Petronilla was the first Irish woman burned at the stake, and her persecution for witchcraft was well ahead of the witch-hunting mania that started sweeping Europe in the late 15th century—hence the comment “my persecution was way ahead of its time.” Petronilla is a tough ID before getting to The Dinner Party, but pretty straightforward once there.

Elizabeth R. was celebrated for defeating the Spanish Armada, and also had a complicated relationship with her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth imprisoned and eventually executed.

Gentileschi’s most famous work is Judith Slaying Holofernes. It’s too bad the two of them didn’t share a subway line, because I’m sure they would have loved to chat. Caravaggio also painted the same subject.

A section of Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own imagines what Shakespeare’s equally talented sister Judith would have faced had she existed. Spoiler: nothing good.

Anne Hutchinson was a Puritan who, along with her family, got banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding discussions in her home that were considered heretical.

Ancient and Aboriginal cultures believed the Primordial Goddess to be essentially the life force of the world. Here she is bitter about being written out of the bible and having her work attributed to the Abrahamic God.

Caroline Herschel is the only astronomer in The Dinner Party.

Anna Van Schurman was a polyglot who knew 14+ languages, including French, German, Dutch, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, Persian, and Greek—all used in her dialogue. All translations courtesy of Google Translate—apologies for any errors.

Socrates and Menexenus discuss Aspasia in Plato’s Menexenus (found here). In that text Plato attributes Pericles’s famous Funeral Oration to being written by Aspasia herself.

The Ancient Greeks were pretty obsessed with Amazons. Fun fact: archaeologists think they were based on the Ancient Scythians, an egalitarian nomadic people. Recommended watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYL5CLJ2prA

“Marcella was a Roman noble woman who was canonized, or declared a saint, by the Vatican for her role in founding the Christian monastic system . . . Rather than remarry, as was custom in Roman society, she declared celibacy, devoting her life to God and the study of the Bible. She owned a palace on Aventine Hill . . . ”

It’s maybe a stretch that she would have been able to see the Forum from Aventine Hill, but there were a lot less tall buildings back then, so I’m just going to roll with it.

“Rituals connected to the worship of Ishtar/Inanna include a Sacred Marriage in which a male ruler is identified with Dumuzi. As the practice was recounted only in literature, it is unclear whether it was purely symbolic or an actual reenactment.”

We went the “actual reenactment” route here, because Ishtar herself would know which of the two it was!

There’s only one pharaoh at the Dinner Party, so this has to be Hatshepsut.

Hypatia studied and taught in Alexandria. (The library referenced here is, of course, the Library of Alexandria). She was murdered, and her work later destroyed, during an anti-intellectualism movement within Christianity at the time.

This is a pretty close adaptation of Emily Dickinson’s Because I could not stop for Death.

Natalie Barney held weekly salons which she referred to as her “Fridays.” Gertrude Stein and Isadora Duncan attended. (Incidentally, googling some of these terms together will likely get solvers to the Dinner Party site if they’re not there already).

The Snake Goddess was a figure in the ancient Minoan religion on Crete. To her chagrin, Crete is much better known today for being the home of the Minotaur.

This is a reference to statues including the Venus of Willendorf and Venus of Hohle Fels, one of the oldest known sculptures of the human form.

The allusion to worshipping will narrow this dialogue to the gods includes in the Dinner Party.

Christine de Pisan’s The Book of the City of Ladies imagines a city where women are respected and considered significant (one could imagine this puzzle taking place in such a city). The book unfolds as a dialogue between her and three allegorical Virtues—Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. Then she just wanted to chill but the Virtues showed back up and made her write a sequel. This bears striking similarities to the story of how we’ve found ourselves constructing the Mystery Hunt for the second time in a three year span . . .

Theodora rose up from the bottom of Byzantine society—who considered acting on par with prostitution—to become Empress.

Sojourner Truth was an enslaved person for the first 30 years of her life.

I didn’t set out to make this into a conversation about intersectionality, but then I read the Susan B. Anthony quote, “I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman” [ref] and it had to happen. The white American suffragists were terrible to their black counterparts—for instance, they tried to make black women march in the back of the 1913 suffrage parade (Ida B. Wells refused, because she was awesome). And generally distancing themselves from black women to try to get racist white people on their side.

The two women were both Quakers—hence the references to Meetings.

Mary Wollstonecraft was Mary Shelley’s mother, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein about an eponymous doctor who creates a creature whom most people refer to as Frankenstein. Mary Wollstonecraft herself was remarkable and brilliant, but not in ways that lent themselves to clues as readily.

Just read this: “She was accepted at Geneva Medical College in Geneva, New York where she began her studies in 1847. Despite being snubbed by the local community, referred to by the dean of faculty as an “inconvenience” to male students, and asked not to attend lectures on the male reproductive system, Blackwell persevered. She excelled in all of her studies, from anatomy to material medica, or the study of the origin, preparation, dosage, and administration of drugs. In January 1849, Blackwell graduated first in her class, after which the college closed its doors to women.” WHAT IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE?

“In the Gnostic creation story Sophia, seeing God’s creations, desired to make something of her own. The being she formed was her son, Ialdabaoth, who had the face of a lion and the body of a serpent.”

Kali and Parvati are forms of the same Hindu Goddess.