Sex and the City of Ladies: Rewriting History with Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great

by Lisa Hilton

The bestselling author and historian Lisa Hilton picks up the mythical ‘City of Ladies’ where the medieval writer Christine de Pisan left off, continuing a conversation about gender and greatness that began more than six hundred years ago. In 1405 Christine de Pisan took up the pen to defend her maligned sex. Her book, The City of Ladies , was built around preserving women's reputations from the slights and misunderstandings of history. In it the author is visited by three spirits – Justice, Rectitude and Reason – who guide her in sifting through countless lives, in search of worthy citizens.
 
Over 600 years later, the historian and novelist Lisa Hilton picks up the book and promptly falls asleep, only to be visited by three great women from Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. And they aren’t happy. Having found themselves barred from the original ‘City of Ladies’, they want to know why. And isn’t it time, they ask, for a new author to take up the pen?
 
What follows is a reassessment of the past, in which deeds and reputations, rumours and reality are held up to the light, and history is wrested back from the distortions of misogyny.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Feminism, Audiobook, Biography

80 pages, Hardcover

Published October 27, 2020

About the author

Lisa Hilton is an author and biographer. She grew up in the north of England and read English at New College, Oxford, after which she studied History of Art in Florence and Paris. After eight years in New York, Paris and Milan she has recently returned to England and now lives in London with her husband and their daughter. Her work has appeared in Vogue, Elle, the Evening Standard and the Telegraph, among others.

Reviews

[Sophia]

Yes I am reading super short books to meet my reading goals for 2021, is there a problem?
I thought this was a fun little essay. If you are new to feminist historical critiques this would be a nice jumping off point to dip your toes in. That being said, there is a little too much just explaining the history of these women and not enough analysis, which would have provided some more depth. As this is a short piece, it is fairly heteronormative & cisnormative, though she does offer a little critique in the conclusion. Again, since this is so short I was not expecting a deep analysis, but rather saw this as a jumping off point for somebody interested in history, but not sure they want to start with longer academic pieces.

[V]

What a wallop! In a few dozen pages, Hilton illuminates the Renaissance, decimates contemporary literary scholarship’s gender essentialism, and tosses in some cocktail chatter-worthy facts about the loves of four oversexualized, ultimately underestimated historical figures: Christine de Pisan, Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, and Catherine the Great. This delightful and powerful tome is just right for the distracted reading breaks in coronatime.

[Илияна Димитрова]

Доста интересно.

[Regina Andreassen]

Juvenile

[Linda]

Really short, but I was expecting something slightly different.

[Goya]

“In history, powerful women can never escape their own corporeality”
Hilton reconsiders the trials and tribulations of Cleoptra, Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine the Great in this fast paced, pithy book that introduces the dismantling of powerful women being judged in the prism of their femininity.
Uncovers and rewrites certain facts about these three women who have been susceptible to the deep assumptions of cultural femininity and the narrative pressures, instead of being contextualised and narrated accurately as individuals.

[Chris]

Sex and the City of Ladies is Lisa Hilton doing one of the things she does best: taking women who have been flattened by reputation and giving them back their intelligence, appetite, politics, and nerve. The book is stylish, but it is not merely stylish. Hilton knows how to make history feel sharp again, especially when she is writing about women who have been treated as scandals instead of people.

What I liked most is the energy of the argument. Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia, and Catherine the Great are familiar names, but familiarity has not always done them any favors. They tend to arrive already wrapped in gossip: seductress, poisoner, monster, libertine. Hilton is very good at pulling at those labels until you can see the machinery underneath. Who benefited from telling the story that way? What made powerful women so frightening? Why are ambition and desire treated so differently when a woman has them?

The writing has Hilton’s usual bite. It is clever, elegant, and occasionally wicked in the best way. She does not make these women saintly, which would be boring and false. She makes them more interesting than that. The book is fun to read because it has both brains and pace, and because Hilton understands that history is never only about what happened. It is also about who got to explain it afterward.

I finished it admiring the book’s confidence. It is not a dry correction of the record. It is a lively, intelligent argument against lazy memory, and a reminder that some reputations say as much about the people who created them as they do about the women trapped inside them.

[Ted Richards]

A fun, well intentioned pop history of three great women of history.

Lisa Hilton's take on Christine de Pisan finds her using dream-vision writing to frame a quick re-evaluation of Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great. It's a fun storytelling device and Hilton's appraisal of all the women is very energetic. This is a book well suited for people first venturing into reading history or wanting a palette cleanser in non-fiction.

There's nothing particularly revolutionary here. Hilton's accounts tend to match up with most modern day thinking of her key figures. Each chapter lays out the history of the characters, then burrows into why they have been sensationalized throughout history. But each figure could well span several volumes of inquiry, and sometimes Hilton's approach feels more reductionist than simplistic.

