October 14, 2019 • 32 mins
Baret was the first woman known to circumnavigate the globe. But her experience wasn’t just about the travel – she was working, and her work took her to places that were totally unexpected for someone of her gender and economic class in the 18th century.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
Fry And today's episode is a sponsored one. It's sponsored
by the All New Explorer. They asked us to do
(00:23):
something that was related in some way to exploration and
then left it totally up to us how did we
want to interpret that? So of course we had a
big pile of ideas at the ready that fit in
some way for that theme, and we finally decided to
talk about Jan Boret, who was the first woman known
to circumnavigate the globe. But her experience was not just
(00:43):
about the travel like a lot of the women travelers
that we have talked about, we're traveling to explore, uh,
just mostly because they had disposable income and you know,
had the means and the money to to do that
kind of thing, and sometimes to do other work alongside
all the travel. But like the travel was a major
piece of it. She was working, and the work she
(01:04):
was doing was taking her to places that were totally
unexpected for somebody of her gender and her economic class
in the eighteenth century. Jean Barret was born on July
seventeen forty to Jean Barret and Jeanne Puscha. They lived
in La Camel, France, which is roughly two hundred miles
that's about three hundred twenty kilometers southeast of Paris. This
(01:25):
is a rural, agricultural area, and Jeanne's father worked as
a day laborer. He did not own any land or
always have access to steady work, so the Beret family
and others who were similarly situated were some of the
poorest people in that part of Europe. We really know
almost nothing about her upbringing or her early life, but
she might have been trained as an herb woman, so
(01:48):
somebody who knew how to grow and forage and prepare
medicinal herbs. This is something that she would have learned
from other women based on knowledge that was mostly passed
down orally. We do know that when she was in
her early twenties, Barret started working for a man named
Philibert Commerson, who was about twelve years older than she was.
He was from an affluent family and was formally educated
(02:09):
in both medicine and botany. He much preferred botany, though,
and he never established a medical practice. Yeah, and the
grand scheme of like social and economic circumstances, they were
nearly opposite. Instead of going into that medical practice, Commerceon
established a botanical garden in Chateagnon led Dome. In the
(02:29):
late seventeen fifties, he visited Voltaire and one of his
colleagues was Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who was the person
who helped establish that system of binomial nomenclature that is
still used to classify organisms today, although that system, of
course has evolved a lot since then. Linnaeus secured a
commission from the Queen of Sweden for Commerceon to catalog
(02:51):
Mediterranean fish. So in addition to his work as a botanist,
he was also an ichthyologist. So if Barret was already
rained as an herb woman, it would have made a
lot of sense for Commerson to hire her. There is
a twenty three page table of medicinal plants arranged in
order of their virtues and according to the healing indications
(03:12):
that is among Commerceonce papers, which biographer Glenn's Ridley suggests
was actually Barret's work. If that is correct, and if
the knowledge contained in that notebook was something that Barret
had already learned before being hired. She would have been
a very clear help to Commerceon's botany work from day one,
but it appears that at least at first, commerce On
(03:32):
hired Beret not as a botany assistant, but as as
a domestic servant, and that would have been more stable
and financially lucrative than what the family had been experiencing
as day laborers. We don't know exactly when she started
working for him, her formal employment sort of in seventeen
sixty four, but she seems to have also been working
with him in some capacity before that. It's possible that
(03:55):
she started working there just after the death of Commerceon's
wife at the age of party four. That happened shortly
after she gave birth to their child, and it's possible
that part of Bret's role working for him was to
help care for this newborn. Ultimately, though, the baby was
sent to live with an uncle, and at some point
Beret and Commerceen's relationship became more personal rather than employer
(04:18):
and employee. In seventeen sixty four, Bret became pregnant. Unmarried
women were legally required to register their pregnancies, including naming
the baby's father. Beret did register her pregnancy on August twenty,
seventeen sixty four, but she traveled to another town to
do it, and she took two men with her as
(04:38):
character witnesses. They maintained that she had been assaulted by
an unknown man and that that assault had resulted in
her pregnancy. This baby was almost certainly Commerceons, with the
character witnesses being a part of an effort to cover
up what would have been something truly scandalous if people
had actually known the facts of the situation. Barre and
(04:59):
commerceon to Paris together in September of seventeen sixty four.
She was given a salary of a hundred livres a year.
They lived near the Jardin le Loois or the Royal Gardens,
which is today known as the Jardin des plant In
January of seventeen sixty five, Barrets surrendered her baby, named
Jean Pierre, to a home for foundling children. Jean Pierre
(05:22):
was placed with the foster family, although he died a
couple of years later. The registry of Barret's pregnancy, Jean
Pierre's birth, and his fostering and death are all documented
in the historical record, but berets and commercials, thoughts and
feelings on these events really are not part of any
of those documents. Within a few months of surrendering, Jean
Pierre Barret and Commerceens were preparing for a voyage around
(05:46):
the world. This expedition of exploration and scientific discovery had
been authorized by King Louis the fifteenth, and it was
meant as both an exploratory voyage and a scientific endeavor.
Admiral Louis Antoine Comte Bougambille, who had served in the
Seven Years War, was in command of three hundred thirty
(06:07):
men who were divided between two vessels, the Budeus, and
in addition to being in command of the expedition as
a whole, Boogambille was in command of the Boudous, and
France was Chanard de la Giorde was in command of
the Three scientists had been recruited to participate in this expedition, Commarcon,
(06:28):
who was acting as royal botanist and naturalist, astronomer Pierre
Antoine Veron, and cartographer char Routier de Ville. Among his
other duties. Commercon was one of the people helping to
plan the expedition's route. Commercant was given a budget to
hire an assistant naturalist to take on this voyage to
help him collect and catalog specimens and to illustrate what
(06:51):
they found, but he could not take jam Barre, at
least not legally. It had been illegal for women to
be on French naval ships for anything other than a
brief visit, since nine officers who broke this rule could
be suspended for a month and sailors who broke it
could be sentenced to fifteen days in chains. There is
(07:13):
a lot that we don't know about the dynamics between
Commercion and Barret. There were obvious and meaningful disparities between
the two of them, especially when it came to power
and wealth, stemming from both their relative social class and
their genders, and as well as him being her employer.
But at the same time, what happens next suggests that
(07:34):
Barret was in this relationship willingly, and we're gonna get
into that after we first pause for a little sponsor break.
As they were preparing for their expedition around the world,
Philibert commercial wrote out a will and that bequeathed his
(07:55):
actual property to his son, but it also made it
clear that all of the women, men's clothes, and similar
possessions in his home belonged to his housekeeper, Jambret, to
whom he left the household, furnishings and linen's along with
six livres. The will also gave her the right to
live in his home for a year after the date
(08:16):
of his death, during which time she would organize his
specimens and manuscripts and then send them onto the Royal collection.
