Olive the Lionheart: Lost Love, Imperial Spies, and One Woman's Journey into the Heart of Africa
Brad Ricca
Olive MacLeod (1880-1936)
Source: Library Book sale
My Grandma tells me her last name is pronounce "Mcloud" which sounds so much better than Ma-Klee-od.
This got me thinking about something I read years ago in the Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (I think that's where I got it anyway.) The gist is this: We tend to think that feminism happened in straight line with women progressively gaining more freedom and autonomy. It's more like waves or "two steps forward one back." There was a period in the early 1900s in which some women actually gained entrance into previously male dominated domains and a few of them enjoyed empowerment and a certain degree of liberty and influence that later in post WWII era was redacted. I have two examples below and their timelines are fairly close to Olive's.
Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) - aviator
Margaret Mead - (1901-1978) - anthropologist
Friedan theorized that after World War II, society desired a return to more rigid gender roles and the hyper feminization of women was emphasized. Women who had entered the work force during the war, returned en masse to the home whereupon homemaking, childbearing, and domesticity were idealized and generally promoted.
Olive MacLeod seemed to enjoy her unmarried life in her twenties and into her thirties and this fictionalized biography based on her letters, journals, and writings captures her romantic and adventurous life and spirit.
She was a Scot and her father was a proud clan leader. Having read Goddesses in Every Woman by Jean Shinoda Bolen, I would wager to say that Olive and her older sister Flora had a strong strain of Athena energy that was encouraged by an affectionate and empowering father (who had no sons.) Flora went on to become the clan chieftainess herself eventually.
Olive is portrayed as imaginative, intrepid, and intelligent. She eventually journeys into the heart of Africa with an English couple and a small entourage of servants following the trail of Olive's recently deceased fiancé - an explorer who she had fallen in love with during his sabbatical in England.
The author toggles back and forth between their engagement correspondences and the present journey into Africa and the adventures that unfold throughout the trip.
Olive continued to write letters to her deceased fiancé which is both endearing and sad. It turns out her life has an enemies to lovers trope. The English dude who oversees one of the then "Colonies" of the empire and who seems to be constantly stymying their movements, ends up becoming her husband. (much later after she returns to the UK, writes a book, flirts with becoming admitted to the prestigious Royal Society (did she?) She then becomes Olive "Temple" and they eventually settle in Spain.
Olive has baby lion pets, and climbs mountains guarded by dark ancestral spirits. She faces down stern tribal chieftains and sneaks into the wife's quarters so she can satisfy her curiosity. Everywhere she goes she has to let down her long red hair to be gazed at by locals.
I have to confess, I kept thinking that they would discover that "dead" fiance was actually still alive and they had been misinformed. But sadly that appears not to be the case.
Anyway I found it to be an entertaining read.
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