Her ultimate conclusion is that attempts to rewrite such mighty figures as proto-feminists is anachronistic. Moreover, popular history narratives often perpetrate the idea of 'women' as a static category, too often viewed as 'not male'. It's all interesting stuff and for first time readers hopefully a good introduction to widen historiographical understanding.

[Annis]

Any book referencing Christine de Pisan I will immediately pick up, and in this respect I found the analysis of de Pisan very interesting. Both the defence of her work and the criticism I felt were interesting and balanced without an agenda.
However I found that the content about the three historical women was lacking in its depth and analysis. I enjoyed the sections on Cleopatra and Catherine the Great, although I wish they were longer and had more analysis rather than being just brief summaries of their lives, however the section on Lucrezia Borgia I thought was confusing, likely because I know very little of papal politics and it wrote with assumed knowledge of the subject.
I really liked the conclusion of historical women being unable to be understood beyond the context of their femaleness, and the idea that to truly analyse the lives of specific historical women is to not analyse them as women at all.
Overall it was a nice introduction to some fascinating historical figures although the analysis was too shallow and relatively limited in its presentation of original ideas. However, I liked the reference to de Pisan and makes me want to reread her work with a different perspective.

[Becky]

Short biographies of three infamous women of history; Cleopatra VII, Lucrezia Borgia, and Catherine the Great. The book takes the framing device of Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies and asks if these three women would make the cut and get in.

This is part philosophy? Part Feminist history. It works rather nicely and would be a good starting point for study of these three fascinating women, as well as to a reading of Pizan's original text.

[Jo]

This short book is a sort of fantasy non-fiction by the author as the narrative has her seeing the ghosts of Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great and then properly telling their stories. It's an interesting look at the way powerful women have been portrayed by those writing history and even by society in their time.

[Kaitlin Lindell]

If you’re a history person, this book isn’t going to be very enlightening. It leaves much to be desired in terms of literary critique and honestly some parts fed into the tired trope of putting powerful women against each other (random catty dialogue that was supposed to be engaging I think?). Too much focus on historical facts and the perpetuation of inaccuracies. Save your time

[Amy]

I enjoyed the histories of the chosen females and am infinitely bettered for all the words I had to look up but the point of the ending of the book is perhaps lost on me. I disagree that we should not write of figures as women when their role in society is vital and impactful- embrace our positions and celebrate how we differ.

[Marcela]

Easy to read, short and funny book.
The author “falls asleep” and had 3 visitors , 3 great women from history: Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great! What an amazing dream/ conversation.

[Georgia]

I think this is a wonderful book for those who haven’t read gender history. I did enjoy it but these are ideas I’ve read before and, whilst the way this was brought to life in re-animating the historical figures was refreshing and fun, I think I would have enjoyed it more as a non-scholar.

[Desirae]

There are some interesting "what-if" feminist moments toward the beginning. However, other than the author engaging in a masturbatory dirge wherein Cleopatra, Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine (Sophie) The Great, "appear" to her to tell their stories, I don't see the point in this.

[Taya]

It was a good short rewriting of History. Makes you think on more their behalf then what everyone knows about. Hilton has a way to persuade you on their side and empathy. Bringing Cleopatra, Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine the Great alive.

[Milly Robertson]

A good starting point for those that want to dive into conversations regarding reputations of historically renowned women. A fun way of meeting three historical figures that stories have many layers.

A short read yet entertaining and thought-provoking.

[Javiera Hernández]

Easy to read, fun, and very fast-paced. It’s a great book to enjoy with an afternoon coffee and learn a bit about powerful women. I would have loved more in-depth information, but I really liked the way everything is described.

[Regina]

Incredible take on how women are written about in history

[Catherine Jeffrey]

Short but it packs a punch, and overturns the spurious myths that surround these three magnificent women .

[Theodora]

2.5 ⭐️
Short book. While it has some interesting points, it’s very poorly written. The pace is inexistant and I found it hard to understand the relevance of many things the author touches on.

[Merel]

A witty and insightful analysis of the way we view strong women in history. I thoroughly enjoyed and admired it.

[Clarissa]

An easy read (short too, which is great for getting back into reading during the pandemic)

Lisa delves into the lives of some fascinating historical figures and challenges the thinking around them. For example: Catherine the great conducted herself (sexually speaking) in a way that for a man would have been more than acceptable and not at all the focus. Whereas, because she was a female, people refer to her as that Russian Queen who slept with a lot of people rather than the great ruler she was considered to be.

[Meg W]

"Can 'woman' as a category be retired from historical practice?"

I picked this book up at Powell's Books a few years ago and have since read it twice since. I have a great appreciation for it. While it is short it's wastes no words.