The will makes it sound as though jean Barret was
staying behind while he was going on this expedition, and
it also noted that she was sometimes known as Jean
de Bonnefoy. Barret was not staying behind, though. Instead commerceam
(08:38):
maintained that he had not been able to find a
workable assistant to go with him on this voyage in
spite of all of his efforts to do so. Then
Jeanne Barret, dressed in men's clothing and using the name Bonafoy,
arrived at the port of Rochefort, maintaining that she was
looking for work. Commerson hired the disguised beret on the spot,
(08:59):
and from that going on for much of the expedition,
he consistently referred to her as male. Based on everything
we know about the situation, this was a disguise and
not reflection of her gender, so we will keep referring
to her as a woman. Uh. This whole ruse seems
like kind of a stretch to me. Um the idea
that he would have just hired a random person on
(09:21):
the spot, having failed to find somebody that met actual
criteria for a botanists assistant on this voyage, But it
seems like everyone thought that was it made sense. I
guess that he hired an apparently random person at the dock.
I feel like this is one of those things where
it's like the excuse checklist of like, look, you all
(09:42):
know who this is, and I know who this is,
and she knows you all know who this is, but
we have, um, you know, we've checked all the boxes
for all you know, you can say you thought it
was a dude the whole time. Yeah, this is um.
This is also really to me the moment that if
if she had wanted to get out of this situation,
it would have been easy enough to not show up,
(10:04):
which definitely would have been a reduction in the in
the opportunities that were available to her. She probably would
have had to go back home and and try to
find some kind of other employment. But this this would
have been an easier moment for her to kind of
slip away if she did not actually want to go
on this voyage. So the Atoll and the Budeau's planned
(10:25):
to cross the Atlantic separately, traveling southwest across the Atlantic
Ocean to rendezvous at Rio in June of seventeen sixty seven.
From there, they would sail south along the coast of
South America and through the Strait of Magellan. Then they
would follow the western coast of South America before turning
west across the Southern Pacific. Then to return to Europe,
(10:47):
they would travel through the East Indies and around the
Horn of Africa, then back north, obviously back to Europe,
and they would make stops all along the way, gathering specimens,
making maps, recording of the people in places they saw.
They would also claim land where they could, and in
one case they would give it up. One stop on
the voyage involved surrendering the Falkland Islands to Spain. Commercant
(11:11):
and Barret were to sail aboard the Atoil when they embarked.
Commercon had so much equipment with him that he was
given the captain's stateroom as his quarters. The captain's stateroom
had its own private baths, which would have made it
easier for Barret to conceal her sex while on board.
The idea of easy is really relative here, though for
(11:32):
almost two years Barret maintained a disguise that required her
to bind her breasts. Today's chest binders are usually made
with synthetic elastic fibers, which have some stretch, but these
materials had not been invented yet when Barret was living.
She would have been using bandages or strips of cloth,
and giving the materials that were available at the time,
(11:53):
they wouldn't have been very stretchy or giving at all.
This would have made this whole process a lot more
uncomfortable and difficult, with the bindings also prone to slipping
and shifting during the day. Working as Commerceal's assistant also
required by Ray to do a lot of physical work
in all kinds of weather and climate conditions, from the
tropics to the far southern tip of South America, which
(12:14):
is almost in the Antarctic circle. So even before accounting
for the difficulties of travel and the work itself, Barret's
job was inherently uncomfortable, often unpleasant, and very physically demanding.
Added to that, there were storms that seriously damaged the
ship and periods where they were becalmed and ran out
of food. Illnesses spread among the crew, and there was
(12:37):
intense seasickness at sea, and that often affected both Barret
and commerceal so he was able to spend time out
on deck that a lot of the time will help
with seasickness because you can see the way the boat
is moving. But Barret didn't have that option. She really
had to weather all this in the confines of Commerceons
(12:58):
quarters to try to protect her privacy and her identity.
That would not have been a particularly comfortable place to
try to ride that out. Even though bare meticulously maintained
her disguise and Commerce and scrupulously addressed and referred to
her as a man, Rumors began to spread throughout the
ship that they were carrying a woman in disguise, and
(13:19):
that happened not long after the Atwall set sail from
Rochefort on December fourteenth, seventeen sixty six, and naturally, suspicion
fell on Barret, who, among other things, did not have
facial hair and didn't use the communal toilet facilities for
the crew who shared her rank. Obviously, there are plenty
of men who don't have facial hair, but that was
one of the things that drew suspicion to her. On
(13:41):
March seventeen sixty seven, the Atwall crossed from the northern
to the Southern hemisphere, and the ship's crew had sort
of a ritual baptism and quotation marks for people who
hadn't previously crossed the equator. The details of this hazing
ritual differed depending on the person's rank and for the
officers servant, which was how Barret was classified. It involved
(14:03):
being made to drop into a pool made of a
sail cloth that was being dragged alongside the ship. The
people who were having to do this we're also blackened
with soot and prevented from getting out of the water.
And because of all this water and mess involved, the
men who were being made to undertake this ritual usually
did it partly or completely nude. Because she was a woman,
(14:24):
Barret would have had to do this still dressed. Uh.
Commerceone does describe this ritual in his journal, but he
doesn't make any reference to Barret's participation in it eventually
at twas Captain France Swash and now de la Girode,
was obligated to investigate the rumors about a woman on
board his ship. Apart from it being unlawful for anyone
(14:46):
to bring a woman on board, the rumors and efforts
to figure out whether they were true, we're clearly causing
a disruption. According to his logs, he questioned Barret about
her gender, and she told him that she was a eunuch,
framing it in terms of the men who guarded the
Ottoman Empire, this seems to have at least temporarily stopped
the suspicion, or at least reigned in the sailor's harassment
(15:09):
of her to try to figure out if she was
a woman in disguise. The Ottoman Empire's implementation of slavery
included enslaving Christian men, although this practice was at least
officially ended before this voyage was taking place, but horror
stories about it still circulated in a lot of Europe,
and the idea of being captured and enslaved and then
(15:32):
castrated by the Ottoman Empire was frightening and disturbing. That
probably led to the sailors treating Barret with a little
more kindness than they had before. After this interrogation, the
captain did put a stop to Barret sleeping in Commerson's quarters.
From that point, Barret was always armed, especially when she
slept or went ashore together specimens. Commerceng was frequently ill,
(15:56):
and he had an abscess on his leg that didn't
want to heal. So it was often Barret and not
Commerceon who was doing the botany work on shore, and
she was often doing it without him or anyone else
to protect her. The plants that they collected in the
earlier part of this voyage included the one that they
named bougun Bia spectabilis, or the great Bugambilla, which is
(16:16):
the name, of course for Bougambi, the commander of this expedition.
