It’s been a long time since we had a Heroine of the Weekend post!  Since the Battle of Hastings took place October 14, 1066, I thought we’d do a way-back Heroine and take a look at Queen Matilda of Flanders, wife of William the Conquerer.

She was born in 1031, to Count Baldwin V of Flanders and Adela of France (Flanders had great importance in that time, being a sort of “stepping stone” between England and the Continent), and she was descended from Charlemagne.  At first, the couple was not allowed to marry, as William was illigitimate, and they were third cousins once removed, but they did wed 1051/2, when she was about 20 and he was a few years older.    She became Duchess of Normandy and later Queen of England, mother of about 10 children who lived to adulthood (including two kings, William II and Henry I, an abbess, and a duchess.  It appears to have been an affectionate and successful marriage, and William had no known mistresses or bastard children.  Matilda was intelligent and shrewd, interested in education, politics, and ecclesiastical matters.  She rarely came to England after her husband became king there, living most of her life in Normandy and serving as Regent there at least six times.  During those days, there was no unrest or uprisings, she sponsored many new schools, monasteries, and churches, and assisted her brother’s Flemish interests.  She was often caught in the middle of disputes with her husband and sons, and was well-known as a soothing, peaceful presence.  She died aged 52 in 1083, and her family couldn’t maintain their peaceful relationships without her to mediate for them.

A few good sources:

Tracy Borman–Matilda: Wife of the Conquerer, First Queen of England (2011)

Paul Hilliam–William the Conquerer: First Norman King of England

M. Morris–The Norman Conquest (2012)

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 This weekend’s heroine is the writer Colette, born on January 28, 1873!  

Born
in the Burgundy village of Saint-Saveur-en-Puisaye to a war hero father
and his wife, the family was orginally prosperous but suffered
finanical reversals.  She married in 1893 to Henri Gauthier-Villars
(“Willy”), a writer and publisher 14 years her senior.  Her first 4
books (the “Claudine” titles) were published under his name and
copywright.  When they separated in 1906 (and later divorced in 1910),
she had no income from her own writings.  She worked in journalism and
on the music hall stage, as well as practicing as an amateur
photographer.  She also had relationships with several women, including
the famous Natalie Barney, as she continued her writing.

In 1912,
she married Henri de Jouvenal, and in 1913 had her daughter
(‘Bel-Gazou”).  She published her very popular (and scandalous!) Cheri in
1920, and her writing career took off quickly.  She was divorced again
in 1924, and in 1925 married Maurice Goudeket, who was her husband for
the rest of her life.

The 1920s and ’30s were very productive for
her work, and she was acclaimed as France’s greatest female writer.  She
was 67 when the Germans occupied France, and she stayed in her Paris
apartment on the Palais-Royal despite the arrest of her Jewish husband
in 1941 (he was quickly released, and they spent the rest of the war
quietly).  In 1944, she wrote her most famous work, Gigi. 
Postwar, she was famous but ill with arthritis, nursed by her husband,
and continued to write.  (She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in
literature in 1948).  When she died on August 3, 1954, she was the first
French woman of letters to receive a state funeral, and was buried in
Pere Lachaise.

A couple of sources for her fascinating life:

Judith Thompson, Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (1999)

Annie Goetzinger, The Provocative Colette (2018)

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