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The podcast discusses the history of gossiping and its underlying sexism. It explains how the definition of gossip has changed over time and how it predominantly targets women. The host also talks about the misconceptions of gossiping, such as the belief that it is always negative, when in reality it can provide useful information and help people make decisions. The podcast then delves into the significance of gossip in history, particularly during the witchcraft trials and the Regency era. It highlights how gossip played a major role in accusations and prosecutions, leading to the persecution of many women. The host emphasizes the importance of gossip in historical sources and how it can shape our understanding of the past. Hello, guys, and welcome to It's All in the Execution. I'm your host, Rachel Panya, and we'll be discussing today the history of gossiping and the underlying sexism that occurs within gossip. I wanted to start off by defining what gossip is and how gossip has changed in terms of its definition over the centuries. So originally, it was used in the early 1300s and was mainly in relation to godparents and baptisms. It's completely changed in 1580, where we see the term gossip first used as a modern definition, which we use today. A person, mostly a woman, a light, trifling character, especially one who delights in idle talk and newsmonger attachment. From this instance, we clearly see gossip targets women, terminology around gossip targets women, and it's pretty instantaneous that gossip usually is related to a woman. One of the first instances of the term gossip being used was by a man called Thomas Decker, and he stated, I wonder what blind gossip this makes that is so prodigal. And he wrote this in The Peasant Comedy of Old Fortuanas, which is really interesting that instantaneously, one of the first recordings of this word is about a woman. Constantly, constantly about a woman. And I think this is really, really interesting, and it seems to be quite a common theme throughout the rest of this, as we go on to explore the historiography of being a gossip, what a gossip means, the damages of gossip, that women really seem to be in the centre of all of this. We then go on to see this get redefined again in 1811, but it's still quite similar, it's just a little bit more gender neutral. The conversation of such a person, idle talk, trifling or groundless rumour, tittle tattle, also in a more favourable sense, easy unrestrained talk or writing, especially about persons or social incidents. This starts to take form in the type of definition that we use for gossiping now. It's more so discussing the act of gossiping, and highlighting the importance of it being a social event. Both of these definitions are still basically pretty much used today. The initial targeting of women is still very, very evident within defining gossip, and I think still remains extremely prevalent when we're looking at the historiography and also what we use now, and especially within our modern media. I kind of wanted to start off, kind of moving on from this, talking about the different types of misconceptions of gossiping. And I did a bit of research, and it was really interesting. So, first and foremost, I'd like for you to ask yourself the question of, how many minutes do you think you spend a day gossiping? When I read this statistic, I was so shocked, because I was like, I 100%, 100% spend so much more time than this. I was like, I must do. And then I thought about it more, and I was like, do you know what? I actually don't think I do. The average person spends 52 minutes per day gossiping. And trust me, I still think that's a lot. That's a long period of our time. It really surprised me that it wasn't more. And I genuinely thought that maybe it's just me, maybe being a uni student gets to me, but I was really, really surprised at this. I assumed that all gossip was negative, but actually a lot of research shows that most gossip is genuinely neutral. It's more so believed that it's a lot worse for us than it actually is. Maranesco stated, First, gossip contains information about others' past behaviours, skills, and abilities. And this can help receivers understand who they should trust and partner with. Specifically, negative gossip may warn receivers against being exploited or harmed by uncooperative or selfish individuals. And positive gossip may help receivers choose to work with others known for being hardworking, capable, or cooperative. Now, obviously, this is very tailored to our workplace, but I think it's most certainly applicable for our day-to-day lives and how we pick our friends and how we go about our social situations. And it's all sort of based off that kind of social learning theory. For example, say you're in a workplace and Brian, imaginary Brian, Brian took too much time off on sick pay. And your colleague comes up to you and goes, Have you heard about Brian? He's been taking too much time off work. They're going to call him in. You would instantaneously learn from that, OK, four weeks of sick pay is too much sick pay. And I feel like this demonization of gossip has been right throughout our history. And this constant misconception that it's negative, I feel like it's just such a designated point to put women down. And this is definitely demonstrated by the historical cases that I'm going to go into. Probably more on a bit of an extreme level than kind of what we see now, but definitely still relevant. In this next section, we're going to be talking about the historiographical analysis of gossiping and how significant it was to society. But before we get into the two case studies that I have decided on, which is witchcraft and the Regency-era gossip sheets that then kind of turned to the tabloids that we see now, I wanted to start off by this quotation from Julia Brine. History owes most of what Little Truth It contains to the gossip of diarists and annotators, as well as to the intimate confinances of friendly correspondence. And notwithstanding the necessary trifling details of these private effusions and the banalities with which they often abound, the sidelights of such records have become invaluable to the grouping students of past times and of dependent humanity, nor can we process too much such chronicles. Now, I feel like this quotation does such a fantastic job at actually exemplifying why gossip is so significant to historians. Not only is it the foundation for so many sources, it also provides so much information and