It's still cultivated a lot as an ornamental plant today.
That's very lovely blossoms, and Barret was likely the person
who gathered it. Others aboard the atual eventually discovered Jean
Barret's sex, but accounts disagree on exactly when this happened
or how, and we're going to get into that after
(16:38):
we have one more little sponsor break. Louis wrote the
account that's most often cited as far as how Jan
Beret was discovered to be a woman. This isn't just
because he was in command of the whole expedition and
(17:00):
was one of the most prominent people on it. It's
also because, unlike the authors of all the other accounts,
he later edited his journals into a book and had
them published. His account of the discovery is noted as
having been written on May nine, seventeen sixty eight, about
six weeks after the expedition left Tahiti, which was the
(17:21):
first time that the French had actually seen this island.
Buga Villa writes that some business called him over to
the atoll and quote, I had an opportunity of verifying
a very singular fact. For some time there was a
report in both ships that the servant of Monsieur de Commesson,
named Barret, was a woman. His shape, voice, beardless chin,
(17:43):
and scrupulous attention of not changing his linen or making
the natural discharges in the presence of anyone besides several
other signs had given rise to and kept up this suspicion.
He went on to describe Barret as an expert botanist
who had worked along side Commercean with quote so much
courage and strength that the naturalist had called him his
(18:05):
beast of burden. He went on to write quote. A
scene which passed at Tahiti changed this suspicion into certainty.
Monsieur de Commercon went on shore to botanize there. Baret
had hardly set his feet on shore with the herbal
under his arm, when the men of Tahiti surrounded him
cried out, it is a woman and wanted to give
her the honor's customary in the aisle. The Chevalier de Bernard,
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who was upon guard on shore, was obliged to come
to her assistance and escort her to the boat. Okay,
the honors customary to the aisle that he is referring to.
We should clarify the French had virtually no experience with
Pacific island cultures at this point, and they really widely
misinterpreted a lot of actions and gestures as being an
(18:51):
offer or an expectation of sex. And this includes ceremonial
gifts of cloth which were given wrapped around a woman
or a girl's body, along with various dances and a
general acceptance of nudity is being socially acceptable. Also, bogambia
Is writing about Tahiti and Tahitians in his journal really
spread a highly romanticized idea of the island and reinforced
(19:15):
the idea of the quote noble savage that was being
spread at the time by romantic writers like Jean Jacques Rousseaux.
According to Bougaville, the discovery changed the tone of Baret's
relationship to the rest of the crew quote. After that period,
it was difficult to prevent the sailors from alarming her modesty.
When I came on board the Atoi Barret with her
(19:35):
face based in tears, owned to me that she was
a woman. She said that she had deceived her master
at Rochefort by offering to serve him in men's clothes
at the very moment when he was embarking that she
had already before served a geneva gentleman at Paris in
quality of a valet. That being born in Burgundy and
become an orphan, the loss of a lawsuit had brought
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her to a distress situation and inspired her with the
resolution to disguise her sex that she well knew when
she embarked that we were going round the world and
that such a voyage had raised her curiosity. Although Boa
had grounds to be angry with both Commercial and Barret
because they had been deceiving everyone on board and her
presence on the ship was unlawful, he finishes his account
(20:22):
of what happened in a way that's relatively respectaful, at
least for part of it. After alluding to this trip
around the world, he wrote, quote, she will be the
first woman that ever made it, and I must do
her the justice to affirm that she has always behaved
on board with the most scrupulous modesty. And then it
gets into the parts that's maybe less respectful. Quote she
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is neither ugly nor handsome, and is no more than
twenty six or twenty seven years of age. It must
be owned that if the two ships had been wrecked
on any desert isle in the ocean, Barret's bait would
have been a very singular one. Another account also connects
the discovery of her sex to Tahiti, or at least
to a Tahitian person. A man named Ahu Turu, who
(21:05):
was a chieftain's brother, learned French while the expedition was
in Tahiti and asked to be taken to France. When
they departed, he described Barret as mahou, which is a
term used in several Pacific island cultures to signify a
third gender. After colonization by European powers, in many places,
that term took on a disparaging connotation connected to cross dressing,
(21:27):
and that being a pejorative term. A Hutaru died of
smallpox before the voyage got back to France, however, but
most of the other accounts placed this discovery of Jehan
sex later and July of seventeen sixty eight on the
island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, not in
May in Tahiti. The ship's log for July eighteenth, seventeen
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sixty eight reads quote the physician Monsieur Commercon's domestic was
discovered to be a girl who until now passed as
a boy. Ships surgeon Flais Vives wrote about several moments
in Baret's time on board. In his journals, he wrote
of rumors about a woman in disguise, and then the
captain's putting a stop to Barets sleeping in commercial's cabin.
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He writes as though he was present when the captain
interrogated Bahret, and that she said she was a eunuch.
This account of the discovery includes a reference to a
body song about a woman named Geniton who was accosted
by foreman in a field, suggesting that some of the
crew may have physically assaulted her to figure out her sex. Yeah,
most of his writing about her comes off as pretty gross.
(22:32):
The Prince of Nassaucigen, who was on board as a
paying passenger, also alluded to the discovery of Barret's sex
and said quote, I want to give her all the
credit for her bravery, a far cry from the gentle
pastimes afforded her sex. She dared confront the stress, the dangers,
and everything that happened that one could realistically expect on
(22:54):
such a voyage. Her adventure should, I think, be included
in a history of famous women. All together. These other
accounts suggest that Jeanne Barret was discovered to be a
woman almost a month after bougun Via reported in his book.
It's not clear whether he fiddled with the timeline to
take suspicion off of himself in some way, or if
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this was just a matter of where it seemed to
fit while the journal was being edited. Regardless, though afterward,
Barret continued dressing in masculine attire. That was what she
had with her, but she stopped binding her chest after
her identity was known. For his part, commercong claimed that
he was totally surprised with this entire revelation, writing that
(23:35):
Beret was quote a courageous young woman who, taking the
clothing and temperament of a man and the curiosity and
audacity to circumnavigate the world, accompanied us without us knowing it.
I think he might have been covering his own tail there.
He really it is, I mean just bordering all on
impossible that he would not have recognized her, and this
(23:57):
whole thing really did play out. Is just him hiring
a random person at the dock like that? Just it's
so far fetched, and he just seems to have kept
up with this. Wow that turned out to be a woman.
I didn't have any idea. Again, checklist reasonable deniability, uh.
