- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 2
-
Sparkle (0)
BlogHer recently caught up with author Stella Duffy. We're reading her novel Theodora for BlogHer Book Club.
BlogHer: Despite her importance within the history of the Roman Empire, Theodora hasn't received the same amount of attention as some of the other women in history among the general public. Why do you think that is?
Stella Duffy: I think many women in history haven’t achieved the lasting prominence their lifetime status or achievements might have deserved. This is partly because for such a very long time, historians were men who didn’t see women’s lives - no matter how important - as worth recording, but I think there’s a more insidious reason with Theodora, to do with empire and colonialism and racism. The west (by which I mean western Europe in Theodora’s time, and modern day first-world countries in our time) have always believed themselves to be the centre of the world. You only need to look at British politics two hundred years ago or much of American and European politics today to see that large powers truly do believe they are all there is. In Theodora’s time, the accent was shifting from east back to the west. The east – China, Persia, Arabia - had always been both intriguing and extremely "different" to western eyes, which allowed for some exoticism in western writing and histories of the east, but when the Roman Empire finally truly crumbled, there were already great powers rising in central and western Europe.
Our modern-day histories (for those of us in the west!) are based on the comings and goings of those European powers, following on from the Roman Empire. Therefore, for us in the west, Theodora and many women like her – as well as many men – simply ceased to matter as the focus shifted back to the west. I’m sure that if we could read the Persian and Chinese and various Arabic languages of the time, we might have a very different sense of world history – those of us who only read English have to content ourselves with Euro-centric histories, written by men, from a time when the rise of the church (both Roman and orthodox) meant women’s voices were being ever more suppressed – no wonder it seems we didn’t exist in history other than as saints, whores or witches!
As for the issue of why Theodora didn’t maintain the prominence of other historical women ... well, Cleopatra famously "seduced" two hugely important men and then (apparently) committed suicide. History has always loved tarts with a heart who come to a bad and early end – Theodora, on the other hand, was faithful and devoted to Justinian – or at least, his actions in visiting her grave weekly for twenty years after her death, and in never marrying again himself, would encourage us to believe in their fidelity. Unlike Queen Elizabeth I, she was no virgin. Unlike Helen of Troy, she was, so they said, not especially beautiful. I also think there is the issue of western racism/anti-Semitism against darker-skinned people, people of Semitic origin, and there are suggestions that some of Theodora’s family might have been from Syria, or at the very least that she was no blonde, European-featured beauty. At a time when the west (Europe) was constantly at war with the east (especially over faith, and in the Crusades), I suspect a great empress who looked like the enemy wasn’t necessarily going to be considered worth remembering.
BlogHer: In your author video, you had some Theodora-esque pictures and things in the background. Do you surround yourself with things from your current novel’s time period while you are writing? What did you have for Theodora?
Stella Duffy: Because this was my first historical novel, I found that I needed to constantly be looking at maps of Constantinople and the Mediterranean/Middle East of the time so I knew not only where the characters were, but also the names of the places, names that are changed today. I also had – still have as I’m doing the final edit of the sequel – the postcard of Theodora that I bought at the chapel in Ravenna where I saw the mosaic that started off this brilliant journey.
When I’ve been working on other, contemporary novels, it’s been other things – newspaper clippings, notes to myself – whatever might remind me of what I meant to put in the book!
BlogHer: There are conflicting historical accounts of Theodora's
