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Unknown Artist, ‘Unknown Women, formerly known as Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury’ (circa 1535), National Portrait Gallery . ‘Unknown woman, formerly known as Margaret Pole’ is a portrait currently owned by the National Portrait Gallery. Margaret Pole, born 14 th  August 1473, is an extremely interesting woman who experienced major fluctuations in her social standing from her birth, through the Wars of the Roses, the establishment of the Tudor regime and the oppressive Henrician age. Hence the title of the portrait, it has not been conclusively proven to be Margaret Pole and there has been debate on who exactly the sitter may be.  This portrait has become an art history conundrum, the artist is unknown and the year of creation is an estimate, circa 1535. Originally, the portrait was confidently believed to be Margaret Pole but this was rescinded as a fact after examinations of the artwork in the 1960s and 1970s. Hilary Mantel noted that some original features may have been altered in the 20th century, such as the possibility that the black ribbon was added to hide damaged paint, this raised the question could the barrel charm have been added also?  1 Roy Strong noted that the portrait was first documented in 1785 and believed it to be a lady from the Barrington family playing the role of Margaret Pole, however, the National Portrait Gallery has identified the painting's origins as the 1530s so this argument is not completely persuasive.  2 There is little doubt that features have been altered on the painting but the questions are, which features have been altered and why? Unfortunately, it will likely never be known. Hazel Pierce has stood firm on her stance that as the barrel charm did not fade during the 1973 cleaning of the portrait it is more likely to be an original feature.  3 Pierce’s view is convincing, as the author of the first full biography on Margaret Pole her research was extensive and regarding this portrait, discussed with the National Portrait Gallery. The stance that this article will support is that the sitter is indeed Margaret Pole and from it historians can glean an insight into the countess and the treacherous medieval landscape in which she lived.  Margaret’s parents were two nobles from the house of York, George, Duke of Clarence and Isabel Neville; the marriage had been part of a rebellion and a betrayal of George’s brother, King Edward IV, who had previously denied the union. Despite this, George and Isabel were forgiven and welcomed back into the Yorkist court. George however, never seemed to feel secure in his place within the regime.  With Isabel’s death in 1476, George became increasingly erratic and destroyed any remaining patience Edward IV had with his displays of disloyalty. George was convinced that his brothers did not wish for him to obtain more wealth and power. This frustrated him greatly as he had vast ambitions for himself, thus he became riskier in his behaviour and involved in a string of legal disputes; the Duke refused to eat the King's food and his men were legally linked to the dark arts. The final straw for Edward IV was George’s judicial murder of Ankarette Twynho and John Thursby whom he believed to be responsible for the poisoning of his wife but were both almost certainly innocent. The image of the three brothers of York had been a powerful part of the Yorkist identity, brothers united against disputable Lancastrians who would shine the sun back on England. George’s behaviour though was erratic and untrustworthy. On 18th February 1478, George was executed for treason, reportedly by being “plunged into a barrel of sweet wine.”4  Margaret Pole was unlikely to remember much about her parents but the unhappy series of events that occurred after Isabel’s death had a profound impact on her life. George had died a traitor's death. Margaret was Yorkist royalty but also a traitor's daughter, these two things would come to define her reputation. His execution thrust her into a life of wardship that would only further change with the fall of the Yorkist dynasty. These would have been a major series of events in her life and perhaps years later, she memorialised them within portraiture.  The rumours that have circulated around George’s execution focus on being drowned in a barrel of Malmsey wine. The rumour, started by Dominic Mancini, a peer with very little link to the Yorkist royals, could easily be false, but there has not been steadfast evidence against it either. Whether the barrel execution is true or false, it came to define George, Duke of Clarence in historiography where he has often been represented as fickle and foolish. Margaret Pole herself, went through dramatic changes of fortune during her adult life. Henry VII married her to Richard Pole, a staunch Lancastrian of humble standing; the couple had children, resided in the Ludlow household of Prince Arthur and settled into Tudor society. It was in the turbulent reign of Henry VIII and after the death of her husband however, that Margaret’s prominence rose. In 1512, Margaret regained her family’s wealth, titles and land, surpassing the expectations of her gender and becoming the only woman in England to hold a title in her own right, which she would be until 1532. Margaret showed herself to be ambitious and intelligent, she was also loyal and staunchly supported what she cared about, demonstrated by her actions regarding The Kings Great Matter which would eventually tie into the downfall of the Pole family.  Margaret Pole lost standing with the King during the 1530s as she firmly planted herself in the Aragonese faction, interestingly, this is the estimated creation date of the portrait making it a vital timeframe to analyse. During the dissolution of Princess Mary’s household in 1533, Margaret refused to hand over the princess’ jewels and was dismissed from court. The Poles were also one of the noble families implicated in the Nun of Kent affair, a case inexplicitly linked to the growing treason laws and which demonstrated who in court was not supporting the new faith. In Europe, Margaret’s son Reginald, was on a catholic campaign to condemn the King’s actions. As long as he worked against the King abroad, his family would not be trusted at home. In a report from Eustace Chapuys from February 1535, Henry VIII supposedly referred to Margaret as a ‘fool of no experience,’ this personal insult demonstrated how far Margaret had come from being the trusted governess to Princess Mary years earlier.5 Henry VIII no longer approved of the Pole family and their matriarch and had no qualms about showing it.  