Heroines in History: Professor Katie Pickles on myth-making and martyrdom

Historian Professor Katie Pickles, author of "Heroines in History: A Thousand Faces". Photo / George Heard

5 QUICK QUESTIONS WITH: PROFESSOR KATIE PICKLES

Joan of Arc features on the cover of your latest book, Heroines in History, which looks at the making and mythologising of female archetypes through the ages. Six hundred years on, who's her contemporary equivalent today?

I call eco-warrior Greta Thunberg a modern Joan of Arc. They're both teenage girls, they both have a "calling" — Greta's is to save the planet from environmental destruction, Joan's was to save France from England. They come in desperate times and succeed against the odds, but get caught up in nationalist agendas. They both get abused as well and put back in their place. Greta was told to shut up and go home. Joan was sent to the stake.

Climate change activist Greta Thunberg is the modern representation of a "warrior heroine" archetype personified by another teenage girl born 600 years ago, Joan of Arc. Photo / United Nations

You talk about Princess Diana as being posthumously crowned as a "maternal, martyred Queen of Hearts". Is it part of the myth-making to have heroines meet a tragic end?

There's this idea that some of them are hounded for a long time and never really allowed to rest in peace. Martyrdom, or silencing, serves as a way to contain them because when you have heroines who go outside the norm, by challenging the place of women in society, it's about reasserting those walls. Joan was reinstated in history as a virgin martyr a symbol of bravery but her masculinity and cross-dressing were marginalised. [Revolutionary socialist and anti-war activist] Rosa Luxembourg was fearless and stood up for what she believed in – she was shot and chucked in a river.

Who's your personal heroine?

I always ask my students that, and my answer is what most of them say: my mother, Geraldine. But the qualities I think are heroic about her aren't confined to her being a woman: looking after and encouraging others but also looking after and developing her own self. Fighting for what she believes in. Using her life for good actions and making a difference where she can. Being passionate and joyful as well as being genuine, not selling out in this age of fake and misinformation. Those are qualities I admire in [Nobel Prize-winning scientist] Marie Curie, too. I'd love to see us move away from this heterosexual, binary mode of heroism, because they're qualities all humans should aspire to.

English primatologist and anthropologist Dame Jane Goodall is immortalised as a Barbie doll in Mattel's Inspiring Women series. Image / Mattel Creations

What do you make of women such as civil rights activist Rosa Parks and environmentalist Jane Goodall being turned into "inspirational" Barbie dolls?

It's obviously appealing to diverse ethnicities and girls from communities who wouldn't have previously been represented as Barbies. But it's so ironic because these groundbreaking heroines were seeking careers outside of their physical appearance. They didn't want to be valued for what they looked like. So their substance being consumed by their image is ultimately re-objectifying them.

Is society actually regressing, given the erosion of women's rights across the world — from America to Afghanistan?

To me, it shows the importance of history. History can repeat. But if we know not only the tactics and strategies of how women have been contained but also how they've broken free, we can find our way forward. The most fascinating aspect this century is the rise of global feminism. There's real value in transnational thinking about what we have in common and learning from the mistakes of the past, when feminism was part of cultural imperialism. That's how I came into this whole project, because there's a lot of work on heroines as agents of empire, used for spreading Britishness around the world. Now, it's about thinking across cultures and becoming stronger by working together to make the future.

— as told to Joanna Wane

Canterbury University Professor of History Katie Pickles explores female archetypes in her new book "Heroines in History: A Thousand Faces". Image / Supplied

A professor of history at Canterbury University, Katie Pickles is the author of Heroines in History: A Thousand Faces (Routledge, $70) and is currently working on a new biography of suffragist Kate Sheppard.