You mean women like Brigit of Ireland, Eleanor of Aquataine, Christine de Pizan, Jeanne d'Arc, and all of those women who held down the castle and even managed being besieged while their menfolk were off doing something else? Like the peasant women who worked side-by-side with the men in the fields, gelded animals, wove, sewed, and all that sort of stuff?

I think that a lot of Victorian upper-middle-class ideas have colored our notions of the man-woman relationships of the past.