In the ‘Unknown Woman’ portrait, a barrel charm is visible on the wrist of the sitter. Margaret has not been conclusively identified as the subject of this painting but the barrel charm is the largest piece of evidence in favour of that stance, along with a W hanging off the black ribbon which would acknowledge her Warwick ancestry from her mothers side. The barrel is undoubtedly the most interesting of these motifs, as it would be a strange fashion choice unless the symbol meant something to the wearer or the viewers of the portrait. To the Pole family and those that knew them, it would mean very much indeed. If the barrel charm was an original feature, this portrait is very likely Margaret Pole subtly paying homage to her father. This is significant in multiple ways and, if we accept this portrait to be of Margaret, gives an insight into her boldness and how she felt towards the crown. Margaret would have been at the height of her wealth and influence visualising a charm that served as a memento of her father. Perhaps, in a nod to his own vast ambitions and in hopes that he would be proud of how high her effort had raised herself and her children. Or as a morbid reminder of how quickly one could fall from favoured courtesan to traitor. This portrait was created in the midst of an extremely dangerous period for Margaret Pole; treason laws were expanding and she had established herself as standing against the reformist court, as her son was actively campaigning against the King to catholic enemies of England. Yet, she was further associating herself with an executed traitor whilst simultaneously harking back to her family's royal legacy. Not only would this portrait have reminded people of the powerful dynasty Margaret came from but it looks humbly regal, she is graceful and surrounded by rich green hues. This is even more fascinating with the rumours that emerged from Chapuys of a plan to marry Reginald to Princess Mary and create a new claim to the throne, according to Lauren Mackay, Chapuys was corresponding with Reginald and meeting Geoffrey Pole frequently.  6 This plan never amounted to anything, but could this portrait have even been a reminder of the Yorkist legacy of the Pole family and eligibility to the throne? Could the barrel charm hint to a proud, rebellious attitude that Margaret and her children had gained from George, Duke of Clarence, who never caved on doing what he wished no matter how detrimental it could be. Or perhaps it served as a reminder to herself and the Pole family of how far one could fall if they walked the tightrope of traitorous behaviour, no matter who they were nor how regal their legacy was. It would be impossible to know exactly what was intended by this portrait and there are no surviving accounts from Margaret herself that shed light on any portraiture during her life. Could the barrel, when paired with the W, have been an effort to memorialise her parents or does this seem too much and more likely to have been added later to promote the image of Margaret Pole? Whilst both are possible, this was a contentious time in Margaret’s life, she and her children would have known how easy it would be to fall victim to Henry VIII’s executioner as had happened to many courtiers by the 1530s. Therefore, it would be reasonable for one to become mindful about their family and legacy and no small memento in a portrait would necessarily be too much. Portraits were designed to be long lasting and present a legacy to future generations. This was the era in which artists, such as Hans Holbein the Younger, created characterisations of Tudor figures through portraiture (or lack thereof) that have only recently begun to be deconstructed and viewed in more nuanced ways. This portrait then, could be evidence of the monumental effect that the execution of George, Duke of Clarence had on his daughter. If this is indeed Margaret Pole, then fifty-seven years later she was using not his badge, nor a Yorkist motif, but the method of his supposed fools execution as a token in a medium designed to be part of her future image for years to come. Additionally, doing this at a time when she was teetering on the edge of being viewed as a traitor would hint that she wanted to portray a strong message to King and court. This would display a pride in her legacy and bravery. This could be then, a dangerous and touching representation of herself to present to the ruthless world of Henrician England. No matter what is true or false, because Margaret has been linked to this portrait and George, Duke of Clarence linked to the barrel of malmsley wine for so long, they are explicitly bonded together through these things as unfortunate victims of traitor culture in historic regimes.  There is no evidence that Margaret explicitly violated the Act of Supremacy or committed treason, which means that either she was innocent or she learnt from the rebellions that her father so proudly took part in and hid her actions better than he had. In her children however, the reckless abandon that harked back to George, Duke of Clarence was rife and they did not cover their actions well enough. It was with Reginald Pole’s explicit catholic campaign, Lord Montagu Pole's loose lips and Geoffrey Pole's tortured implication of his family that Margaret Pole was arrested. On 27th May 1541, with an Act of Attainder and no concrete evidence of treason, Margaret Pole was executed at sixty-seven years old. According to the French ambassador, this consolidated the “total ruin of her house.”  7 Margaret Pole’s life was dramatic, she navigated treacherous times and was witness to prolific reigns of English History. There is sadly a lack of conclusive evidence outside of her household accounts that directly allows historians to know her as a person, which is so often the case with historical women. This is also echoed with the mystery of this portrait and the question of whether or not she is the sitter. If the lady with the barrel charm is Margaret Pole, history certainly stands to gain slightly more insight into her courageous character and fascinating life.  Hilary Mantel, ‘How do we know her?’, London Review of Books , Vol.39, No.3,  February 2017 Hazel Pierce, Margaret Pole: Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541 , (Cardiff, 2003) p.198 Ibid  Michael Hicks,  False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George Duke of Clarence 1449-78 , (Gloucester, 1980) p.200.   Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII , Volume 8, January-July 1535, pp. 98-124, 1885. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol8 . Date Accessed 14th August 2025.  Lauren Mackay, Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and his six wives through the eyes of the Spanish Ambassador , (Gloucestershire, 2015)  Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 16, 1540-1541. N.p., 1898. Print. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol16/pp409-429  Date Accessed 14th August 2025. Bibliography/Further Reading Hicks, Michael,  False, Fleeting, Perjur’d Clarence: George Duke of Clarence 1449-78 , (Gloucester, 1980) Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII , Volume 8, January-July 1535, pp. 98-124, 1885. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol8 . Date Accessed 14th August 2025. Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 16, 1540-1541. N.p., 1898. Print. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/letters-papers-hen8/vol16/pp409-429  Date Accessed 14th August 2025. Lauren Mackay, Inside the Tudor Court: Henry VIII and his six wives through the eyes of the Spanish Ambassador , (Gloucestershire, 2015) Mancini, Dominic, The Usurpation of Richard III , ed. C. A. J Armstrong, (Oxford, 1969). Mantel, Hilary,  ‘How do we know her?’, London Review of Books , Vol.39, No.3,  February 2017. Penn, Thomas, The Brothers York: An English Tragedy , (London, 2019) Pierce, Hazel, Margaret Pole: Countess of Salisbury 1473-1541 , (Cardiff, 2003)  Unknown Artist, ‘Unknown Women, formerly known as Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury’ (circa 1535), National Portrait Gallery .

