The Women Who Dared: To Break All the Rules

by Jeremy Scott

Victoria Woodhull, Mary Wollstonecraft, Aimee Semple McPherson, Edwina Mountbatten, Margaret Argyll and Chanel were all women who dared. They had no time for what society said they could and couldn t do and would see the world bend before they did.

In 1870 a mesmerising psychic named Victoria Woodhull shattered tradition by running for the White House. Had she won the ensuing spectacle would surely have rivalled that of our own era. Abhorring such flamboyance, Mary Wollstonecraft inspired a revolution of thought with her pen as she issued women s first manifesto still to be fulfilled.

From Aimee Semple McPherson, the first female preacher in America, to Coco Chanel, designer of an empire, these women became the change they wanted to see in society.

In Women Who Dared, Jeremy Scott pays tribute to them all with wit, verve and reverence

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Womens

288 pages, Paperback

Published February 7, 2019

Reviews

[Nóri · Rating 2 out of 5]

Having recently suffered through one and a half other books that promised to teach me about interesting women I've never heard of but which were, in reality, 60% Tumblr level "lol men are the worst am I right?" kind of jokes, 20% obnoxious pop culture references, 10 % insinuating that literally nothing has changed since the 19th century and women are just as oppressed as ever thanks to Trump obviously, and maybe 10% relevant information, I was excited for Women Who Dared because I really, really love to read about groundbreaking, trailblazing, amazing historical women, and just once I would like to be able to do so without straining my eye muscles from rolling them too hard.

Unfortunately, this book is also not the answer I was looking for, but this time it's harder to put into words why. Certainly it was not too political, which I appreciated, but it had numerous other problems. I couldn't entirely get behind the writing style, for one thing. Colloquial in certain places, pretentious in others, it was as if the author couldn't decide whether he wanted to write a serious, informative non-fiction book, or a gossip column-worthy, flippant account of the lives of these women, full of rumours told as facts, possibilites presented as certanties, and blatant misinformation.

And oh, these women. I can't for the life of me understand what possessed the author to choose these six women in particular for his book. Certainly they all fit under the "women who dared" title, and it's probably my fault that I expected to find actual role models in here instead of con artists, barely important socialites, and women whose only claim to fame is their messy divorce and all the men they fucked. And just to show that I'm not kidding or exaggerating about any of this, let's take a look at the book chapter by chapter.

1. Victoria Woodhull
The book was off to a promising start with a chapter about the first female candidate for President of the United States, and I was excited to read about just how that was even possible in the 19th century. Well, that I never really found out. Victoria's presidential run amounted to about half a sentence in this chapter that was mainly about her inredibly messy home life, her career as a successful "spiritual healer", con-woman, and broker, and her attempt to ruin the life of a prominent man who was once mean to her. I can't even recall what platform she ran on, other than maybe "fuck monogamy" and "free sex for all", which seemed to be about 90% of her belief system, according to this book.

2. Mary Wollstonecraft
By far my favourite chapter, it was also, unfortunately, the shortest, and it would have been even shorter if not for the tangentially related account of women's role in the French Revolution that took up maybe half of it. Still, at least Mary is a role model, and I appreciated that she was included at all, even if I did have to roll my eyes a bit at the author's relentless insistence that her goals and ideas (namely education and equal opportunities for women) "have yet to be fulfilled" in our society. We could save so much time and help so many people in actual unequal and oppressive societies the world over if we finally stopped pretending this was true.

3. Aimee Semple Macpherson
I've never heard of Aimee before and honestly I'm not sure I missed much. The fact that she was the first female preacher in America, as well as one of the first true media celebrities, back when "mass media" really only meant the radio, is admirable alright. But the fact that she also used "faith healing" as one of her spectacles, and that she founded the first of those wacky American megachurches, is a dubious claim to greatness, and that's not even touching her kidnapping story.