Bougaville's expedition left New Ireland on July eight. By December,
(24:20):
they had traveled across the Indian Ocean toward the eastern
coast of Africa. On December twelve, the ships left a
small island now known as Mauritius, which was then a
French colony known as e Defals. They left without Beret
or Commerceal on board. Commerceal had been released from the expedition.
The ship's astronomer left at that time as well. On Mauritius,
(24:41):
Commerceal Embrey continued to live together and pursue their botanical work.
This included making an expedition to the island of Madagascar
and documenting various things on Mauritius. The island's governor was
another botanist, a man named Pierre Plov, who had become
friends with them, and it's pretty likely that Bogumba thought
(25:02):
that it was best that they both be off the ship,
and that a French colony with a friendly governor who
was also a botanist made Mauritius the best situation they
could probably find to accomplish getting them off the ship.
Cover Song and Barre lived together on Mauritius for about
five years. At first, they lived with Poava at the
governor's residence, but when he was recalled to France they
(25:23):
had to find their own lodgings. Commerceon had been chronically
ill for much of their time together, and his condition
worsened in the early seventeen seventies. He died in seventeen
seventy three, leaving Barret without protection or support. So Barret
once again found work, first working out a tavern and
then running one. On May seventeen, seventeen seventy four, she
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married a non commissioned officer named Jean du Barnand, and
by that point she'd been on Mauritius for seven years.
It's not clear exactly when Barret returned to France, but
when she did, that last leg of the journey made
her the first woman known to have navigated the globe.
Boo Gambia intervened on her behalf after she got back
(26:05):
to France to make sure she wouldn't be punished for
her time aboard ship, and a point in her favor
in his doing this was that he didn't think that
her example would inspire other women to do something similar.
He thought she'd just be the only woman ever to
circumnavigate the globe, and that quote her example is not
likely to be contagious. This line of logic really reminds
(26:26):
me of the way that people talked about Srijuana and
is Dela Cruz and how her becoming a nun was
going to keep her from inspiring other women to be
similarly iconoclastic in their behavior. Instead, the opposite wound up,
happening to being punished. The French Ministry of Marine recognized
her work with the expedition and awarded her a pension
(26:46):
of two livres per year, and then she also secured
the money that Commerson had left her in his will,
although by that point his death was long enough in
the past that she didn't live in his house for
a year. Not much as known about Jean Barret's last
year's She did not get to do the cataloging of
the collection that Commisson had hoped she would. Everything that
they had collected on bougun VI's expedition and afterward was
(27:09):
either in storage or impounded after connissons death. However, since
the unorganized collection was not well known or associated with
a prominent member of the nobility, it made it through
the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Today, at
least six thousand specimens survive in museum collections, including the
French National Museum of Natural History, part of which is
(27:31):
on the site of the former Royal Gardens Yeah, a
lot of that stuff still has its original handwritten labeling
that was probably written by her. Jean Barret died in Saintavier, France,
on August seven, and left her remaining property to Commerceans heirs.
She was sixty seven. We know so little about Commisson's
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feelings towards her. He named a plant after her during
the expedition, calling it Barettia bonafidia, although it turned out
to be a species that had already been discovered and named,
and he wrote of her very fondly. Here's a sample,
cited in a biography published in three quote. Armed with
a bow like Diana, armed with intelligence and seriousness, like Minerva,
(28:13):
she eluded the snare of animals and men, not without
many times, risking her life and her honor. He also
praised her for doing all of this risky and difficult
work without complaint. He did also call her his beast
of burden, but he did that while trying to maintain
this ruse that she was a man, and that really
doesn't seem like a weird way for a man to
(28:35):
talk about his male assistant at the time. Although the
plant that Commercon named after her didn't stick, Barre did
have a species permanently named for her in twelve. That
was Solanum verita, which is part of a large and
diverse plant genus that also includes the night shades. This
particular species was selected to bear her name because of
(28:56):
its leaves, which are really variable in their shape and size.
This is also true of the species that Commercon had
originally named after her, because he thought this very ability
really reflected her life and her character, and like the
fact that she had disguised herself as a man for
so long and taken on so many jobs that were
really unexpected for women at the time. Uh, my two
(29:18):
cents are are that that is such a thoughtful way
to look at the selection of her plant species that
he wanted to be named for her, that it does
suggest a very genuine affection between the two of them. Yeah,
her relationship with him definitely started as his hiring her
to do work, but a lot of their life together
they really seem to live basically as common law spouses,
(29:42):
not so much as employer and employee, especially once they
were off the expedition and she was no longer officially
on his payroll, but they were continuing to live together
essentially as a couple. I feel like her story is
pretty complicated. There's it's clearly that she went through so
much difficulty and and possibly even violence while on that expedition. Um,
(30:03):
but also the fact that she was from really the
poorest class of people where she was living, and a woman,
and was able to go on this round the world
voyage which was just a whole like universe away from
the possibilities that were open to people in that same situation.
It's really incredible to me. She sounds kind of spectacular.
(30:26):
That's the person I would use the time machine to
go back and talk to. Ye. Do you have a
little bit of listener mail for us? I knew it's
from Alyssa and it's titled Hove to Dar Rebel, Latina activist, teacher,
and Alyssa writes, I saw a small video on Dar
which I've left linked in the bottom, and was greatly
intrigued by her because she's from my hometown. I looked
(30:49):
her up, but I feel like my research on her
would not do her memory justice. I love hearing your
pieces on strong women and their quote unnatural ways for
their time. I hope you all can help bring Hove
to a dark to life, not just for me, but
because she's just a kick ass Latina woman that deserves
her name to be rung. Your podcast have gotten me
through workouts, long trips, and workshifts, speaking of which, I've
(31:12):
been caught a handful of times by customers while listening
to your podcast. My favorite of these times being while
listening to Marie Lawrence song. I believe the line was
about her fiance and all the customer heard was erotic novels,
and then I paused it and then there is like
the laughing emo. G Thank you again for your work
and dedication to the show. I hope hopefy to makes
(31:34):
it on the list soon. Best wishes, Alyssa. Thank you
so much Alyssa for this email. I don't know if
Hovita will make it onto the show because a quick
search found that the information available on her is a
little sin. That doesn't mean no, it means it might
just take a while to gather enough resources or maybe
a six impossible episodes entry at some point. I think
(31:56):
will be due for one of those before the end
of the years. So thank you again Melissa for sending this.