Femininity was of key importance in the construction of the public identities of female pop stars in 1960s Britain. Utilising the work of Gender historians, who have established the malleability of gender and how it is crafted in the establishment of public identities, this essay will discuss the varied ways the femininity of 1960s female pop stars was presented to the British public. [1] Through the careful analysis of the careers of Sandie Shaw and Marianne Faithfull, I will illustrate how the diverse constructions of femininity were employed not only as a marketing tactic but also as a tool to assert proper codes of conduct for women in 1960s Britain. Furthermore, the evaluation of their careers exhibits the significant anxieties surrounding gender in post-war Britain and the manner in which societal discourses influenced representations of femininity in mainstream popular culture. Figure 1: Sandie Shaw, 1960s. Sandie Shaw rose to fame in 1964 following the release of the single ‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me ’ and garnered further success with the singles ‘ Long Live Love ’ and ‘ Puppet on a String ’, the latter winning the 1967 ‘ Eurovision Song Contest ’. Shaw became known for her theatrical style, her habit of not wearing shoes, and her romantic yet childlike songs. Femininity was a central component in the formation of Shaw’s identity as a musician, and in the way she was discussed in the media. Upon the outset of her career, Shaw was marketed as familiar and embodying a feminine paradigm that was relatable to the young women and girls of the 1960s. This is illustrated clearly by Tom Hutchinson, who wrote in the Women’s Mirror  that Shaw was ‘a girl in a million, because she’s a girl like a million’. [2]  Shaw was marketed to young women as someone they could relate to, but more pertinently, as an exemplary model of an acceptable feminine paradigm that could be replicated by young British women. This phenomenon has been identified by feminist scholars, such as Valerie Walkerdine, as a form of social conditioning that coerces women into expressions of femininity that are deemed appropriate within patriarchal societies. Within the context of post-war Britain, this was typically through representations of girlhood and womanhood in popular culture output (such as magazines, music and television). This can be seen within the aforementioned quote by Hutchinson, which champions Shaw’s admirable normalcy alongside her femininity. Born into a working-class family in Dagenham, Shaw worked in a factory before being discovered in 1964. [3]  This origin was routinely emphasised in the press surrounding her, establishing her as an ordinary teenager whose success was possible for other teenage girls. [4] Alexandra M. Apolloni illustrates that Shaw was presented as a ‘real-life Cinderella’ who, despite her success, remained representative of the majority of young British women . [5]   The repeated emphasis on ‘normality’, and indeed of the mundane, in the marketing of Shaw’s image was reflective of the rapid social change occurring in post-war Britain.  Therefore, considering Shaw’s public persona was marketed as representative of the experiences of the majority of young British women in the 1960s, we can perceive the tensions and concerns surrounding femininity reflected within it.  When analysing the discourses surrounding Shaw and, indeed, how she represented herself, the tensions between conservative and liberal attitudes surrounding gender in 1960s Britain are evident.   The lives of working-class women were rapidly changing. For example, the traditional occupation for working-class women, domestic services, was on a steady decline, and the traditionally middle-class and male-dominated office work was now the vocation of 40% of young women between the ages of 15 and 17 . [6] Furthermore, educational opportunities for women had significantly transformed in the post-war period, with 30% of British university students being women in 1962. [7] However, as Andrew August argued, conservative gender roles were still significantly present during the 1960s, as evidenced by the average age of marriage, which dropped from 24.6 in 1951 to 22.6 in 1971. [8]  Women’s experiences of 1960s Britain were therefore complex, navigating a society that was simultaneously offering newfound freedom, all the while still championing patriarchal structures that sought to limit said freedom.   Such a dichotomy is notably present within Shaw’s public image. This is exemplified by a 1967 television performance of ‘ Puppet on a String ’, which focuses on Shaw singing alongside a swimming pool that has children playing within it. [9]  Upon first glance, Shaw appears to be the epitome of ‘swinging culture’, dressed in a crocheted mini-dress and walking around barefoot (Fig. 1).    In the performance, Shaw is sartorially presented as a distinctly modern and liberal woman, with her bare feet and sheer dress signifying anti-establishment sensibilities. However, as the performance progresses, she moves towards the playing children and begins to playfully splash them as she sings (Fig. 2). Figure 2: : Sandie Shaw performing ‘Puppet on a String’ on an unidentified television show, 1967. Figure 3: : Sandie Shaw performing ‘Puppet on a String’ on an unidentified television show, 1967. Therefore, while Shaw’s dress is evocative of anti-establishment sentiment, her actions within the performance place her in a maternal role. This is emphasised by the set, which is a recreation of a suburban garden, directly placing Shaw within the domestic sphere. Shaw’s rebellious fashion, contrasting the domestic setting, illustrates well the manner in which her femininity was employed to represent the inherent tensions that were felt by young women in the 1960s. This is made all the more evident by the lyrics of ‘ Puppet on a String ’, which Shaw was obliged to sing following a 1967 public vote. [10] While Shaw disliked the misogynistic content of the song, Apolloni argues that she was convinced to accept the vote due to public concern surrounding her perceived subversion of acceptable gender expression. [11]  This concern originated to Shaw being cited in the divorce proceedings of TV executive Douglas Murdoch, who was alleged to have engaged in an extramarital affair with her. [12] This resulted in significant public outrage and a smear campaign which castigated Shaw as ‘a manipulative femme fatale who deliberately disrupted the marriage’. [13]  Her role as an icon of attainable femininity was jeopardised as Shaw was perceived to have subverted this feminine paradigm and contributed to the widespread anxiety surrounding the sexualities of young women. Such widespread moral outrage is indicative of the societal anxiety surrounding sexuality that was engendered by the increasing autonomy allotted to women by such innovations as the 1961 introduction of the birth control pill. [14]  While it is not explicitly stated, it is evident that the song was a part of a wider effort to reframe Shaw’s femininity in reaction to her transgression of acceptable gender roles. The lyrical content of the song further confirms this argument as it places Shaw in a distinctly subservient and patriarchal role. The lyrics to ‘ Puppet on a String ’ are markedly dissimilar to those of her prior hits. While songs such as ‘ There’s Always Something (There to Remind Me) ’ and ‘ Girl Don’t Come ’ follow the pattern of love songs of the era, a protagonist longing for emotional fulfilment or dealing with heartbreak, they still assert agency for the songs' female narrators. This can be illustrated by ‘ Girl Don’t Come ’, which is centred around a man’s disappointment at having been stood up on a date. The song is not judgmental of the woman for standing her date up, and instead focuses on the man’s feelings of romantic rejection. More broadly, this normalises women’s autonomy within their romantic life, presenting it as unremarkable. However, following Shaw’s perceived breach of acceptable behaviour for women, it became necessary to reject Shaw’s previous image of relative autonomy by depicting her in a significantly patriarchal manner. The lyrics to ‘ Puppet on a String ’ are markedly patriarchal, with the song’s narrator declaring that she will be ‘like a puppet on a string’ for the man she loves. [15]  The song’s childlike melody is bolstered by lyrics of ‘merry-go-rounds’ and ‘fairs’, consequently ‘infantilising’ Shaw and depicting her as needing the control of a man. [16]     The varied representations of Shaw’s femininity demonstrate how femininity as a concept was integral to the creation of the stage personas of female singers in the 1960s. The singers themselves were utilised as expressions of femininity that reflected the lived realities of women, therefore ensuring their marketability. However, when this curated image was jeopardized a traditional and patriarchal image of femininity was enacted to keep them within the confines of respectability. This further illustrates that while the 1960s saw definite progress for women’s rights, it remained a distinctly patriarchal decade in which a woman’s worth was inherently associated with the reproduction of an acceptable feminine paradigm.   