From Joan of Arc to Brigitte Bardot: meet the trailblazing women who shaped French history

Katherine Pangonis speaks to Charlotte Vosper about the extraordinary women often excluded from France’s national story – and what their lives reveal about the country

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Published: April 6, 2026 at 3:30 PM

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Charlotte Vosper: In your book, you tell the history of France through the lives of 21 women. How did you choose who to include?

Katherine Pangonis: I had this idea to revisit French history by looking at women who were not necessarily the most famous, but through whose lives you could explore pivotal moments of change in French history. I wanted to pick women whose experiences encapsulated or shed new light on the events that we think we know well, but usually through male-centric lenses.

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I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the women who played roles in great moments of change in French history weren’t just footnotes or exceptions, but that their lives actively shaped politics, culture, religion and the French identity over centuries. By following their lives, I hope I can help the reader to see the history of France a bit differently. That was my key mission when selecting the women for the book.

You suggest women have been systematically excluded from the national narrative of French history. Can you expand on this?

I think it’s a combination of both deliberate and inadvertent exclusion from the French national narrative. Really, this links to a bigger question about the representation of women in history. In the written historical record, the lack of female representation comes down to the basic fact that throughout most of history the majority of the population were illiterate, and secondly, that the small number of the population that were educated in reading and writing, tended to be male.

Today, while women aren’t totally erased from the French historical narrative, there is a lack of information about them. This book started with my long walks in the Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris, where there are 20 statues of the queens and illustrious women of France. We see these women’s faces and their historical costumes, but none of the statues have any information about women’s lives attached to them.

This is often the case in museums, too. One of my favourite museums is the Musée Carnavalet, which looks at the history of Paris from its early origins to the modern day. It’s an excellent museum, but the roles of women just aren’t highlighted enough. For example, they have a room about the Enlightenment which includes a desk belonging to Voltaire, a key thinker from the period. Near the desk, a portrait of Émilie Du Châtelet hangs on the wall. Du Châtelet was a fantastic mathematician in her own right and she contributed hugely to Voltaire’s work. But there is no information about her in the museum.

In many cases, I think this lack of recognition comes from big institutions’ reluctance to go below the surface of existing, widely available information. This is in the process of changing though. There’s a movement among historians to redress the balance, and I would like my book to contribute to that.

I would like to zone in on some of the women in your book. Let’s start with Christine de Pizan. What can you tell us about her?

De Pizan was one of the first women known to make a living from her writing. She was born in Venice around 1364 and moved to France when her highly educated father began work at Charles V’s court as an astrologer. Her father made a deliberate effort to educate her, beyond what was expected at the time.

A medieval manuscript scene shows crowned and veiled women studying around a table with books and instruments, while two others build a white‑brick wall with mortar.

A miniature from Le Livre de la Cité des Dames. In this landmark 15th-century book, Christine de Pizan imagines an allegorical city of refuge whose walls are built from the achievements of women, ranging from warriors to artists to saints (Image by Getty Images)

At 15, Christine married a 26-year-old man in what seems to have been a real love match. They lived together and had children, but when he died in 1389, de Pizan was left a young widow. Suddenly, she found herself as the only breadwinner, with small children and an aging mother to look after. In response, she dedicated herself to building a career as a writer, creating these beautiful and painstakingly handwritten manuscripts. At the French court she was well positioned to find wealthy patrons to sell her works to, and so she managed to support her children with her writing, earning enough to educate them and broker them good marriages.

De Pizan left behind an impressive surviving body of work, which is why researching her was so rewarding for me. She wrote about other women and elevated the female artists who illustrated her works, and in this sense, we can call her a protofeminist. She really was a fantastic figure.

So you think that we can read modern identities, such as de Pizan being a ‘protofeminist’, back into the past?

We can definitely see the beginnings of modern ideas in earlier thinking. While there are dramatic differences between the moral frameworks of different time periods, there’s a huge amount of shared experience throughout history. Philosophical, emotional and spiritual threads link us with the people that came before us. Projecting modern values onto the past is risky, but there are connections through time.