4. Edwina Mountbatten
This is where things started to go downhill for me. I tried to enjoy the chapter for its dual biography nature, but couldn't get past all the inconsistencies and guesswork that clearly went into writing it. One part where it really sticks out is when Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson, a young black singer, is described as "destined to become Edwina's lover", and then a few pages later the author admits that she might have had an affair with a completely different black man, we don't know for certain, since Hutch always denied the claims. Then there are the parts where he describes specific events that prove Edwina's husband's bisexuality (which the author treats as a fashionable pastime all throughout the book), except I couldn't find a single source online that would corroborate that. This is really where the book completely crosses over into tabloid territory, since the actual historically important, not to mention the most interesting parts of Edwina's life, her involvement in rescue operations during the Blitz, are treated as mere anecdotes in the sea of all her affairs and glamorous social life.

5. Margaret Argyll
And then THIS is where the author completely drops the ball and gives up any pretense of writing about actually important women. Margaret Argyll was, by all accounts, and appalling person, and the only reason she is even talked about now, if ever, is because she was stupid enough to leave detailed records of her affairs AND pictures of herself giving blowjobs lying around for her husband to find. That's literally it. She was born rich, grew up privileged, lived off her father's money well into adulthood, didn't work a single day in her life, or did anything to make life better for anyone but herself... why is she included in this book then, you might ask? Well, the author's reasoning is that she, or specifically her disastrous and very public divorce, marked a turning point in the way people looked at aristocracy, and ushered in a more democratic, less class-conscious age in Britain. Honestly I'm not even certain that's true, and even if it was, she was nothing but a passive participant in those events. She didn't DO anything, other than cheat, lie, scheme, and spend money. Was she then, a "woman who dared"? Sure. Dared to be an asshole.

6. Coco Chanel
I guess this chapter could have been interesting, but by this point I felt so dragged down and angry by the last two that I just kinda wished the book to be over. I'm not really into fashion anyway and I have no idea how Chanel no. 5 even smells like, but at least Coco really was a pioneer in her own field, who used her own talents and resources to enact change in the world where she felt like it needed some, and that makes her infinitely better than certain others on this book.

So there you have it. All in all I would call this a disappointing book which took a good idea and went in a completely pointless direction with it, but I recognize that others might think differently. Were the women described in the book technically interesting to read about? Sure, and if that's all you're looking for, you might enjoy this a lot better than I did.

A thousand thanks to Edelweiss for my review copy!

(Review cross-posted to my blog)

[Emily · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author Jeremy Scott presents a series of short biographies of ground-breaking females. Though none are without flaw, they are infinitely fascinating as precursors of the modern feminine aspiration. Included are Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to attempt a run for President of the US; Mary Wollstonecraft, widely regarded as the author of feminism; Aimee Semple McPherson, first to command a pulpit and a congregation of millions; Edwina Mountbatten and Margaret Argyll, wildly wealthy and promiscuous British women whom the press followed incessantly; and Coco Chanel, who invented casual wear, caused the phenomenon of 'thin is in' and basically influenced just about everything women's fashion has tried to do in the last century.
I was most interested and impressed with the accomplishments of Woodhull and Chanel, who seemed to have quite made something of themselves, though Woodhull was not able to retain her wealth and regard. I didn't really understand why Argyll and Mountbatten were chosen to profile except that they 'dared to break all the rules' by being promiscuous, unfaithful, scheming and shady. That is not to say that promiscuous and unfaithful are necessarily undesirable, but the lengths Margaret went to in order to retain fame and wealth as well as punish those who'd wronged her are not to be admired. At least Mountbatten redeemed herself a bit with her work during the war.
At any rate learning of the lives of historically important women is never a chore and Scott has achieved his intended purpose passably well, though possibly a female author might have been able to treat her subjects with more insight instead of coming off like he lusted after each and every one. Writing this, I begin to hypothesize as to the nature of Scott's choices of heroines, as all were sex-positive and pleasure-seeking women (even the pastor) in a time when that sort of thing was (more) frowned upon. I believe I've cracked it: "Break all the Rules" is code for "have agency over one's sexual preferences and habits regardless of marital status or societal mores". Lending credence to this theory is a question on page 247: Why do fabulous women go for bastards? *The question is explored at length in The Irresistible Mr. Wrong by your current author Jeremy Scott. I wonder if possibly Mr. Scott is a "nice guy" who laments his inability to "get the girl". The more I consider that, the more sense his writing style of almost salivating, fawning obsequiousness makes.

