Thanks, friend! Both the hugs and the good juju are much appreciated. I thought I was doing fairly well at Coping, at least on the surface, and then a new senior colleague in the department got distracted in a meeting by the fact that I looked (apparently) as though I were about to fall over. Not my finest hour.
Anyway! One of my favorite badass historical ladies is Mary Buckland. She was the daughter of a forester, who, as a single parent, just took her into the forests to do science with him (SO CUTE) and then was adopted by a scientist at Oxford who left her all his equipment because she was so good at science and liked it so much (so cute??) and then she became renowned throughout Europe for her awesome scientific illustrations, building her network from her household connections outwards. How awesome is that? Class mobility and general entrepreneurial bravery and recognized academic specialization! Of course, she still wasn’t officially an academic, because it was the 18th century. But she met her husband, paleontologist William Buckland, in History’s Best Meet-Cute, because they were reading the same just-released cutting-edge tome (more here) and proceeded to become an illustration for The Woman Who Has Everything, working as his partner in their cutting-edge field of science, and being acknowledged as his equal by their scientific peers (the nineteenth century undid that, but that’s being redressed now) and also they had something like 9 or 11 children together, which seems like good evidence for exuberant mutual delight, ahem. I love her a lot.
Also – and maybe you will, in fact, have more thoughts/knowledge on this – Isabelle of Angoulême. For several years, I thought her second marriage (after King John, obligatory boo-hiss despite recent historiography) was to the man she was supposed to marry in the first place, and I loved that story. Then I discovered that her second marriage was actually to her erstwhile betrothed’s son?? but that he had been supposed to marry her daughter but then decided to marry her instead, or that they decided to marry each other? What? I would gladly consume a novel or miniseries about this whole drama, is what I’m saying.
…Truly, badass historical women are an endless source of cheer and delight; thanks for inviting me to reflect on them. ❤
William “and all was clear as mud” Buckland was married?! Guess I’m one of today’s lucky 10,000.
Mooncustafer 