I love that story about being overheard by a customer
and being like, well, that was just totally the wrong
time for maybe a customer to walk in on this podcast.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast or history podcast at how stuff
(32:19):
Works dot com and then we're all over social media
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(32:44):
Class is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts, for my heart Radio, visit the i
heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly
Fry And today's episode is a sponsored one. It's sponsored
by the All New Explorer. They asked us to do
(00:23):
something that was related in some way to exploration and
then left it totally up to us how did we
want to interpret that? So of course we had a
big pile of ideas at the ready that fit in
some way for that theme, and we finally decided to
talk about Jan Boret, who was the first woman known
to circumnavigate the globe. But her experience was not just
(00:43):
about the travel like a lot of the women travelers
that we have talked about, we're traveling to explore, uh,
just mostly because they had disposable income and you know,
had the means and the money to to do that
kind of thing, and sometimes to do other work alongside
all the travel. But like the travel was a major
piece of it. She was working, and the work she
(01:04):
was doing was taking her to places that were totally
unexpected for somebody of her gender and her economic class
in the eighteenth century. Jean Barret was born on July
seventeen forty to Jean Barret and Jeanne Puscha. They lived
in La Camel, France, which is roughly two hundred miles
that's about three hundred twenty kilometers southeast of Paris. This
(01:25):
is a rural, agricultural area, and Jeanne's father worked as
a day laborer. He did not own any land or
always have access to steady work, so the Beret family
and others who were similarly situated were some of the
poorest people in that part of Europe. We really know
almost nothing about her upbringing or her early life, but
she might have been trained as an herb woman, so
(01:48):
somebody who knew how to grow and forage and prepare
medicinal herbs. This is something that she would have learned
from other women based on knowledge that was mostly passed
down orally. We do know that when she was in
her early twenties, Barret started working for a man named
Philibert Commerson, who was about twelve years older than she was.
He was from an affluent family and was formally educated
(02:09):
in both medicine and botany. He much preferred botany, though,
and he never established a medical practice. Yeah, and the
grand scheme of like social and economic circumstances, they were
nearly opposite. Instead of going into that medical practice, Commerceon
established a botanical garden in Chateagnon led Dome. In the
(02:29):
late seventeen fifties, he visited Voltaire and one of his
colleagues was Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus, who was the person
who helped establish that system of binomial nomenclature that is
still used to classify organisms today, although that system, of
course has evolved a lot since then. Linnaeus secured a
commission from the Queen of Sweden for Commerceon to catalog
(02:51):
Mediterranean fish. So in addition to his work as a botanist,
he was also an ichthyologist. So if Barret was already
rained as an herb woman, it would have made a
lot of sense for Commerson to hire her. There is
a twenty three page table of medicinal plants arranged in
order of their virtues and according to the healing indications
(03:12):
that is among Commerceonce papers, which biographer Glenn's Ridley suggests
was actually Barret's work. If that is correct, and if
the knowledge contained in that notebook was something that Barret
had already learned before being hired. She would have been
a very clear help to Commerceon's botany work from day one,
but it appears that at least at first, commerce On
(03:32):
hired Beret not as a botany assistant, but as as
a domestic servant, and that would have been more stable
and financially lucrative than what the family had been experiencing
as day laborers. We don't know exactly when she started
working for him, her formal employment sort of in seventeen
sixty four, but she seems to have also been working
with him in some capacity before that. It's possible that
(03:55):
she started working there just after the death of Commerceon's
wife at the age of party four. That happened shortly
after she gave birth to their child, and it's possible
that part of Bret's role working for him was to
help care for this newborn. Ultimately, though, the baby was
sent to live with an uncle, and at some point
Beret and Commerceen's relationship became more personal rather than employer
(04:18):
and employee. In seventeen sixty four, Bret became pregnant. Unmarried
women were legally required to register their pregnancies, including naming
the baby's father. Beret did register her pregnancy on August twenty,
seventeen sixty four, but she traveled to another town to
do it, and she took two men with her as
(04:38):
character witnesses. They maintained that she had been assaulted by
an unknown man and that that assault had resulted in
her pregnancy. This baby was almost certainly Commerceons, with the
character witnesses being a part of an effort to cover
up what would have been something truly scandalous if people
had actually known the facts of the situation. Barre and
(04:59):
commerceon to Paris together in September of seventeen sixty four.
She was given a salary of a hundred livres a year.
They lived near the Jardin le Loois or the Royal Gardens,
which is today known as the Jardin des plant In
January of seventeen sixty five, Barrets surrendered her baby, named
Jean Pierre, to a home for foundling children. Jean Pierre
(05:22):
was placed with the foster family, although he died a
couple of years later. The registry of Barret's pregnancy, Jean
Pierre's birth, and his fostering and death are all documented
in the historical record, but berets and commercials, thoughts and
feelings on these events really are not part of any
of those documents. Within a few months of surrendering, Jean
Pierre Barret and Commerceens were preparing for a voyage around
(05:46):
the world. This expedition of exploration and scientific discovery had
been authorized by King Louis the fifteenth, and it was
meant as both an exploratory voyage and a scientific endeavor.
Admiral Louis Antoine Comte Bougambille, who had served in the
Seven Years War, was in command of three hundred thirty
(06:07):
men who were divided between two vessels, the Budeus, and
in addition to being in command of the expedition as
a whole, Boogambille was in command of the Boudous, and
France was Chanard de la Giorde was in command of
the Three scientists had been recruited to participate in this expedition, Commarcon,
(06:28):
who was acting as royal botanist and naturalist, astronomer Pierre
Antoine Veron, and cartographer char Routier de Ville. Among his
other duties. Commercon was one of the people helping to
plan the expedition's route. Commercant was given a budget to
hire an assistant naturalist to take on this voyage to
help him collect and catalog specimens and to illustrate what
(06:51):
they found, but he could not take jam Barre, at
least not legally. It had been illegal for women to
be on French naval ships for anything other than a
brief visit, since nine officers who broke this rule could
be suspended for a month and sailors who broke it
could be sentenced to fifteen days in chains. There is
(07:13):
a lot that we don't know about the dynamics between
Commercion and Barret. There were obvious and meaningful disparities between
the two of them, especially when it came to power
and wealth, stemming from both their relative social class and
their genders, and as well as him being her employer.
But at the same time, what happens next suggests that
(07:34):
Barret was in this relationship willingly, and we're gonna get
into that after we first pause for a little sponsor break.
As they were preparing for their expedition around the world,
Philibert commercial wrote out a will and that bequeathed his
(07:55):
actual property to his son, but it also made it
clear that all of the women, men's clothes, and similar
possessions in his home belonged to his housekeeper, Jambret, to
whom he left the household, furnishings and linen's along with
six livres. The will also gave her the right to
live in his home for a year after the date
(08:16):
of his death, during which time she would organize his
specimens and manuscripts and then send them onto the Royal collection.