[Claudi · Rating 2 out of 5]

'Women who Dared' takes the tales of seven heroines in an attempt to deconstruct how they scandalised their respective societies. In just over 250 pages, advertiser-turned-author Jeremy Scott (no, not the fashion designer) draws broad parallels between so called 'independently minded women'.

There is a high degree of historical overlap between these figures. Apart from a cursory aside (5 pages) devoted to the Roman Messalina, four were predominantly 20th century figures, with one from each the 19th and 18th centuries. So just what joins these stories? What is Scott attempting to achieve by linking together the proto-feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, with the designer Coco Chanel? How is the spiritual leader Aimee Semple McPherson related to the first female presidential candidate - Victoria Woodhull? The only obvious pairing are the adulteresses Margaret Argyll and Edwina Mountbatten, but beyond this, Scott's selection shows a heavy weighting towards the Anglo-American axis. Despite their alternating birth statuses, the majority become wealthy and infamous.

For a work obstinately about women, 'Women who Dared' spends an inordinate amount of time on men. We hear about how Woodhull so impacted James Blood he 'reinvented himself almost overnight, transforming into another character entirely'. McPherson, with her 'body, abundant auburn tresses and huge doe-eyes expressive of a melting softness', was cited by 'many reporters covering her meetings' as having a 'sex appeal' - including to the author Daniel Mark Epstein. Ian Campbell, Duke of Argyll and at that time married, was so taken in by Argyll as 'a young woman of such startling grace and loveliness [... that ...] he turned to his wife to say that was the girl he would marry one day.'

For all its wit and humour, 'Women who Dared' makes uncomfortable reading for women. Scott, over and over, re-iterates the nomos, the worldview, that a woman in the world of the turn-of-the century West can only be measured by her effect, for better or worse, in sickness and in health, to death do us part, on the men who revolve around her 'charisma'. Indeed, charisma is a word used so frequently by Scott that it undergoes metamorphosis turning into a by-word for physical sexual appetite. And perhaps this is why Messalina is included - she is 'the epitome of the hypersexed female'. Despite Scott's protestations that the word 'sex addict' may yet fall into disuse, as it becomes accepted that the concept is (in Scott's view) an outdated, prudish one, he nonetheless reveals his belief that the primary way women may achieve fame is through men in 'a lifestyle choice to live boldly in a manner only possible in the West today'.

Scott questions but never deconstructs. He treats class as an impediment to fame, but rather than asking if it is moral to become fabulously rich, he bemoans the strict hierarchy of 'old money'. True, there is a digression to revolutionary France in Wollstonecraft's section, but the lack of attention payed to Chanel's sympathies with the Nazi Gunther von Dincklage, and the glossing over of Dickie Mountbatten's part in the bloody partition of India underscore any leftist sympathies the author may harbour. If bored when reading, I'd invite fellow readers to start a swear jar for every use of the phrase 'a good war'. War, in 'Women who Dared', is sport for the advancement of careers.

Similarly Scott digresses only briefly to Chanel's relationship with Misia Sert - the only relationship between two women in the book. And once again it is framed in the context of a man, as Chanel comes to rely on Misia following the 'worst humiliation of her life' as a former (male) paramour married. Scott cannot seem to reconcile how the 'slim athletic figure' of Chanel would be attracted to the unconventional 'burley, even stout' Misia as 'physically the two were ill-matched'.

'Women who Dared' is predominantly a limited study of the key heterosexual relations a select group of wealthy woman engaged in in the early 20th century. This is an engaging read, amusing at times, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Scott makes little attempt to be objective, clearly admiring his subjects' tenacity, but this admiration too often feels like fetishisation. This is not a book about Women, this is a book about the reactions men have to the facade of female.