Some of what Christine de Pizan wrote about women is problematic by modern feminist standards, like the way she writes about sex workers. While she was progressive for her day, she is not progressive enough to be called a ‘good feminist’ in the 21st century. Nevertheless, I think her work did lay the foundations of modern feminism to an extent. She built a career for herself and wrote tracts defending women against critical stereotypes. In this, we can see her as a key figure in the very early phases of the feminist movement, even if her personal values didn’t align with modern feminist ones.

De Pizan’s historical significance may be evident but is the influence on French history of the other women in your book as tangible?

Soft power plays a critical role throughout the book. I was motivated by two considerations when selecting people to write about. I wanted to choose women who were active political agents, and in that category I would include de Pizan. I’d also include Louise Michel, an incredible activist during the Paris Commune who is often hailed as the mother of anarchy, and of course Olympe de Gouges, a woman who was pro-revolution but ended up on the block of the guillotine herself.

A black‑and‑white studio photograph of a person with short, wavy hair, dressed in a dark garment with a patterned collar and a tied scarf at the neck, posed against a plain backdrop.

The feminist, anarchist and social activist Louise Michel (1830–1905) (Image by Getty Images)

And yet, beyond these women, I’ve also included those whose historical influence was less tangible, and whose lives shed light on the less well-known parts of French history. In that category, I would include St Balthild of Chelles, a Frankish queen during the Dark Ages who set the stage for later powerful queens like Eleanor of Aquitaine. I’d also put Béatrice de Planisolles – a 13th-century noblewoman who was subjected to the Cathar inquisition – in that category. She wasn’t particularly powerful or wealthy, but she left behind these amazing inquisition records about how she lived her life and what she thought and felt.

Then, of course, there was the Empress Joséphine Bonaparte, the wife of Napoleon. Most of her power came through her influence as a cultural icon and her profound influence on her husband. Other women who follow in this vein include the painter Berthe Morisot, who changed how women’s lives were viewed in the arts, and the singer Édith Piaf, who wrote about love, tragedy and emotional trauma. There is a soft and artistic power that reverberates from these women throughout history, and I’ve tried to capture that in the book as well.

A formal painted portrait of a woman wearing a jeweled tiara and an embroidered white gown, her right hand placed on a crown set on a richly decorated cushion, with a throne and drapery behind her.

Joséphine (1763–1814), the empress of France and wife of Napoleon Bonaparte (Image by Topfoto)

As well as giving due attention to female power and influence, it’s also important to recognise women with more complex legacies. How did you assess their historical impact and balance that with the more troubling aspects of their life stories?

That’s a really interesting question. While, as I’ve said already, I think projecting moral values onto figures of the past is tricky and not particularly rewarding, in the case of Coco Chanel, I think we can view her with our modern value systems in mind. Chanel died in the mid-20th century, and while there have been seismic societal changes between then and now, she is not so far removed from us that we should play down her complex legacy by saying she lived in a different time.

There is a soft and artistic power that reverberates from these women throughout history, and I’ve tried to capture that in the book as well

Chanel has been accused of being a Nazi sympathiser. She stayed in Paris during the German occupation, lived in a lavish suite at the Ritz with her lover (who was a Nazi intelligence officer), and she offered up her services as a spy on behalf of the Nazi regime. Yes, she liberated women from corsets, modernised how women dress, and made women’s fashion more comfortable and more practical. But while this is iconic, we cannot divorce her influence on fashion from the fact that her personal conduct was terrible. Some people would argue that the punishment of French women who had Nazi lovers during the occupation was too harsh: their heads were shaved, they were whipped, and they were shamed terribly. In some cases, it was arguably justified; in others – such as poor women who had no one else to protect them – perhaps not. But I’d argue that Chanel did have choices. Women like the dancer Josephine Baker, who was in Paris during the war and offers a direct parallel, offered her services to the French Resistance at great personal risk and to help Jewish families.

A black‑and‑white photo of a person in a dark jacket, light blouse, and hat with a brooch, leaning on a table with their head resting on one arm.

The designer Coco Chanel, pictured in 1954, may have modernised fashion, but she had ties to the Nazis (Image by Getty Images)

Certainly, the modern fashion house is far removed from the original woman, and you can love Chanel designs, but her Nazi sympathies are a part of Coco’s story which it’s important to fully acknowledge.

It was also difficult to navigate my inclusion of the actor, singer and model Brigitte Bardot in the book. She was an enduring icon of French culture but also had problematic views. I had to tread a fine line when evaluating how to acknowledge her iconic status, while highlighting that she is not necessarily a woman we should always look up to.