The will makes it sound as though jean Barret was
staying behind while he was going on this expedition, and
it also noted that she was sometimes known as Jean
de Bonnefoy. Barret was not staying behind, though. Instead commerceam
(08:38):
maintained that he had not been able to find a
workable assistant to go with him on this voyage in
spite of all of his efforts to do so. Then
Jeanne Barret, dressed in men's clothing and using the name Bonafoy,
arrived at the port of Rochefort, maintaining that she was
looking for work. Commerson hired the disguised beret on the spot,
(08:59):
and from that going on for much of the expedition,
he consistently referred to her as male. Based on everything
we know about the situation, this was a disguise and
not reflection of her gender, so we will keep referring
to her as a woman. Uh. This whole ruse seems
like kind of a stretch to me. Um the idea
that he would have just hired a random person on
(09:21):
the spot, having failed to find somebody that met actual
criteria for a botanists assistant on this voyage, But it
seems like everyone thought that was it made sense. I
guess that he hired an apparently random person at the dock.
I feel like this is one of those things where
it's like the excuse checklist of like, look, you all
(09:42):
know who this is, and I know who this is,
and she knows you all know who this is, but
we have, um, you know, we've checked all the boxes
for all you know, you can say you thought it
was a dude the whole time. Yeah, this is um.
This is also really to me the moment that if
if she had wanted to get out of this situation,
it would have been easy enough to not show up,
(10:04):
which definitely would have been a reduction in the in
the opportunities that were available to her. She probably would
have had to go back home and and try to
find some kind of other employment. But this this would
have been an easier moment for her to kind of
slip away if she did not actually want to go
on this voyage. So the Atoll and the Budeau's planned
(10:25):
to cross the Atlantic separately, traveling southwest across the Atlantic
Ocean to rendezvous at Rio in June of seventeen sixty seven.
From there, they would sail south along the coast of
South America and through the Strait of Magellan. Then they
would follow the western coast of South America before turning
west across the Southern Pacific. Then to return to Europe,
(10:47):
they would travel through the East Indies and around the
Horn of Africa, then back north, obviously back to Europe,
and they would make stops all along the way, gathering specimens,
making maps, recording of the people in places they saw.
They would also claim land where they could, and in
one case they would give it up. One stop on
the voyage involved surrendering the Falkland Islands to Spain. Commercant
(11:11):
and Barret were to sail aboard the Atoil when they embarked.
Commercon had so much equipment with him that he was
given the captain's stateroom as his quarters. The captain's stateroom
had its own private baths, which would have made it
easier for Barret to conceal her sex while on board.
The idea of easy is really relative here, though for
(11:32):
almost two years Barret maintained a disguise that required her
to bind her breasts. Today's chest binders are usually made
with synthetic elastic fibers, which have some stretch, but these
materials had not been invented yet when Barret was living.
She would have been using bandages or strips of cloth,
and giving the materials that were available at the time,
(11:53):
they wouldn't have been very stretchy or giving at all.
This would have made this whole process a lot more
uncomfortable and difficult, with the bindings also prone to slipping
and shifting during the day. Working as Commerceal's assistant also
required by Ray to do a lot of physical work
in all kinds of weather and climate conditions, from the
tropics to the far southern tip of South America, which
(12:14):
is almost in the Antarctic circle. So even before accounting
for the difficulties of travel and the work itself, Barret's
job was inherently uncomfortable, often unpleasant, and very physically demanding.
Added to that, there were storms that seriously damaged the
ship and periods where they were becalmed and ran out
of food. Illnesses spread among the crew, and there was
(12:37):
intense seasickness at sea, and that often affected both Barret
and commerceal so he was able to spend time out
on deck that a lot of the time will help
with seasickness because you can see the way the boat
is moving. But Barret didn't have that option. She really
had to weather all this in the confines of Commerceons
(12:58):
quarters to try to protect her privacy and her identity.
That would not have been a particularly comfortable place to
try to ride that out. Even though bare meticulously maintained
her disguise and Commerce and scrupulously addressed and referred to
her as a man, Rumors began to spread throughout the
ship that they were carrying a woman in disguise, and
(13:19):
that happened not long after the Atwall set sail from
Rochefort on December fourteenth, seventeen sixty six, and naturally, suspicion
fell on Barret, who, among other things, did not have
facial hair and didn't use the communal toilet facilities for
the crew who shared her rank. Obviously, there are plenty
of men who don't have facial hair, but that was
one of the things that drew suspicion to her. On
(13:41):
March seventeen sixty seven, the Atwall crossed from the northern
to the Southern hemisphere, and the ship's crew had sort
of a ritual baptism and quotation marks for people who
hadn't previously crossed the equator. The details of this hazing
ritual differed depending on the person's rank and for the
officers servant, which was how Barret was classified. It involved
(14:03):
being made to drop into a pool made of a
sail cloth that was being dragged alongside the ship. The
people who were having to do this we're also blackened
with soot and prevented from getting out of the water.
And because of all this water and mess involved, the
men who were being made to undertake this ritual usually
did it partly or completely nude. Because she was a woman,
(14:24):
Barret would have had to do this still dressed. Uh.
Commerceone does describe this ritual in his journal, but he
doesn't make any reference to Barret's participation in it eventually
at twas Captain France Swash and now de la Girode,
was obligated to investigate the rumors about a woman on
board his ship. Apart from it being unlawful for anyone
(14:46):
to bring a woman on board, the rumors and efforts
to figure out whether they were true, we're clearly causing
a disruption. According to his logs, he questioned Barret about
her gender, and she told him that she was a eunuch,
framing it in terms of the men who guarded the
Ottoman Empire, this seems to have at least temporarily stopped
the suspicion, or at least reigned in the sailor's harassment
(15:09):
of her to try to figure out if she was
a woman in disguise. The Ottoman Empire's implementation of slavery
included enslaving Christian men, although this practice was at least
officially ended before this voyage was taking place, but horror
stories about it still circulated in a lot of Europe,
and the idea of being captured and enslaved and then
(15:32):
castrated by the Ottoman Empire was frightening and disturbing. That
probably led to the sailors treating Barret with a little
more kindness than they had before. After this interrogation, the
captain did put a stop to Barret sleeping in Commerson's quarters.
From that point, Barret was always armed, especially when she
slept or went ashore together specimens. Commerceng was frequently ill,
(15:56):
and he had an abscess on his leg that didn't
want to heal. So it was often Barret and not
Commerceon who was doing the botany work on shore, and
she was often doing it without him or anyone else
to protect her. The plants that they collected in the
earlier part of this voyage included the one that they
named bougun Bia spectabilis, or the great Bugambilla, which is
(16:16):
the name, of course for Bougambi, the commander of this expedition.
It's still cultivated a lot as an ornamental plant today.