[Erika · Rating 3 out of 5]

** Full disclosure: I received this book in exchange for an honest review**
Victoria Woodhull, Mary Wollstonecraft, Aimee Semple McPherson, Edwina Mountbatten, Margaret Argyll and Coco Chanel. Six women who had no time for what society said they could and could not do. They would see the world bend before they did.
I found this book very interesting, both for its content and for the choices made by the author. Overall, I enjoyed it, the writing was fairly well paced and engaging, and I definitely feel I learned more than a few things that I did not previously know…I’m just not sure how reliable all of it is. I did not do any fact checking here, my uncertainly comes from the tendency the author has of stating things that I do not believe have been definitively proven, such as affairs and motivations or feelings, AS definitive fact. An approach I find concerning. A particular red flag for me was how willing he was to dive into the most salacious sexual escapade and illegal activity of most of the women, to state them as fact…and then barely even mentioned the suspected depth of Coco Chanel’s involvement with the Nazi party. An interesting omission that casts doubt on his choices.
I also found his choice of who to include here interesting. I don’t think that everyone in a book such as this should be a role model or ideal citizen but how exactly did Edwina Mountbatten and Margaret Argyll break the rules when it seems clear from his writings that they didn’t seem to even consider that the rules applied to them?
I also have a major issue with the layout of this book, there was nothing indicating where one woman’s story ended and the next began until you got far enough into the new section to figure out he was talking about someone new and I found that very frustrating. Now, I am reviewing an unedited proof so it’s possible this will be changed in the official release, but if not, I find this an unneeded complication.
As I stated above, overall I enjoyed this book. It was interesting and kept me engaged and it made me think and question a few things and I appreciate that it focused on women you don’t normally hear about in books such as this. I just wish I felt more confident in its reliability.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book incorporates a selection of different women and the role they played within their lifetime and the legacy they left behind. I was excited to read this book and was aware that trying to detail six women and their lives all within approximately 250 pages would be a challenge. Overall, I think the author did manage this task. However, the writing style and language did seem to differ for each woman, making me feel that quite a bit was 'copied and pasted' from other literature.
I was personally aware of only 3 of the 6 women but was keen to find out about them all. I didn't envy the author's challenge though, of only having been able to select half a dozen amazing and influential women throughout history!
The book was a great introduction to their lives and certainly left me curious to read and find out more on at least one of the women.

[Claire O'Sullivan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting women - not a great deal of info and the use of slang was a little off putting at times .

[Traian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. I was expecting role models, the book only partially delivers from that point of view.

The writing style adds to the disappointment. It constantly fluctuates between simple and pretentious.

And there isn’t really a common idea that links these women together other than the fact that they were considered desirable in their respective periods.

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a free copy of this book from LT's early reviewers program.

I mostly enjoyed Jeremy Scott's book "The Women Who Dared: To break all the rules" (which actually means they had forward-thinking ideas for their time about sex mainly.) Scott profiles six women who did not conform to the ideas of their times.

The strongest profile was the first on Victoria Woodhull -- the first woman who ran for president in the United States. She was also a bit of a shyster, as well as a newspaper publisher and (along with her sister) was the first female stock broker. I'd absolutely love to read a more extensive biography of her, just based on Scott's presentation here.

Not all of the other profiles were as strong... I feel like I read more about Edwina Mountbatten's husband than the woman herself, though the information that was actually her was certainly interesting.

Overall, this was a pretty fun look at some strong women.

[Tyra Parker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did like the start of this book, it was the first time I had heard of Victoria Woodhull. But this book has done somewhat of an injustice to the women it is so-called memorialising. I found out from the reviews that Mary Wolfstonecrafts daughter, also named Mary, is also Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein. Which when reading I kept mistaking her for her.

The blantant focus on all of the womens sex life and charicatures of all the women as a puddle of names connected to others and much less their own people.

The one good thing that came from me reading this book was learning the names of women who history has chosen to extinguish and that Alfred Edwards had a reputation for coprophilia.

[Victoria Sadler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeremy Scott brings to us a collection of short autobiographies about six inimitable women who dared to defy societal expectations on their behaviour and conduct – Victoria Woodhull, Mary Wollstonecraft, Aimee Semple McPherson, Edwina Mountbatten, Margaret Argyll and Coco Chanel.

Now, given the current climate, you would expect an objective to write the wrongs here, to lift these women from the stereotypical portrayals of them to one that showcases their intellectual achievements highlighting the hurdles they had to face from a society only too willing to objectify and gossip about them.

Not so. In fact, Jeremy has delivered a highly salacious account of these women’s lives, reductive representations of them, reducing them to little more than cartoonish stereotypes such as the vamp, the slut and the shrill. An undeniably offensive gesture given concerns on the representation of women.

