Women in history often get the short end of the stick, and some of the most famous ones are the ones who spent centuries being remembered in completely the wrong way.
Trapped between two sides
Mary Todd Lincoln had quite a rough time of it during the Civil War. Both sides of the conflict found reasons not to trust her. Lincoln was born in Kentucky, and quite a few of her relatives were Confederate supporters, so the Northerners claimed she was disloyal. But it’s not like the Southerners liked her, though, no way.Â
Some of them saw her only as Abraham Lincoln’s wife and as a traitor to the South. There were also complaints about her being too extravagant as a first lady because she spent a lot on remodeling the White House. The truth was, the building seriously needed major work, yet a lot of people ran with the idea that Lincoln was greedy.
The poisoner who probably wasn’t
One of the nastiest makeovers in history goes to the Italian noblewoman Lucrezia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI. Writers made her out to be someone who poisoned rivals and slept with relatives. They claimed she helped her family dispose of inconvenient people. Â
Except, a lot of ‘evidence’ for these claims is weak at best. Her marriages were politically useful, and there’s no denying that, but she was far from the deadly seductress she’s painted as being. That idea of her came long after she died.
A mistaken identity that lasted centuries
The strangest thing about Mary Magdalene is that ‘facts’ about her aren’t even true. People often claim that she was a prostitute. Yet the New Testament never refers to her in that way, and this image of her actually came through Western Christian tradition. Stories of several biblical women combined to become the image of Magdalene.
She was a real woman, and we know she was nearby during the crucifixion. The Bible claims she was a follower of Jesus who was one of the first witnesses to the resurrection. But the idea of her being a prostitute just isn’t true, and there’s nothing in the historical record about it.
The queen built from rumors
King Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn, somehow ended up having extra fingers and being a witch. She was also guilty of incest and adultery. At least, that’s what was claimed at the time, there was actually no evidence of her having six fingers or being a witch.
A lot of the claims against her were unproven at best, and completely false at worst. It didn’t matter, though. The former English queen was accused of adultery, incest, and treason. She was tried and was ultimately found guilty. She was executed at the Tower of London.
More than New Orleans folklore
Anyone who spends enough time in New Orleans will hear stories about Marie Laveau. The legends claim she was an evil voodoo priestess who cursed other people and had mysterious powers. She’s treated almost like a supernatural person.
But the real Laveau was a free Creole woman of color who lived in 19th-century New Orleans. She was a healer and religious leader who, yes, practiced Louisiana Voodoo. But she was also Catholic and attended Mass at St. Louis Cathedral. The stories of her as some kind of Satanic sorceress just aren’t true.
The woman nobody wanted to believe
Socialite Martha Mitchell began saying things in 1972 that seemed a bit out there. She claimed that she’d been forcibly kept inside a California hotel room, and that she’d been physically restrained. It was all because she wanted to go to the press about the Nixon administration’s involvement in the Watergate scandal. Nobody believed her, however.
No, the response was that Martha was unstable, and that she’d been drinking. She was treated as someone who had no idea what she was talking about. It was only later that her husband, John Mitchell, was convicted for his part in the Watergate cover-up. He’d been Nixon’s attorney general. His conviction made Martha’s ‘outrageous’ warnings sound a lot more realistic.
Reduced to somebody else’s scandal
Being world-famous overnight is difficult enough, but imagine it happening for something you did two years before. That’s what happened to Monica Lewinsky. Yes, she became an international name at 24 for having an affair at 22 with President Bill Clinton. Lewinsky worked as a White House intern at the time.Â
But people didn’t seem to care that Clinton was nearly 30 years older than her, or about the power dynamics in their relationship. They made Lewinsky the central character in the affair. Practically everything about her was criticized, from her clothes to her body and romantic life. She was a running joke for years, and later, she publicly spoke about the humiliation she’d faced.
Not simply Mrs. Fitzgerald
Most people know Zelda Fitzgerald because of her husband, writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. History tends to remember her as a glamorous wife and Scott’s muse, as well as a troubled woman who spent years in psychiatric hospitals. Part of that’s true.
But it’s also true that Zelda made her own art, including the 1932 novel Save Me the Waltz. She wrote, painted, and trained seriously in ballet, but her own career is pretty much a side note. The focus tends to be on Scott himself and how she affected his work. People forget that she wasn’t simply hanging around while somebody else wrote books.
The punchline left out most of the case
Lorena Bobbitt practically became a national punchline almost overnight in 1993. She sliced off the manhood of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, with a kitchen knife, and television painted the whole thing as a weird yet funny story. It wasn’t.
John Wayne allegedly abused his wife for years and actually assaulted her before she cut him. The prosecution doctors also described Lorena as being a battered wife. She wasn’t simply someone taking out her rage on her husband, far from it.
Poverty became part of the evidence
Sarah Good was a poor and homeless woman living on the outskirts of Salem Village society in the 1600s. Yes, that Salem. She regularly had to ask neighbors for food or assistance. But everything changed in 1692, when people started accusing her of all sorts of things. They said she cursed those who refused to give her charity.
The allegations reached a tipping point when Good became one of the first three women arrested during the Salem witch trials. She denied being a witch, but the people around her saw her as one anyway. Good was convicted and hanged on July 19. She was just a woman dealt difficult cards in life.
The blonde image wasn’t the whole person
Hollywood wanted only a few things from Marilyn Monroe. They wanted her to be blonde, breathy, funny, and not terribly serious or intelligent. But despite how she was shown on screen, Monroe was actually pretty smart, as she studied at New York’s Actors Studio.
She read drama, poetry, psychology, and philosophy. Monroe also had a lot more control over her work than many people thought she did. But unfortunately, it’s the ditzy blonde character of Marilyn that most people seem to know. They don’t understand the intelligence that was underneath those curls.
The singer behind the headlines
Singer Billie Holiday had no room to be complicated. The mass media focused on claims of her drug use and how she was abused, as well as her messy relationship. She was seen as a troubled star. She had her difficulties, of course, but she was also so much more than that.
In 1939, for example, she stood in New York’s Café Society singing ‘Strange Fruit.’ It was a song about lynching that her label, Columbia, refused to let her record. She was a woman that people often reduce to a ‘difficult jazz singer,’ yet Holiday had a lot more going for her.
The claim came from somewhere very real
Actress Jean Seberg had a good reason to think there was something strange going on, although it sounded far-fetched at the time. The Breathless star seriously thought she was being watched and followed. Most people brushed her off, but as it turns out, she was being watched. The FBI put her under surveillance because she’d supported civil-rights groups like the Black Panther Party.Â
It gets worse. The FBI approved a plan in 1970 to damage her reputation by creating a story that she’d had an affair with a Black Panther activist, who’d fathered her unborn baby. None of that was true, but still, the damage was done. The truth only came out later when declassified files confirmed it.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
13 women from history who didn’t know they were marrying monsters
They thought their husbands were normal, handsome, or influential, but they had no idea these 13 men led double lives of horror.
13 women from history who didn’t know they were marrying monsters