Figure 4: Marianne Faithfull, 1960s. Another key example of popular singers being utilised as symbols of femininity in 1960s Britain is the career of Marianne Faithfull. Faithfull’s early career, which saw success in 1965 with the release of ‘ Marianne Faithfull ’, was characterised by a significant focus on her expression of femininity. Much like Shaw’s career, Faithfull’s femininity was distinctly politicised and came to symbolise the wider political climate of 1960s Britain. However, unlike Shaw’s attainable image and working-class origins, Faithfull came to represent ‘a galvanizing idea of feminine sexuality and class’ that was reliant upon her presentation as a symbol of the white upper-class English woman, reflecting the class anxieties of the period. [17]  Faithfull’s mother was ‘Baroness Erisso’ of the defunct Austro-Hungarian nobility, and these aristocratic origins were of key significance in the construction of her femininity. [18]   Faithfull’s aristocratic pedigree was intentionally emphasised: in a 1964 press release, she was described as ‘a poetry reading sophisticate’. [19] Such descriptions were aided by Faithfull’s notably upper-class singing voice, sonically expressing to listeners her aristocratic heritage. Unlike Shaw, whose interviewers largely asked questions about domestic or trivial matters, such as lifestyle and leisure, Faithfull’s education was emphasised. In a 1968 interview with the BBC, Phillip Jenkinson asked her a broad spectrum of questions ranging from contemporary psychology to her belief in the afterlife. [20]  The attention given to her superior education served to assert Faithfull as an intellectual and distinctly aristocratic woman. This was similarly expressed through her music, often exhibiting her upper-class education by singing in French or setting poetry to music.   The marketing of Faithfull as a paragon of upper-class womanhood was inherently racialised. Scholars have noted that it served to ‘cast her as the apotheosis of English womanhood, a symbol of racial purity’. [21] While Faithfull’s aristocratic heritage was Austro-Hungarian, her received pronunciation and ‘haughty’ manner were evocative of a distinctly English tradition of nobility. [22] Faithfull’s whiteness, and particularly her blondeness, were central to her image as the ultimate example of English femininity. The aforementioned 1964 press release described Faithful as ‘lissome and lovely with long blonde hair’. [23] Music mogul Kim Fowley further illustrates this point when describing Faithfull as a ‘big-titted Aryan Goddess, the peak of wet-pussy goddess’. [24] Fowley’s deplorable racism and misogyny exemplify that Faithfull’s white Englishness was fetishised and held up as a racialised symbol of a mythic sense of English femininity. This image was not solely interpreted by those who interacted with Faithfull’s music but was, in fact, propagated by Faithfull and her management. This is not to say that Faithfull viewed herself as a paragon of white femininity; rather, her music catalogue helped reproduce this image alongside the wider political landscape of post-war Britain. This argument is exemplified by Faithfull’s 1966 album ‘North Country Maid’ . This album consisted of covers of contemporary and traditional folk songs, with 6 of its 12 tracks being renditions of traditional British and Irish folk ballads. While folk music is a diverse music genre, the work of scholars such as Caroline Lucas demonstrates how modern British folk music can ‘produce whiteness’, and, that ‘English folk music can be understood as encoded with racialised meanings which reproduce whiteness within the nation’. [25] This is particularly true in the case of British folk music originating in the 1960s, which Julia Mitchell argues ‘echoed anxieties’ concerning immigration. [26] These anxieties often manifested in a mythic idealisation of an older Britain that was divorced from modern contemporary reality and often explicitly white. [27] Therefore, Faithfull’s recording of traditional folk ballads in ‘ North Country Maid ’ can be seen alongside such discourses. Faithfull’s musical output is inherently English, with numerous covers of iconic songs from English history, such as her 1964 cover of ‘ Greensleeves ’. While Faithfull herself certainly wasn’t a white supremacist, notably opposing Brexit and its racist underpinnings, the construction of her femininity as inherently white, alongside her recordings of historically English songs, was symptomatic of a growing English nativism and a racist cultural nostalgia. In fact, Faithfull’s anti-racist viewpoints exhibit how little agency musicians had in the construction and reception of their own image. The cultural anxieties of the period, such as feminine agency in the case of Shaw and racist anxieties in the case of Faithfull, were projected onto them by the public and their own management.   As was perceived in the career of Shaw, the femininity of women pop stars in the 1960s was malleable and altered in response to social concerns and public scandal. Regarding Faithfull’s career, the widespread outrage following her 1967 arrest for drug possession, alongside her boyfriend Mick Jagger, stemmed from the emphasis on female purity and whiteness within her early career. Following the arrest and during the very public trial, Faithfull was acutely vilified for supposed corruption. [28]  Apolloni astutely argues that this vilification of Faithfull is illustrative of a supposed breach of her racialised feminine archetype, as her romantic relationship with Jagger was representative of the corruption of her white femininity. [29] While Jagger is white, scholars of music history have demonstrated that rock music was explicitly racialised upon its introduction to the British market and was seen to be a potentially corruptive influence due to its association with black culture. [30]  As Lee Marshall demonstrates, ‘the Stones explicitly aligned themselves to black music and black musicians’, consequently establishing themselves in the minds of white Britons as an example of the increasingly multicultural music industry, and more broadly British society as a whole. [31]  Their appropriation of traditionally black musical styles, such as soul or r&b, established a sonic association between the white band members and black culture. To those who upheld the racist notion of racial and cultural corruption stemming from increased contact with black people and black culture, white men like Jagger appropriating black cultural output were perceived as evidence of white cultural decay at the hands of increased cultural contact. While he was never viewed as anything other than a white man, his cultural output made him a symbol of cross-cultural contact, and as Riley summarises, threatened ‘the exclusivity and whiteness of British identity’. [32]   With this racist notion in mind, Faithfull’s arrest alongside Jagger was perceived as a transgression of her established image as a symbol of white femininity and further evidence of the perils facing white women in a multicultural Britain. This is best exemplified in a letter sent to Faithfull during the trial, which stated, ‘the sooner you leave this island with your long blond hair floating in the sea, it will be a cleaner place’. [33]  The writer is evidently of the opinion that this feminine paradigm has been sullied, as they illustratively describe Faithfull as being a pollutive influence on British society by stating that Britain would be ‘cleaner’ in her absence. Its description of Faithfull’s blondeness makes the racialised facet of her identity plain; what she was once celebrated for was now used against her due to perceived transgression. Through this letter, it is evident that Faithfull’s arrest was perceived, at least by some, as evidence of the corruption of her established feminine paradigm, which was inherently associated with a racialised understanding of English womanhood. Unlike Shaw, who released her greatest hit ‘Puppet on a String’ in response to a gendered public scandal, Faithfull’s 1960s career did not recover. Following the trial, she descended into drug addiction and experienced homelessness before her meteoric comeback in 1979 with ‘Broken English, released 12 years after the arrest.   