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The article looks at the way students interact with content related to feminism in history textbooks. A questionnaire was distributed to 575 Québec high school students in order to identify their conceptions of textbooks and feminism. Nine students then participated in interviews to assess their understanding of the role of women’s agency in history as well as their reaction to contradictory narratives. The results show the importance of considering students’ representations of the past in order to evaluate the mediation process. A very high proportion of students (88 %) considered the textbook to be a reflection of objective truth. They seemed uncomfortable when completing the task and tried to lessen the differences between narratives while selecting the elements corresponding to their initial conceptions. A majority of the students were able, in varied ways, to differentiate the texts in depending on their agency.