Great Man Theory

The Great Man Theory is the belief that history is made and structured by the influence of great men who possess a variety of traits, like intelligence and political and military superiority, which makes them natural leaders. Typically, this consists of mostly white, middle to upper class men. This leaves hardly any room for the stories of women and people of color to be told. However, it makes sense why this happened when looking at the context of what century it was in. Women were mostly meant to stay at home and raise the children while men were seen as the breadwinners. The history of people of color were not that well known because of how people viewed them in the past; they were seen as being “savages” and “unintelligent”. Therefore, with less primary sources and information it is harder to have accurate knowledge on the person.

I liked how she pointed out that there is not one objective way of telling the past and everyone has a different idea of which stories should be told. However, since there is only a select group of people choosing what gets put in the history books lots of stories end up getting left out. To different people, different stories mean more to them based on their culture and how they were raised. This concept of the Great Man Theory emerged in the 19^thcentury which is not that long ago. Since then we have made more changes and have more people investigating into the histories of those who were forgotten or excluded. For example, historians are becoming more involved in looking at women’s history by attempting to show that they were doing important work at the time, they were just overlooked. I thought that it was interesting that she pointed out how people keep telling her to not forget about Marie Curie or Caroline Herschel, when these women already have had their stories told and she’s interested in bringing new stories to light.