Through the analysis of Shaw and Faithfull’s femininities, it is abundantly clear that the femininity of pop stars was presented in varied ways that were reflective of their own personal histories and the wider societal discourses surrounding gender, race and class. Shaw’s presentation was indicative of a societal tension between traditional gender roles and the increasing opportunities that were available for women in 1960s Britain. Depictions of Shaw’s eccentric and mildly rebellious femininity were still entirely dependent on the reassurance that she was acting within the confines of traditional gender ideals. This is evidenced not only by her performances, which contrasted her eccentricity with the domestic, but by her acutely patriarchal depictions following her perceived gender transgression. Faithfull’s femininity was similarly politicised; however, hers was dependent on a racialised notion of English womanhood that allowed her to be presented as an exemplary model of white English femininity. In the same manner that Shaw’s presentation of femininity was indicative of wider discourses surrounding gender, Faithfull’s emerged from the racist discourses surrounding the ‘exclusivity of Britishness’ that arose in post-war Britain. However, as was witnessed with Shaw, Faithfull’s transgression of this racialised view of English femininity resulted in widespread condemnation. Both women’s presentations of femininity arose from the complex dialogues surrounding gender and race in 1960s Britain and were central to the construction of their public identities. [1]  Namely Judith Butler and Alexandra M. Apolloni. [2]  Alexandra M. Apolloni, ‘ Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop ’ (Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 51 [3]  ‘Sandie Shaw (MBE) - Dagenham’s Eurovision Superstar’, East End Women’s Museum, 13 May 2022 < https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2022/5/11/sandie-shaw > [Accessed 7 May 2025] [4]  Apolloni, pp. 49. [5]  Apolloni, pp. 49. [6]  Andrew August, ‘Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman’, Contemporary British History , vol. 23, 1 (2009), pp. 79-100 (pp. 81) [7]  August, pp. 81 [8]  August, pp. 81 [9]  Sandie Shaw Channel, ‘Puppet on a String 1967’, December 24 2024 <  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uot2CpkEb8Q > [Accessed 28 April 2025] [10]  Apolloni, pp. 63 [11]  IBID. [12]  IBID. [13]  IBID. [14]  Vicky Iglikowski-Broad, ‘Just a pill: 60 years of the contraceptive pill on the NHS ’ , National Archives, 4 December 2021 < https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/just-a-pill-60-years-of-the-contraceptive-pill-on-the-nhs/ > [Accessed 2 May 2025] [15]  Sandie Shaw, ‘Puppet on a String’, from Puppet on a String  (Pye, 1967) [16]  Apolloni, pp. 65 [17]  Apolloni, pp. 196 [18]  Apolloni, pp. 196-197 [19]  Apolloni, pp. 202 [20]  Phillip Jackson, ‘1968: MARIANNE FAITHFULL Talking | Film Review | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive’, Youtube, 31 January 2025 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwG55RBL89g&t=729s > [Accessed 5 May 2025] [21]  Apolloni, pp. 206 [22]  Apolloni, pp. 203 [23]  Apolloni, pp. 199 [24]  Apolloni, pp. 203 [25]  Caroline Lucas, The Imagined Folk of England: Whiteness, Folk Music and Fascism, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies , vol. 9, 1 (2012), pp. 1-19 (pp. 1) [26]  Julia Mitchell, ‘ Postwar Politics, Society and the Folk Revival in England, 1945-65 ’ (Bloomsbury, 2019), pp. 80 [27]  Lucas, pp. 1 [28]  Apolloni, pp. 209 [29]  Apolloni, pp. 209 [30]  Apolloni, pp. 170 and 199 [31]  Lee Marshal, ‘The Greatest Rock and Soul Band in the World? The Rolling Stones, genre and race’,  Popular Music , vol. 73, 1 (2024), pp. 72-87 (pp. 83) [32]  Riley, pp. 150 [33]  Apolloni, pp. 210 Bibliography Apolloni, Alexandra M., ‘ Freedom Girls: Voicing Femininity in 1960s British Pop ’ (Oxford University Press, 2021)   August, Andrew, ‘Gender and 1960s Youth Culture: The Rolling Stones and the New Woman’, Contemporary British History , vol. 23, 1 (2009), pp. 79-100   Brocken, Michael, Derek B. Scott and Stan Hawkins, ‘The British Folk Revival: 1944-2002’ (Taylor & Francis, 2017)   Hodgkinson, Mark, ‘ As Years Go By: Marianne Faithfull ’ (Omnibus Press, 2013)   Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky, ‘Just a pill: 60 years of the contraceptive pill on the NHS ’ , National Archives, 4 December 2021 <  https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/just-a-pill-60-years-of-the-contraceptive-pill-on-the-nhs/ > [Accessed 2 May 2025]   Lucas, Caroline, The Imagined Folk of England: Whiteness, Folk Music and Fascism, Critical Race and Whiteness Studies , vol. 9, 1 (2012), pp. 1-19   Marshal, Lee, ‘The Greatest Rock and Soul Band in the World? The Rolling Stones, genre and race’, Popular Music , vol. 73, 1 (2024), pp. 72-87   Mitchell, Julia, ‘ Postwar Politics, Society and the Folk Revival in England, 1945-65 ’ (Bloomsbury, 2019)   Riley, Charlotte Lydia, ‘ Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain ’ (Random House, 2023)     Staubmann, Helmut (ed), ‘ The Rolling Stones: Sociological Perspectives (Lexington Books, 2013)     Walkerdine, Valerie, ‘Femininity as Performance’, Oxford Review of Education , vol. 15, 3 (1989), pp. 267-279   Websites ‘A summary history of immigration to Britain’, Migration Watch UK, 12 May 2014 <  https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/briefing-paper/48/a-summary-history-of-immigration-to-britain > [Accessed 10 May 2025]   Agence France-Presse, ‘J.K. Rowling and other celebrities mourn Brexit vote: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever wanted magic more’’, Raw Story , 25 June 2016 <  https://www.rawstory.com/2016/06/j-k-rowling-and-other-celebrities-mourn-brexit-vote-i-don’t-think-ive-ever-wanted-magic-more/ > [Accessed 2 May 2025]   Phillip Jackson, ‘1968: MARIANNE FAITHFULL Talking | Film Review | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive’, Youtube, 31 January 2025 <  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwG55RBL89g&t=729s > [Accessed 5 May 2025]   ‘Sandie Shaw (MBE) – Dagenham’s Eurovision Superstar’, East End Women’s Museum, 13 May 2022 < https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/2022/5/11/sandie-shaw > [Accessed 7 May 2025]   Sandie Shaw Channel, ‘Puppet on a String 1967’, December 24 2024 <  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uot2CpkEb8Q > [Accessed 28 April 2025]   Music Faithfull, Marianne, ‘ Come My Way ’ (Decca, 1965)   ______, ‘ Love in a Mist ’ (Decca, 1967)   ______ , ‘ North Country Maid’ (Decca, 1966)   Shaw, Sandie, ‘Girl Don’t Come’, from Sandie  (Pye, 1965)   ______ , ‘Puppet on a String’, from Puppet on a String  (Pye, 1967)

Chopin in 1895 Kate Chopin is often regarded as one of the earliest feminist voices in American literature. She is frequently credited with introducing modern feminist ideas into fiction. However, her place within the feminist movement is far from settled. Critics like Christina R. Williams (2017) view Chopin as a clear early feminist, citing her bold portrayals of women who challenge societal boundaries. Conversely, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese argues that her writing transcends easy categorization, probing deeper questions about human desire, freedom, and society itself. The Complexity of Feminism in Chopin's Work The debate surrounding Chopin’s connection to feminism hinges on our understanding of feminism today versus in her time. Modern radical feminism often prioritises gender issues but can overlook the broader social and institutional forces that underpin women’s oppression. This narrow perspective may fail to encapsulate the essence of Chopin’s narratives, which delve into how family structures and societal expectations dictate women’s lives. Her work is not solely about male dominance; it scrutinises the intricate traditions and pressures that confine women. As Fox-Genovese insightfully notes, “Kate was nonetheless a woman who took women extremely seriously,” which lies at the heart of her writing. In this context, we shall closely examine Chopin’s renowned short story The Story of an Hour , which addresses the