In NORMAL WOMEN, acclaimed author Philippa Gregory presents the data-rich saga of women as they have been perceived --- and as they have perceived themselves --- from 1066 to the present.

Gregory’s fascinating tome focuses on English women in their centuries-long roles as inferior beings according to males --- priests, princes, workingmen and nobility. Yet, even in the early years of England’s foundation as a world power, women worked within the home and outside it --- as launderers, butchers, horse traders and trainers --- and as prostitutes, often an acceptable sideline even for respectable women who needed extra income.

"[NORMAL WOMEN is] filled with a plethora of diligently mined examples and accompanying illustrations, so even the most educated reader will learn something new on almost every page."

However, women who lived with other women were not seen as defiled, as even nuns might sleep together with scant punishment. Methods of abortion were known and utilized, possibly because if a female servant was impregnated by her master (willingly or otherwise), her offspring would be his financial responsibility. Wealthy women were as degraded as their lower-class counterparts, subject to rape by their husbands and often confined to their dwellings. In the 1600s, women were berated for “shopping, unprotected, unsupervised, and undisciplined and ‘wasting’ money.”

Queen Victoria made a landmark decision to have sedatives administered during her several childbirths. This went against the biblical admonition, based on the sin of Eve, that women were meant to suffer that experience. Yet Victoria openly accepted her role as her spouse’s inferior and made no significant moves to uphold the rights of women generally. These downward and degrading trends that gave men all power and glory continued into the 20th century when a sharp turn upward was achieved as women proved their mettle during world wars.

Women gradually became wealthier and stronger, with louder voices and proclamations of sisterhood. Their higher education also produced forceful movements, evoking fresh laws and customs more likely to benefit their birth gender. But even now, Gregory points out, when women may lead strikes, fight against oppression and promote unity, they must struggle with “identity and inclusion.” And so the story goes on.

Considered one of the world’s foremost historical novelists, Gregory has fulfilled her personal wish to write “a huge book about women.” It’s filled with a plethora of diligently mined examples and accompanying illustrations, so even the most educated reader will learn something new on almost every page. Gregory’s desire to show “witches or suffragettes or midwives” all in the same admirable light --- as normal women --- will astonish and gratify her readers, supporting their curiosities and aspirations, and adding considerable weight to the sometimes neglected realm of herstory.