Putting Women in Place: Feminist Geographers Make Sense of the World Book

I enjoyed reading this book; a lot of it was really informative, and Prioleau writes about these women with a particular energy and enthusiasm that catches on to you. I disagreed with a couple of the choices she made in subjects - some because they weren't really much more than sociopaths who managed to abuse their way to the top and one or two because I rejected her (very optimistic) take on them - but, ultimately, it comes down to the fact that Prioleau was writing about women who got power. They didn't have to be good people; they didn't even have to be decent human beings. They gained or regained power by their talents and skills, and they influenced the time they lived. That is all.

Aside from a lot of the hurdy-gurdy about goddesses, there was only one point that seriously irked me. The goddess stuff is normal, if unfortunate; very few people nowadays are able to conceptualize of a culture entirely outside of their own dichotomized framework, and Prioleau managed not to dwell too much on her annoyingly monotheistic viewpoint on various goddesses throughout. That point occurred in a very short synopsis of a Grecian courtesan's life.

Prioleau basically does something absolutely unforgivable - printing the subject's thoughts on how it was better to be anything except a courtesan, she outright contradicts that and comes back with the biographer's equivalent of, "Nuh uh." Seriously. Elizabeth Prioleau, you are not and will never be forced into becoming a prostitute in order to survive; check the arrogant dismissal. Regardless of your beliefs on legalization or de-criminalization or whatever, you contradicted one of your subjects - someone who is too dead to refute you. Respect your subjects, and learn to resist the temptation to use their lives to support your ideology when they outright contradict it.

For a feminist author, it's more than a little inappropriate to silence and appropriate another woman's life simply so you won't have to deal with the cognitive dissonance.