dynamics of the male–female marital relationship. Chopin clearly posits that the existing form of this relationship effectively suppresses female identity and selfhood. The death of Mr. Mallard signifies the end of Mrs. Mallard's silenced existence. This sudden realisation engenders an immensely powerful feeling of freedom from the constraints of such a relationship, as she envisions “beyond that bitter moment a long possession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.” The Irony of Joy and Freedom The notion that the “joy” she experiences could be monstrous is dismissed as “trivial” by a “dear and exalted perception.” Through this “perception,” Chopin unveils the mechanisms at play within the institution of marriage in a conventional setting, which stifles individuality and personal identity. “There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.” When we couple this exploration of marital relationships with the symbolism in the story, which equates her freedom with the blossoming of nature, we grasp the point Chopin seeks to convey: the institution of marriage is unnatural and rooted in the domination of one individual by another. This domination can manifest subtly, often disguised as love, which is merely a euphemism for an exercise of power. It is intriguing to observe how these insights resonate with the perspectives of both Christina R. Williams and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. Any text penned by a female author and centred on a female character inevitably engages with feminist concerns. Yet, due to Chopin’s complex themes and motives, it is challenging to confine her work within a rigid “feminist dogma” in the contemporary sense. Feminism itself is a layered and evolving discourse that cannot be reduced to a single, fixed position. However, in Chopin’s writing, we can discern an early, emerging feminist voice. The Narrative Arc of The Story of an Hour The narrative of The Story of an Hour is deceptively simple. Mrs. Mallard, who suffers from heart trouble, is informed of her husband’s death in an accident. Initially, she grieves but soon retreats to her room, where she experiences an exhilarating sense of freedom. When she descends the stairs and sees her husband alive at the front door, she is shocked, utters a piercing shriek, and dies. Chopin employs a minimalist approach, economising on both words and action. The basic exposition provided in the first two paragraphs reveals little about Mr. Mallard and focuses predominantly on Mrs. Mallard. Her delicate condition is mentioned right at the outset, and it is her sister who takes great care in delivering the news of her husband’s death. Notably, there is little mention of the husband initially, save for the fact that his friend has brought the news. The narrative centres entirely on her, with the entire plot revolving around her experience. This deliberate choice hints at the deeper mystery of their marriage. The absence of Mr. Mallard positions their relationship squarely within the conventional framework of power dynamics. Their union does not appear to be a love marriage that transcends societal expectations; rather, it resembles a typical marriage of convenience, sustained and shaped by social conventions designed to suppress womanhood. The Point of View and Character Development The story is narrated from a third-person limited perspective. The only thoughts we access are those of Mrs. Mallard, or Louise. Initially, she struggles to reflect on her own state. However, as she becomes aware of her situation and emotions, embracing them with “wild abandonment,” we gain insight into her character, revealing its complexities. Yet, as she descends the stairs, we are abruptly cut off from her thoughts. This manipulation of her point of view is executed with striking effect. While there is minimal conflict in the story, a moment of tension arises when Mrs. Mallard attempts to resist the "something" that, after a brief struggle, overtakes her. What she experiences is not an inner conflict but rather a tumult that fills her with the joy of newfound freedom. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the colour that filled the air.” The irony in the story is particularly captivating and serves as a strong element throughout the narrative, not merely in its conclusion. Chopin’s commentary on the institution of marriage is profoundly ironic. The marital relationship, which is ostensibly founded on love, is, in reality, a power struggle in which “men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” The Duality of Love and Suppression The cement of love is, in fact, synonymous with the suppression of a woman’s identity and selfhood. From this fundamental irony arises the entire ironic situation of Mrs. Mallard, who feels liberated and exalted at the death of her husband, a man who had shown her nothing but love in their relationship. The ironic nature of the “heart trouble” she suffers from becomes increasingly apparent as we gradually uncover that it refers more to her spiritual condition than to a physical ailment. This leads us to the ultimate irony. When her death, upon discovering her husband is alive, is interpreted as “the joy that kills,” we encounter one irony beautifully concealed within another. Here, “joy” not only refers to the perception of those attempting to explain her death but may also serve as an ironic reference to her joyful state, the sudden end of which—and its ultimate futility—actually causes her demise. Symbolism and Nature in Chopin's Narrative The story is rich with symbolism drawn from nature, evident in the words and expressions Chopin employs, as well as in the immediate settings she creates. Mrs. Mallard’s “comfortable, roomy armchair” facing the “open window” suggests her longing and desire to escape the confines of her life, yearning to step through the open window that leads to a world where “the tops of trees are all aquiver with the new spring life.” “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below, a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song, which someone was singing, reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.” The contrast between the vibrant world outside, teeming with motion, and her life, in which she “sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,” is striking. She finds the breath of rain quite “delicious,” and she too has been crying. This imagery symbolically represents her feelings about her situation. She is severed from the natural, dynamic world that exists beyond the confines of her life, which is tethered to the norms of the relationship she is or was in. She savours the delicious air of freedom but is left only to shed tears near the window, which seems to offer an opportunity not just to witness free life from a distance but to venture out and embrace it. This illuminates the fundamental structure of their marriage, revealing it as an institution grounded in tradition rather than the genuine reciprocity of love and the shared freedom characteristic of true comradeship. While Mr. Mallard appears unburdened and free to traverse the world, Mrs. Mallard remains constrained, her emotions stifled and her voice silenced. Her estrangement from herself is so profound that it seems as though she is, at long last, rediscovering her own being after years of inner suppression. Her shackles, though imperceptible, lie beneath the surface of a relationship that outwardly offers care and affection yet systematically denies her freedom. In this regard, Mrs. Mallard exemplifies what Simone de Beauvoir critiques in The Second Sex when she writes, “Genuine marriage would presuppose liberty and equality, both of which have been denied to women in patriarchal societies.” Beauvoir highlights that true love is founded on freedom, not restriction, regardless of how disguised it may be. A genuine relationship fosters individual growth, allowing people to breathe and become their authentic selves. However, marriage, particularly as shaped by patriarchy, rarely provides that space. Instead of nurturing emotional connection, it often serves to uphold entrenched norms, rituals, and hierarchies. What should be a personal choice gradually morphs into a social obligation. She further asserts, “It is not the individuals responsible for the failure of marriage: it is the institution,” signalling a crucial shift. The issue, she contends, lies not with flawed individuals but with a flawed system that prioritises one gender over another. The fundamental problem resides in the structure itself, which operates