By way of example…

Aimee Semple, the evangelist and media personality, is described by Jeremy – when she is a teenager – as “bee stung lips and a mouth made for kissing…flash(ing) a shapely calf…” This is simply not acceptable. You cannot describe a teenage girl in these terms; we cannot project an adult sexuality on underage girls.

Edwina Mountbatten doesn’t fare much better with Jeremy scathingly describing the debutante as, “overweight, even obese by today’s standards. Her face was beefy (and) she had an unflattering short bob…” I mean, please. It isn’t a progressive depiction when you reduce women like this.

Add to that, his depiction of the legendary Chanel as a morphine addict and the pioneering Mary Wollstonecraft as a shrill, high-maintenance girlfriend and perhaps you can see why I was shaking my head in disbelief at some sections.

There are also some bizarre gaps and omission of critical key data that would illuminate and inform the discussion immeasurably. For example, Jeremy finishes his chapter on Mary Wollstonecraft with the fact that she “whilst giving birth to a daughter – also named Mary.” And that’s it. There’s no mention whatsoever of who that Mary would grow up to be. What an example of Mary W’s legacy that her daughter would grow up to be Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein, fulfiller of her mother’s legacy of women as writers that could change the world. But no. Not a breath of that.

It’s even worse for Margaret Argyll, a high society woman caught up in a scandalous divorce in the 1960s. Jeremy’s attention is all on Margaret’s sex life – who she slept with, where she partied, the photos she took... Now, if he was setting out to frame her as a sexually liberated woman, he fails to achieve this as he focuses the last chapter on her story on nymphomania, framing Margaret as a victim of a condition.

Yet all of this is highly skewed and speculative, especially as Jeremy makes no mention of a serious head injury that Margaret experienced, which, her friends believe, severely altered Margaret’s personality and behaviour, and may likely have been a critical factor in her liaisons. Why omit this? Maybe it simply didn’t fit the portrayal that Jeremy wanted – preferring instead to gossip about high society women, no different to what we see today in the tabloid press over Meghan.

I’ve no doubt that Jeremy would be most remarkably offended by my opinion on his book as he goes to great lengths to acknowledge his love for women in the preface; “my book was always intended as a homage to and celebration of these women…” Yet he does nothing but a disservice to them.

[Jamie Jones · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is weird. For one thing, the author writes as if he's texting...super choppy, incomplete sentences, which I can't stand in an actual book. If he hadn't have saved the chapter on Coco Chanel for last, I wouldn't have finished it. I did, though...and was not rewarded for it.

It does have a few bright spots. I definitely learned some things...several of the women I had never even heard of before, and I discovered new things about those I had. But the stories are very incomplete and superficial. The chapter about Mary Wollstonecraft, for example, briefly mentions her daughter, Mary, near the end. It does not mention that she would grow up to marry Percy Shelley or write Frankenstein. Seriously??

Several of the women included seem to only be in this book because they practiced sexual freedom, and not because they did anything worthwhile for society. It's a strange combination of women chosen to profile, and it didn't work for me.

[Dominique King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little known (for the most part) women who gained a measure of fame, or more likely, infamy despite breaking the many "rules" society expected them to follow.
A couple I'd read other books about (like Victoria Woodhull or Aimie Semple McPherson), but a few that were new to me.
Scott delves into some of the lesser known aspects of their often controversial lives, and I thought it was sad to see how many of them really never found themselves or achieved their goals.
Folks are probably better for it in many cases that there were women willing to question and move ahead despite the obstacles...and that made the path easier for those who followed their leads.
I'm not much of a fan of the Royals, or the naval gazing qualities of many of such lives covered in this book. The book dragged in those parts for me.

[Mick Meyers · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the lives albeit abridged of six women who under the stringencies of the day proved themselves a worthy adversary for men.in their different ways they laid the foundation stones for sufferegets and the womens liberation movement.the whole idea of the book is summed up in the last brief chapter quite consinctly.

[Sonja · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an ARC. Filled with lots of history and insights, it introduced me to many women I'd never heard of; the writing was a little choppy at times but overall a good book.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

On a whole a good book but there was an interesting choice in including certain information about the woman that changes the tone in the book

[Piper Winchester · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you know me, you know I love my women who makes a difference and this book introduced me to some underrated women who did great things!