That's very lovely blossoms, and Barret was likely the person
who gathered it. Others aboard the atual eventually discovered Jean
Barret's sex, but accounts disagree on exactly when this happened
or how, and we're going to get into that after
(16:38):
we have one more little sponsor break. Louis wrote the
account that's most often cited as far as how Jan
Beret was discovered to be a woman. This isn't just
because he was in command of the whole expedition and
(17:00):
was one of the most prominent people on it. It's
also because, unlike the authors of all the other accounts,
he later edited his journals into a book and had
them published. His account of the discovery is noted as
having been written on May nine, seventeen sixty eight, about
six weeks after the expedition left Tahiti, which was the
(17:21):
first time that the French had actually seen this island.
Buga Villa writes that some business called him over to
the atoll and quote, I had an opportunity of verifying
a very singular fact. For some time there was a
report in both ships that the servant of Monsieur de Commesson,
named Barret, was a woman. His shape, voice, beardless chin,
(17:43):
and scrupulous attention of not changing his linen or making
the natural discharges in the presence of anyone besides several
other signs had given rise to and kept up this suspicion.
He went on to describe Barret as an expert botanist
who had worked along side Commercean with quote so much
courage and strength that the naturalist had called him his
(18:05):
beast of burden. He went on to write quote. A
scene which passed at Tahiti changed this suspicion into certainty.
Monsieur de Commercon went on shore to botanize there. Baret
had hardly set his feet on shore with the herbal
under his arm, when the men of Tahiti surrounded him
cried out, it is a woman and wanted to give
her the honor's customary in the aisle. The Chevalier de Bernard,
(18:29):
who was upon guard on shore, was obliged to come
to her assistance and escort her to the boat. Okay,
the honors customary to the aisle that he is referring to.
We should clarify the French had virtually no experience with
Pacific island cultures at this point, and they really widely
misinterpreted a lot of actions and gestures as being an
(18:51):
offer or an expectation of sex. And this includes ceremonial
gifts of cloth which were given wrapped around a woman
or a girl's body, along with various dances and a
general acceptance of nudity is being socially acceptable. Also, bogambia
Is writing about Tahiti and Tahitians in his journal really
spread a highly romanticized idea of the island and reinforced
(19:15):
the idea of the quote noble savage that was being
spread at the time by romantic writers like Jean Jacques Rousseaux.
According to Bougaville, the discovery changed the tone of Baret's
relationship to the rest of the crew quote. After that period,
it was difficult to prevent the sailors from alarming her modesty.
When I came on board the Atoi Barret with her
(19:35):
face based in tears, owned to me that she was
a woman. She said that she had deceived her master
at Rochefort by offering to serve him in men's clothes
at the very moment when he was embarking that she
had already before served a geneva gentleman at Paris in
quality of a valet. That being born in Burgundy and
become an orphan, the loss of a lawsuit had brought
(19:58):
her to a distress situation and inspired her with the
resolution to disguise her sex that she well knew when
she embarked that we were going round the world and
that such a voyage had raised her curiosity. Although Boa
had grounds to be angry with both Commercial and Barret
because they had been deceiving everyone on board and her
presence on the ship was unlawful, he finishes his account
(20:22):
of what happened in a way that's relatively respectaful, at
least for part of it. After alluding to this trip
around the world, he wrote, quote, she will be the
first woman that ever made it, and I must do
her the justice to affirm that she has always behaved
on board with the most scrupulous modesty. And then it
gets into the parts that's maybe less respectful. Quote she
(20:43):
is neither ugly nor handsome, and is no more than
twenty six or twenty seven years of age. It must
be owned that if the two ships had been wrecked
on any desert isle in the ocean, Barret's bait would
have been a very singular one. Another account also connects
the discovery of her sex to Tahiti, or at least
to a Tahitian person. A man named Ahu Turu, who
(21:05):
was a chieftain's brother, learned French while the expedition was
in Tahiti and asked to be taken to France. When
they departed, he described Barret as mahou, which is a
term used in several Pacific island cultures to signify a
third gender. After colonization by European powers, in many places,
that term took on a disparaging connotation connected to cross dressing,
(21:27):
and that being a pejorative term. A Hutaru died of
smallpox before the voyage got back to France, however, but
most of the other accounts placed this discovery of Jehan
sex later and July of seventeen sixty eight on the
island of New Ireland in Papua New Guinea, not in
May in Tahiti. The ship's log for July eighteenth, seventeen
(21:49):
sixty eight reads quote the physician Monsieur Commercon's domestic was
discovered to be a girl who until now passed as
a boy. Ships surgeon Flais Vives wrote about several moments
in Baret's time on board. In his journals, he wrote
of rumors about a woman in disguise, and then the
captain's putting a stop to Barets sleeping in commercial's cabin.
(22:10):
He writes as though he was present when the captain
interrogated Bahret, and that she said she was a eunuch.
This account of the discovery includes a reference to a
body song about a woman named Geniton who was accosted
by foreman in a field, suggesting that some of the
crew may have physically assaulted her to figure out her sex. Yeah,
most of his writing about her comes off as pretty gross.
(22:32):
The Prince of Nassaucigen, who was on board as a
paying passenger, also alluded to the discovery of Barret's sex
and said quote, I want to give her all the
credit for her bravery, a far cry from the gentle
pastimes afforded her sex. She dared confront the stress, the dangers,
and everything that happened that one could realistically expect on
(22:54):
such a voyage. Her adventure should, I think, be included
in a history of famous women. All together. These other
accounts suggest that Jeanne Barret was discovered to be a
woman almost a month after bougun Via reported in his book.
It's not clear whether he fiddled with the timeline to
take suspicion off of himself in some way, or if
(23:14):
this was just a matter of where it seemed to
fit while the journal was being edited. Regardless, though afterward,
Barret continued dressing in masculine attire. That was what she
had with her, but she stopped binding her chest after
her identity was known. For his part, commercong claimed that
he was totally surprised with this entire revelation, writing that
(23:35):
Beret was quote a courageous young woman who, taking the
clothing and temperament of a man and the curiosity and
audacity to circumnavigate the world, accompanied us without us knowing it.
I think he might have been covering his own tail there.
He really it is, I mean just bordering all on
impossible that he would not have recognized her, and this
(23:57):
whole thing really did play out. Is just him hiring
a random person at the dock like that? Just it's
so far fetched, and he just seems to have kept
up with this. Wow that turned out to be a woman.
I didn't have any idea. Again, checklist reasonable deniability, uh.
Bougaville's expedition left New Ireland on July eight. By December,
(24:20):
they had traveled across the Indian Ocean toward the eastern
coast of Africa. On December twelve, the ships left a
small island now known as Mauritius, which was then a
French colony known as e Defals. They left without Beret
or Commerceal on board. Commerceal had been released from the expedition.
The ship's astronomer left at that time as well. On Mauritius,
(24:41):
Commerceal Embrey continued to live together and pursue their botanical work.
This included making an expedition to the island of Madagascar
and documenting various things on Mauritius. The island's governor was
another botanist, a man named Pierre Plov, who had become
friends with them, and it's pretty likely that Bogumba thought
(25:02):
that it was best that they both be off the ship,
and that a French colony with a friendly governor who
was also a botanist made Mauritius the best situation they
could probably find to accomplish getting them off the ship.
Cover Song and Barre lived together on Mauritius for about
five years. At first, they lived with Poava at the
governor's residence, but when he was recalled to France they
(25:23):
had to find their own lodgings. Commerceon had been chronically
ill for much of their time together, and his condition
worsened in the early seventeen seventies. He died in seventeen
seventy three, leaving Barret without protection or support. So Barret
once again found work, first working out a tavern and
then running one. On May seventeen, seventeen seventy four, she
(25:45):
married a non commissioned officer named Jean du Barnand, and
by that point she'd been on Mauritius for seven years.
It's not clear exactly when Barret returned to France, but
when she did, that last leg of the journey made
her the first woman known to have navigated the globe.
Boo Gambia intervened on her behalf after she got back
(26:05):
to France to make sure she wouldn't be punished for
her time aboard ship, and a point in her favor
in his doing this was that he didn't think that
her example would inspire other women to do something similar.
He thought she'd just be the only woman ever to
circumnavigate the globe, and that quote her example is not
likely to be contagious. This line of logic really reminds
(26:26):
me of the way that people talked about Srijuana and
is Dela Cruz and how her becoming a nun was
going to keep her from inspiring other women to be
similarly iconoclastic in their behavior. Instead, the opposite wound up,
happening to being punished. The French Ministry of Marine recognized
her work with the expedition and awarded her a pension
(26:46):
of two livres per year, and then she also secured
the money that Commerson had left her in his will,
although by that point his death was long enough in
the past that she didn't live in his house for
a year. Not much as known about Jean Barret's last
year's She did not get to do the cataloging of
the collection that Commisson had hoped she would. Everything that
they had collected on bougun VI's expedition and afterward was
(27:09):
either in storage or impounded after connissons death. However, since
the unorganized collection was not well known or associated with
a prominent member of the nobility, it made it through
the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Today, at
least six thousand specimens survive in museum collections, including the
French National Museum of Natural History, part of which is
(27:31):
on the site of the former Royal Gardens Yeah, a
lot of that stuff still has its original handwritten labeling
that was probably written by her. Jean Barret died in Saintavier, France,
on August seven, and left her remaining property to Commerceans heirs.
She was sixty seven. We know so little about Commisson's
(27:51):
feelings towards her. He named a plant after her during
the expedition, calling it Barettia bonafidia, although it turned out
to be a species that had already been discovered and named,
and he wrote of her very fondly. Here's a sample,
cited in a biography published in three quote. Armed with
a bow like Diana, armed with intelligence and seriousness, like Minerva,
(28:13):
she eluded the snare of animals and men, not without
many times, risking her life and her honor. He also
praised her for doing all of this risky and difficult
work without complaint. He did also call her his beast
of burden, but he did that while trying to maintain
this ruse that she was a man, and that really
doesn't seem like a weird way for a man to
(28:35):
talk about his male assistant at the time. Although the
plant that Commercon named after her didn't stick, Barre did
have a species permanently named for her in twelve. That
was Solanum verita, which is part of a large and
diverse plant genus that also includes the night shades. This
particular species was selected to bear her name because of
(28:56):
its leaves, which are really variable in their shape and size.
This is also true of the species that Commercon had
originally named after her, because he thought this very ability
really reflected her life and her character, and like the
fact that she had disguised herself as a man for
so long and taken on so many jobs that were
really unexpected for women at the time. Uh, my two
(29:18):
cents are are that that is such a thoughtful way
to look at the selection of her plant species that
he wanted to be named for her, that it does
suggest a very genuine affection between the two of them. Yeah,
her relationship with him definitely started as his hiring her
to do work, but a lot of their life together
they really seem to live basically as common law spouses,
(29:42):
not so much as employer and employee, especially once they
were off the expedition and she was no longer officially
on his payroll, but they were continuing to live together
essentially as a couple. I feel like her story is
pretty complicated. There's it's clearly that she went through so
much difficulty and and possibly even violence while on that expedition. Um,
(30:03):
but also the fact that she was from really the
poorest class of people where she was living, and a woman,
and was able to go on this round the world
voyage which was just a whole like universe away from
the possibilities that were open to people in that same situation.
It's really incredible to me. She sounds kind of spectacular.
(30:26):
That's the person I would use the time machine to
go back and talk to. Ye. Do you have a
little bit of listener mail for us? I knew it's
from Alyssa and it's titled Hove to Dar Rebel, Latina activist, teacher,
and Alyssa writes, I saw a small video on Dar
which I've left linked in the bottom, and was greatly
intrigued by her because she's from my hometown. I looked
(30:49):
her up, but I feel like my research on her
would not do her memory justice. I love hearing your
pieces on strong women and their quote unnatural ways for
their time. I hope you all can help bring Hove
to a dark to life, not just for me, but
because she's just a kick ass Latina woman that deserves
her name to be rung. Your podcast have gotten me
through workouts, long trips, and workshifts, speaking of which, I've
(31:12):
been caught a handful of times by customers while listening
to your podcast. My favorite of these times being while
listening to Marie Lawrence song. I believe the line was
about her fiance and all the customer heard was erotic novels,
and then I paused it and then there is like
the laughing emo. G Thank you again for your work
and dedication to the show. I hope hopefy to makes
(31:34):
it on the list soon. Best wishes, Alyssa. Thank you
so much Alyssa for this email. I don't know if
Hovita will make it onto the show because a quick
search found that the information available on her is a
little sin. That doesn't mean no, it means it might
just take a while to gather enough resources or maybe
a six impossible episodes entry at some point. I think
(31:56):
will be due for one of those before the end
of the years. So thank you again Melissa for sending this.
I love that story about being overheard by a customer
and being like, well, that was just totally the wrong
time for maybe a customer to walk in on this podcast.
If you would like to write to us about this
or any other podcast or history podcast at how stuff
(32:19):
Works dot com and then we're all over social media
at missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram,
and Twitter. You can also come to our website, which
is missed in History dot com and find the episodes
of our show. And you can subscribe to our show
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else to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History
(32:44):
Class is a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.
For more podcasts, for my heart Radio, visit the i
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