on unequal power dynamics, fixed roles, and expectations that leave little room for freedom or equality, paving the way for suppression. The Tension of Repression and Desire We learn that Mrs. Mallard is “young, with a fair, calm face whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength.” Repression and strength! With what force does this repression of the desire to be free—“body and soul”—explode within this woman of “strength”! We witness the tension building within her as something creeps out of the sky, preparing to overtake her with force. It moves through “the sounds, the scents, the colour that filled the air,” creating a tumult within her. She struggles to identify what this “something” is, attempting to resist it in vain. Ultimately, she becomes entirely possessed. The sensuous and sensational nature of this experience renders it as erotic as it is spiritual. We sense that the “repression” previously detected within her is also sexual. That “something” which has overtaken her is her own natural desire to be free—“body and soul free.” Throughout the entire description of her tumultuous state, the emphasis on the connection between body and soul is significant. But why does this force arise externally and then overtake her? Why doesn’t it emerge from within her? The symbolism here suggests that the force originates from nature and the sky. Chopin seeks to establish a connection between the force of natural desire and the essence of nature itself. The woman being overtaken is, in fact, reclaiming her nature, which has been forcefully repressed for far too long and now demands its rightful territory back. It does so like an act of nature and is extraordinarily powerful, for the stronger the repression, the more forceful its consequences. During Mrs. Mallard’s tumultuous experience, we first observe a “suspension of intelligent thought,” leading to a “clear and exalted perception” that cannot occur without intelligent thought. This suspension transpires during a brief moment of conflict when her own nature, her sense of freedom, overwhelms her. This is because “nature” brooks no intelligent thought, and no intelligent thought could eliminate it. “The clear and exalted perception” emerges when nature is allowed its course and is now unrestricted. The point Chopin seems to be making is that a social structure should not negate or deny nature but rather align with it. The exalted thought challenges the very notion of marriage as it exists today. It dismisses the idea that the joy enthralling her is “monstrous,” monstrous because such joy, such a notion of freedom, is perceived as unnatural or unacceptable. This brings us back to Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, whose introduction began this exploration. Fox-Genovese perceives Chopin as a social critic. In many of her stories, Chopin does not focus on individual relationships or gender-centric views. Instead, she examines the deeper conflict between human nature and the rigid institutions that seek to control it. There is no specific antagonist present; rather, we witness nature pitted against institution. Once Mrs. Mallard finds herself exalted, uplifted, and overwhelmed with joy, she undergoes a rebirth, transforming into “Louise,” and is no longer merely Mrs. Mallard. Her metamorphosis imparts new symbolic significance to nature’s springtime rebirth in the story, with the tops of its trees “aquiver” with new spring life. Chopin was deeply interested in the human connection with the surrounding world, particularly the bond women share with nature. In The Story of an Hour , she presents nature as a potent and living force, intricately linked to a woman’s inner life and the suppression that life endures. Louise’s awakening illustrates how this connection allows her to momentarily experience freedom and selfhood. Simultaneously, Chopin critiques how patriarchy, as an institution, suppresses not only female identity but also the natural forces of growth, change, and renewal. Through this lens, Chopin quietly yet powerfully critiques the systems that deny both women and nature their right to exist freely. Bibliography Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Vogue , 6 Dec. 1894. Literature in Context , The University of Virginia, https://anthology.lib.virginia.edu/work/Chopin/chopin-hour . PBS. "Interviews: Kate Chopin and Feminism." PBS , www.pbs.org/katechopin/interviews.html . Williams, Christina R. "Reading Beyond Feminism: Kate Chopin's The Awakening and the New Woman." Scholar Commons , University of South Carolina, 2008, scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1092&context=tor . Accessed 24 Nov. 2024. Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex . Translated by H. M. Parshley, Vintage Books, 1989.

Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius  is a three-part documentary which focuses on the writer Jane Austen’s life from her childhood to her death at age 41 in 1817. It is currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer and is narrated by the actor Juliet Stevenson. Alongside Stevenson other people discuss Austen including the actor Charity Wakefield and the writer Helen Fielding. Actors in period dress, including Emöke Zsigmond as Jane Austen and Adél Jordan as Austen’s cousin Eliza depict events from Austen’s life. Cassandra Austen, Vignettes of Early Kings of England from Austen’s History of England , 1922. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. The first episode explores Austen’s early life in Hampshire, where she grew up and her early writing. There are several surviving notebooks that include works which Austen wrote between the ages of eleven to eighteen which were published after her death in 1817. These are largely fictional works which range from plays to short novels as well as other forms of writing. Jane Austen Expert, Kathryn Sutherland argues that these sometimes parody and critique writing from Austen’s lifetime. One of Austen’s early works was called the History of England and features illustrations by Austen’s sister Cassandra. It was written when Austen was 15 and parodies Oliver Goldsmith’s book The History of England from the Earliest Times to the Death of George II . This was a history book that was studied by children in the late 1700s including Austen and her siblings when they were growing up. Austen’s later work continued to satirise and critique popular writing. For example, Austen’s posthumously published novel Northanger Abbey subverts and critiques Gothic Literature which was popular in her lifetime. In many late Eighteenth Century Gothic novels, the heroine would have a bleak family history and there would be dark secrets surrounding her and her family (Scopic,2019). In contrast, Northanger Abbey’s  protagonist Catherine Moorland has a happy upbringing with loving parents and many siblings. There are also no secrets surrounding her and her family. Moreover, many eighteenth century gothic heroines were written with little agency and had few personality flaws, in contrast Catherine is a flawed person, who actively makes events happen. (Scopic,2019). Charles Edward Brock, Illustration from Chapter Five of Catherine and her friend Isabella 1907 Edition of Northanger Abbey , 1907. Source Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. The documentary does not explain why Austen’s early work remained unpublished during her lifetime. Nonetheless, the notebooks with her early writing contain wear from heavy use and were read aloud to other people during her lifetime. Moreover, Austen’s niece Anna Austen Lefroy and her half- brother James Edward Austen Leigh added their own contributions to one of the notebooks. Anna later wrote and published two children’s books including one named Springtide in 1842. James wrote a book called A Memoir of Jane Austen with the help and contribution of his sister Caroline, Anna and their cousin Cassy Esten Austen. This was the first major published biography of Jane Austen. Episode one also explores the difficulties Austen faced with getting her work published, using the example of her novel Northanger Abbey . Austen wrote Northanger Abbey  in the early 1800s and sold it to a publisher named Crosby and Co with the understanding that it would be published immediately, which did not happen. Crosby and Co later claimed that they had no intention of doing this. Some years later, Austen’s brother Henry brought back the copyright for Jane. However, Northanger Abbey  was not published until six months after Jane’s death in 1817. The inclusion of Austen’s struggles