In her early career, Bardot’s acting roles turned her into a liberating symbol of female sexuality, and she promoted the free expression of women’s sexual desires. But when she stepped away from the spotlight at the age of 39 and dedicated herself to animal rights activism, she used that cause to criticise religious groups and endorse racial prejudice. On this basis, she was fined for hate speech. I included her as the last woman in my book because I think her public image reflects the divisions in modern France. It is a deeply divided country. Vast waves of the population now vote for far-right parties and French citizens violently disagree with each other. This is part of a wider political trend in Europe, and I think Bardot represents this divisive landscape.

Do you think the extraordinary women you write about can help us understand the lives of ordinary women in the past?

I think we can certainly use the women in the book to understand the struggles of ordinary women. A good example is George Sand, the 19th-century writer who begged her mother for them to leave their aristocratic family and run away together. Sand wanted to start a hat shop, but her mother refused, telling Sand it would be impossible. She opened Sand’s eyes to just how dangerous and precarious life was for women without money and protection. In this moment, we see the shattering of Sand’s illusion that anything is possible, a testament to just how difficult life was for ordinary women in France over the centuries.

A shoulder‑length painted portrait of a person with dark, wavy hair decorated with red and white flowers, shown against a muted brown background.

An 1837 oil portrait of the prolific and popular 19th-century French novelist George Sand (Image by Topfoto)

Another example is Béatrice de Planisolles. She was married off at a young age to an older man, raped by another, and suffered an attempted rape later in her life. De Planisolles experienced horrible things at so many points in her life, just like the other women in my book. Joan of Arc and Olympe de Gouges were executed. Brigitte Bardot suffered depression and was suicidal at points in her life. Djamila Boupacha, an Algerian militant, was also subjected to rape and sexual abuse. These are extreme cases, but they draw attention to the deep-seated misogyny and racial prejudice that has existed in French society for a very long time.

These were women who have arguably led successful and, in some cases, charmed lives, but they have also all been subjected to powerlessness and oppression. This book offers windows into lots of different women’s lives, and together they speak to the ubiquitous issues that women have faced. Whether or not these women’s lives give us insight into the experiences of ordinary women, they show us the pervasive challenges and threats that women have faced throughout history. These issues exist today, and while many women today live freer lives than they would have done a hundred years ago, there is still work to be done.

Do any continuities or common experiences unite the women in your book?

On the one hand, we might ask what relationship could there really be between St Balthild, the Anglo-Saxon slave girl who was trafficked from Britain to the Kingdom of the Franks and married the king, and Brigitte Bardot, the modern screen icon? But, on the other hand, I see huge points of connection. Most of the women in this book are self-made and they did not follow the paths laid out for them at birth. No one would have expected St Balthild to become Queen of the Franks, or Christine de Pizan to generate her own income from writing, or Joan of Arc to lead a French army. The wealthy, aristocratic George Sand became a trouser-wearing cigar-smoking linchpin of the Parisian literary scene, and in this, she controlled her own destiny. Simone Veil survived the Holocaust to become a leading woman in French and European politics.

The women in my book were trailblazers, and that’s the thread linking them. Whether they were heroines or villains or something in between, they all managed to take control of their lives and position themselves as active agents in their own eras. I think that’s amazing.

Whether these women were heroines or villains or something in between, they all managed to take control of their lives and be active agents in their eras

What do you hope will come out of your female-focused history of France?

I hope this book will introduce readers to some women who perhaps they hadn’t heard of before. People will probably have heard of Joan of Arc, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Brigitte Bardot. But I’m not sure how many of my readers will know about Louise Michel, Christine de Pizan, Djamila Boupacha or St Balthilde of Chelles. And so I hope that my book can plant seeds in readers’ minds. It is by no means a comprehensive work on the roles of women in French history, nor is it an in-depth academic work, but I hope that the book will whet readers’ appetites, pique their interests, and show them that there is much more to French history than they might have originally thought.

Katherine Pangonis is a writer whose work focuses on the Middle East and Mediterranean regions, and the interactions between east and west. Her books include Queens of Jerusalem: The Women Who Dared to Rule (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2021)

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This article was first published in the March 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine

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