elucidates this idea of what is historical truth. And it completely shows this level of public history in which is adapted to some level of bias from gossip. And all of these sources provide such a good display of the significance of this. It's one of the biggest influences in historic sources. Now, moving on, I wanted to discuss our first era where gossip was extremely influential. And this is the era of witchcraft and prosecution. So in this period of medieval Europe, we see this creation of essentially how gossip, in essence, leads to all of these women being accused of witchcraft. Now, I've got two examples. I've got the case of Agatha Penkanti Tawas, who was accused of practicing magic in January 1675. And then I've got the case of Amy Denny and Rose Carlander. I'm going to focus on Amy Denny in the second part, because Rose Carlander has a very interesting story. But I feel like Amy Denny really exemplifies that level of gossip and rumour that really, really defined women's lives at this period of time. So I'm going to start with Agatha. Agatha was accused of practicing magic by the vicar Gabriel Arctoplanatus, who heard it from Jaco Arenapokia. And he claimed that the rumour was started by Haika Tuamampoka's wife. And so Toivo basically talked about this in their book. And essentially, it is just a big who's who of who is blaming Agatha for being a witch. It is literally the definition of one person heard it from one person who heard it from one person, and then that person went to the court. And that's crazy, because this stood up in court. And I think that's absolutely wild. These people basically just turned around and were like, she's a witch, so she's got to be a witch. And that was taken for face value. This really shows that gossiping was really frowned upon, that gossiping was also the foundation for all of these law cases. And it's bizarre. A lot of these stories, it's men bringing the court cases. But it seems to be a very common theme of a woman is the one that decides that someone's a witch. And this is even further exemplified in Amy Denny's story, which I'll go to in a minute. But Agatha's story is a prime example of how unserious these witch trials were. It exemplifies how stories of witchcraft led to slew prosecution, and how gossip and rumour defined the livelihoods of these women. Agatha was prosecuted, she was blamed, she had to pay 40 makas. But then even though she paid that, fast forward a significant amount of time, she was blamed again. Someone went, hey, she's still a witch. You know, it's a perfect example of the fact that regardless of what you think, you know, gossip still defined these women's lives. It was so important. And then this is even further exemplified by Amy Denny, who was prosecuted and hanged for witchcraft on March 17 of 1662 in Bury St Edmunds. Ironically, this is one of the most famous cases of witchcraft prosecution in the UK, because it actually ended up sparking the Salem Witch Trials. And Amy's name was so important, yet it was recorded wrong by the newspaper. And instead of Amy Denny, it was recorded as Amy Dooney, like D-U-N-Y. And it's like, this woman who was so important, who was hung, and you couldn't even be bothered to spell her name right. It's so insane to me that this was the circumstance. So anyway, she was hung alongside a woman called Rose Callender, who was also accused of witchcraft in Bury St Edmunds. And these, this trial, both these trials were so influential that they resulted in the Salem Witch Trials, because it honestly caused mass hysteria. And I think that's crazy. What I found even crazier was how many people were prosecuted in the Salem Witch Trials. I was like, you know, sex is not a big place. I was like, there can't be a lot of women knocking about there. 141 women were accused of being a witch. Like, surely this could be like your entire population, especially in that time period. How are you procreating? Like, what is going on there? 122 of these people were imprisoned, and 19 were hung, all basically because of Amy Denny and Rose Callender. This sort of, this story kind of supports this idea that a lot of time accusations came about when there was a lot of turmoil in villages, and like, political unease, and basically people wanted scapegoats. People wanted to blame other people for their hardships, which then, that meant that women, especially widowed and unmarried older women, were left vulnerable to these attacks of prosecution. People believed they were a witch. And it got so bad that one of these judges, called Sir Matthew Payle, was notorious for convicting witches. He was so famous for convicting witches that exemplifies that, you know, it became a thing of just targeting different women. But yes, so anyway, back to the court case of Amy Denny. Amy Denny's testimony came from her neighbor, a woman called Dorothy Durant, who essentially left her child, William Durant, with Amy for a day, under the salary of a penny. Penny to look after William. And it's really interesting, Dorothy knew that Amy had this reputation of being a witch, and at this point in time, William was still nursing. And when Dorothy gave Amy William, she was like, you can't nurse my baby. Bear in mind, Amy's well beyond nursing years. She's not lactating anything. Yet when Dorothy picked up William, she was convinced. She was convinced that Amy had nursed him. And she gets William home, and William apparently falls ill. So a few days passes, and the doctor comes. The doctor goes, ah, well, you know what, you need to put your son's blanket up in the corner of the room near a fireplace, and then wrap him in it. And if when you take it off him when he's sleeping, something falls out, your baby's going to be fine. You need to kill whatever falls out the blanket. So Dorothy does this, and essentially what happens is a toad falls out. A toad. And Dorothy grabs the toad and sets on fire. Sticks it in the fireplace. Bam. Problem solved. The next day, Amy Denny's niece apparently knocks on the door and goes, Dorothy, Dorothy, Dorothy, my aunt, all her legs are burnt. You need to come look at this. So Dorothy goes over, goes and checks out the burns. And behold, apparently Amy Denny, covered in burns. And therefore, Amy Denny's a witch. So Dorothy holds up this first testimony in court. She goes there. She's like, this is the reasons why Amy Denny's a witch. And it's all essentially boiled down to the fact that, you know, Dorothy believes Amy nursed her son, which Amy was well beyond her years in doing. And in doing so, Dorothy basically sent Amy