they learned along the way.

[Dan Jones]

And if you want more historical failures, do listen to this episode's accompanying bonus episode, which includes the story of the guy who literally dropped and misplaced the arrest Warrant For Henry VIII's last wife, Catherine Parr, allowing her to narrowly escape execution. You can find that and listen along ad free if you're one of my royal favorites on patreon.com forward/thisishistory. And of course, if you want to learn more about the Peasants Revolt, you can read my book, Summer of Blood. You want to read it?

[Elizabeth Day]

I do really want to read it.

[Dan Jones]

Surprised you haven't read it already.

[Elizabeth Day]

Is it a nice Sunlander read? Is that why it's got Summer in the title? It's a great holiday read. That's the blurb that you need.

[Dan Jones]

If you don't feel there's enough blood in your holiday, take Summer of Blood.

[Elizabeth Day]

Brilliant. If you've got a question about anything we've discussed on Greatest Failures so far, Dan's Royal favourites can DM him on Patreon or email us on thisishistoryonymusic.com that's

[Dan Jones]

all for this episode. Let's fail again next time.

[Elizabeth Day]

Is that actually our email address? Because we're not. Oh, yes, because your. This is history. Surprise. Sorry,

[Dan Jones]

you can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your [e-mail] to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever.