Friday, October 7, 2011

Boudicca: A Queen with a Goal

After looking at the blog progress report, I decided that I would post on a topic that I have not yet posted about. I looked up top ten famous women warriors, and found an article that gave a brief description of each of the top ten (http://listverse.com/2008/03/17/top-10-badass-female-warriors/). I found it interesting that I did not know anything about these warriors; the only name I recognized was St. Joan of Arc.

I found Boudicca, the Queen of Norfolk, truly interesting. Boudicca’s husband was the King of Norfolk, and when he died he left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and to the Roman Emperor. The Roman Empire however ignored this joint ruling, and completely took over the land and people. Boudicca was flogged and her daughters were raped by the Romans. Instead of giving in to their power, Boudicca was chosen by her people to lead them in fight against the Romans. Boudicca is famous for winning her battle and completely destroying all who stood in her way: “Tacitus said that the Britons had no desire to take prisoners – they simply slaughtered everyone in their path” (1). I would consider Boudicca a 1st century (AD) super heroine, who was a fierce and unrelenting anti-imperialistic warrior.

5 comments:

  1. I didn't recognize most of the names either. Now I'm thinking about my global history classes in high school, and most of the warriors and heroes we learned were men. It's sad because these women are actually very interesting and probably would have proved interesting and useful to learn about.

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  2. Similarly, I only recognized St. Joan of Arc. I found the Boudicca story really interesting though and I think it fits nicely with what we cover in class. I smiled at the idea that she was tortured and then came back and was successful. (I did not smile at her torture, but at her later revenge). It definitely seemed fierce, and I would find it interesting to discuss real life warriors in class one day and compare them to their fictional conterparts.

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  3. Well this may be an outdated argument but history is really His Story to textbooks tend to focus on the men more than women. It's still no excuse but the implication that history is the story of men may play a role

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  4. I also only recognize St. Joan of Arc. It was interesting to read about the powerful women in history, but sad that this is the first time that I'm hearing about them. These women deserve to be looked up to and should be taught in schools.

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  5. I just wanted to contribute to this conversation in saying that perhaps such women warriors aren't talked about often because there isn't enough information on them. People living in the past most probably didn't document such activity by women warriors, if any activity by women in general, for such women were considered out of line, as their actions did not comply with societal norms. This being said, I do agree that more information about female heroines in our history's past should be taught. However, I'm just pointing out that maybe such information is omitted out of lesson plans because there isn't enough supporting information that is documented.

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