to be hung. And although this obviously, there was other testimonies, I feel like this is one of the most prevalent ones of just pure rumour and speculation of this toad. And yeah, it just completely wasn't true. The historiographical significance of these two cases, which are not unique, might I add, people were hung for much less during witch trials. And even, they just died testing being a witch. It clearly shows that, you know, it was a death sentence. It was completely a death sentence. And it was all from the foundation of gossiping. It was terrible, horrendous. And you know what, it's extremely significant that women were so like cruelly targeted for gossiping by gossiping. It's terrible. After looking at the historical significance of witchcraft, we're going to move on to something a little bit more modern. And we're going to start looking at gossip sheets and gossip columns in newspapers. And they're kind of a reflection on tabloids and how we gain our celebrity gossip now. And my first source on this is actually a Vogue article that basically talks about Bridgerton, which is something I really want to discuss because Bridgerton has a fantastic way of showing and dramatising gossip, which I think is very reflective of how gossip was perceived in kind of that Regency England. But at its core, obviously, you're looking at the commercialisation of the destruction of women and the society that demonised them for enjoying near on anything. However, when you look at gossip columns, Bridgerton's representation is actually really reflective of the type of gossip that would happen in that period of time. You'd find it usually on the Morning Post, where a lot of individuals would write in scandal and gossip that happened over the weekend, leaving out little vows or particular names in order to maybe make it more of a game, but also to protect the identity of the actual people. And this is an extreme example of gossiping throughout history. The sheets were able to ruin and bolster individuals' reputations. It demonstrated the important power of gossip within the high society, and how reputation was crucial. Rumour could completely easily destroy this fundamentally. And it affected how we viewed women, and it still does. This is sort of where we get that kind of era of gossip, and gossip is a women's sport, almost, which is just completely incorrect. Everyone gossips. But this is sort of where it kind of comes from, this sort of period. And this gossip proves to be extremely static in how it's viewed and how it's obtained, because of gossip sheets and gossip columns just essentially moved on to tabloids. And my example that I really want to use today is Diana, who, obviously, absolutely exceptional example of tabloid exploitation. She obviously really, really suffered in the lead-up and after her death, to the point that she had more columns wrote about her in the two months after her death than World War II did, that's all, which is really interesting. And this comes from Chauncey's article. And Chauncey basically discusses how tabloids used images of Diana to completely distort and manipulate her into whatever they wanted her to be. So they went from one side of being like, she is with this person, she's with that person, she's wearing a bikini, she's on a yacht, she's doing this, she's doing that, to she was an exceptional mother. And especially when you think that the paparazzi were so vicious to the point that they are obviously held accountable for her death. Billions of people watched that funeral, and billions of people understood that gossip basically was the cause of Diana, was the cause of her death. And then gossip would go on to martyr Princess Diana. And it's a fantastic representation of the difficulties of gossip throughout history, and a perfect example of how it had extreme consequences for individuals and real life. You know, it's really sad. And this kind of static change between gossip columns to tabloids really, really demonstrates that the consumerism of gossip hasn't changed at all. And I think both witchcraft and tabloids gossip columns are extremely, extremely important in understanding the complex nature of gossip and the consequences of it. I want to sort of end this podcast discussing the sexism of gossip. And there's been a lot of research and writing to this. Spacks and Tebbett both did a lot of research into gossip and the gender associated with gossip. And basically both kind of came to that conclusion that the reason gender and gossip went so hand in hand was because a lot of the time, for a woman, gossiping was seen as a pleasurable experience. But for a man, gossip was seen as dangerous. And this is definitely highlighted by Tebbett, who's discussing that lower caste women just relied on gossip, and it was extremely important in their life to be able to understand their husbands and be able to learn from other couples and families. Spacks goes a little bit deeper into why gossip is seen as a woman's axe, and she comes up with this kind of conclusion that these two philosophers, Heidegger and Kierkegaard, believe that gossip disregards real talk and it represents an obstacle in the means of communication. She builds upon this by discussing this Freudian idea that the woman's superego is less capable of impersonal and abstract consideration, and therefore men and women have different ways of dealing with moral judgment. Women cannot remove their feelings from the situation, therefore concluding that gossip emerges from minds that aren't seriously engaged from inferior states of culture. Essentially, in essence, basically saying that women, due to their inferiority, prefer gossip because they can't handle the impersonal nature of serious real talk, like the real talk Heidegger and Kierkegaard exemplify. But, funnily enough, Spacks dismisses this and proceeds to go on to say, This demonstrates that gossip for women stems from men declaring that men find gossip dangerous, but in reality gossip just essentially states human life. It reflects upon human society, and I think that's certainly revealed in gossip columns and exemplified by Bridgerton, which is obviously a demonstration of public history. It's extremely important and extremely interesting. And, you know, Spacks and Tebbutt both make very compelling statements about why women are so villainized in terms of gossip. I think everyone should gossip more is the takeaway from this, because it's just learning, and it's so important for our society. And with that, thank you for listening. I hope you have a great day.