Professor Kathy J Phillips

Ursula, or the 11,000 Women Professor Kathy J Phillips

The legendary Saint Ursula is said to have left England with 11,000 women to trek across Europe, but my women are no saints. Ursula is not a historical novel but a rollicking new epic, creating experimental language and compelling characters for the present.

When Ursula's father gives her ships, only to trick the women as wives for soldiers, how will she outwit the commander? Is violence appropriate to protest a whaling expedition? How can the women rescue a missing companion--one who seems to have joined her kidnappers? How will Ursula intervene when two women claim one baby? Why did a pope named Cyriacus (say the legends) really give up the papacy to follow Ursula?



Although the material culture in Ursula remains medieval (no trucks, no planes), old trappings combine with modern urgencies, sensibilities, and language. In the episode "Mec Malarkey Puts Skatelin on the Talk-Show Circuit," a slick-talking entrepreneur, dispensing modern celebrity-hype, tries to catch the first hemmings and hawings of a woman stuck in a scold's bridle, which her companions have been trying to undo. Yet if Skatelin's literal metal mask became obsolete, the following centuries have certainly found other ways, periodically, to interfere with women's public voice.



Unfortunately, in 2017, with misogyny apparently resurgent, will Ursula (and you) have to start chiseling that bridle again?