with Northanger Abbey  works well as it is a struggle many writers face. This is because many writers including myself have struggled to get work published and this makes Austen appear as someone we can relate to. Episode two explores Austen’s life from her late twenties to her mid to early thirties. This episode refers to the publication of Sense and Sensibility,  Austen’s first published novel. Episode two gives a brief overview of its characters and plot which is quite broad and is summed up in a few sentences. Then there is a brief analysis of a couple of points from Sense and Sensibility  which is also done when Austen’s other novels are discussed. This works well as the documentary covers a lot of information so there is not enough time to give an in-depth analysis of every novel. Episode two is bolstered by the inclusion of clips from a 1995 adaptation of Sense and Sensibility starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet (dir. by Ang Lee). Lee’s film won awards including the 1996 BAFTA Award for Best Film. Thompson won a BAFTA for best actress and Winslet won a BAFTA for best supporting actress. Lee’s film is compelling: however, the documentary would have benefited from exploring more film and television adaptations of Sense and Sensibility . Every director has their own ideas about how a novel should be depicted; therefore, it would have been interesting to see clips from more than one adaptation of Sense and Sensibility  in order to see the differences and similarities between them. The final episode discusses Austen’s life from her mid- thirties to her death at age forty-one. This includes a discussion of work, that she produced later in life including her last complete novel Persuasion . Throughout the documentary, footage from film and television adaptations of Austen’s novels are used alongside quotes from them and a discussion about each of her works. This is done particularly well in the final episode when an emotional passage from Austen’s novel Persuasion is discussed. In this passage the novel’s protagonist Anne, receives a letter from her former fiancé Captain Wentworth, declaring that he has never stopped loving her and proposing marriage. Anne is greatly affected by the letter and goes to find him. The letter is very emotional as it involves Captain Wentworth talking deeply about his feelings for Anne. People in the documentary, including the actors Greg Wise and Samuel West talk about the letter and read quotes from it. Alongside this, clips of Anne reading the letter are shown from a 2022 production of Persuasion starring actors Dakota Johnson and Cosmo Jarvis as Anne and Wentworth. These clips work well alongside the discussion of Persuasion  and quotations from it as they allow you both to imagine Anne’s response to the letter and see how she might have reacted to it. This is because although the scene is very emotional to read, the inclusion of clips from 2022 Film of Persuasion makes it even more affecting. This is due Johnson’s powerful performance of Anne’s response to the letter.  Charles Edward Brock, Illustration from 1898 Edition of Persuasion of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth. 1898. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain. While wrapping up the story of Austen’s life, the last episode omits details that were an important part of Austen’s life. For example, the documentary discusses how Austen and her sister Cassandra both became ill while they were away at boarding school. The documentary states that Cassandra alone looked after Jane while she was ill. This is then compared to when Cassandra cared for Jane when she was dying. Key details are missed here, therefore failing to dissect nuances in Cassandra’s care for Austen. It is true that Austen and her sister became very ill while at a school run by a woman called Mrs Cawley (Pibworth, 2017). Their cousin Jane Cooper who was at school with them, also became unwell and Mrs Cawley refused to inform the Coopers or the Austens of the girls’ health (Pibworth, 2017). Jane Cooper however wrote to her parents about her and her cousins’ illnesses and Mrs Austen and Mrs Cooper on hearing this, took their daughters’ home (Pibworth,2017). The girls were cared for by Mrs Austen and Mrs Cooper but tragically, Mrs Cooper subsequently became ill and died shortly after (Pibworth,2017). There are various sources that cover this period of illness, and none of them reference Cassandra as a caretaker of Austen. This undermines the authority of the documentary and suggests that not all sources about Austen’s life were consulted. This was a confusing choice for a biographical documentary because with these tactics the documentary, paints an incorrect picture of what happened. Therefore, the documentary should not have used the comparison between Cassandra and Austen’s years at school to the time when Austen was dying. As mentioned previously, there are actors who depict episodes from Austen’s life in all three episodes. The actors accurately depict emotional events and provide a strong image of Austen and the people surrounding her. A good effort is made by the costumes to match the contemporary fashion of Austen's time, however, there is not much nuance as decades change. Storylines could have been bolstered by more detailed costume choices to immerse the viewer in the programme. The actor Emöke Zsigmond wears a gold ring with a blue stone in all three episodes of the documentary. Austen owned a ring with a gold band and a turquoise stone and due to the similarities, the documentary is probably referencing Austen’s ring. Austen’s ring is currently on display in Jane Austen’s House which is a museum open to the public in Chawton in Hampshire. It was also formerly a house Austen lived in with her sister Cassandra, their mother and their friend Martha Lloyd. The reference to Austen’s ring makes the one Zsigmond is wearing seem very authentic to Austen. This is because it almost feels as if Zsigmond has become Austen due to the personal nature of the ring. Billy, Jane Austen’s House.  2011. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under Creative Commons   Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic . Overall, this documentary makes some compelling points. This series is a great introductory watch to become familiar with Austen’s history and the literary techniques she used because the documentary gives a thorough and detailed account of her life and work. For viewers who are already familiar with Austen's life, this may not be an educational watch but it still offers a good illustrative view for all Austen enthusiasts. Bibliography A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen Leigh . Available at: A Memoir of Jane Austen by James Edward Austen-Leigh | Jane Austen's House  , (Accessed 20 December 2025). Anna Austen Lefroy: A Believer in True Love . (26 July 2011) Available at : Anna Austen Lefroy: A believer in True Love - Jane Austen articles and blog , ( Accessed 20 December 2025).   Austen, J. (1996, originally published 1813)  Pride and Prejudice , Penguin Classics: London. Garcia, J (14 May 2018) Jane Austen’s Juvenilia: Extravagantly Absurd and Outrageously Funny. Available at: J ane Austen's juvenilia: extravagantly absurd and outrageously funny – The Oxford Student  , (Accessed  26 December 2025). Jane Austen: Rise of a Genius . (2025). Directed by Ali Naushahi. (Documentary) BBC 2 Television, 27 May-9 th June. Jane Austen’s Ring . Available at: Jane Austen's Ring | Jane Austen's House  (Accessed 19 December 2025). Pibworth, J. (2017 ). Why did Jane Austen go to School in Reading ?.  Available at: Why did Jane Austen go to school in Reading? | Reading Museum . (Accessed 30 August 2025). Scopic, A. (2019) Her Dark Materials: The Gothic Novelas as a Social-Political Critique in Northanger Abbey. Available at: httpps:// jasna.org/publications-2/essay-contest-winning-entries/2019-essay-contest/skopic/ (Accessed 6 August 2025). Sutherland, K. Jane Austen’s Juvenilia . Jane Austen’s Juvenilia | The British Library  (Accessed 4 August 2025).

1443-1509 TW: Suicide, difficult birth, death and grief The badass single mum who ended 30 years of battles and started a royal empire Margaret Beaufort's extended family tree Glossary Lord- A nobleman with a high-ranking position in society with political power Lady- A noblewoman who is high ranking and has political power or is married to a Lord Duke- A nobleman ranking higher than Lord but below the monarch Duchess- A woman who holds the title of Duke in her own right or is married to a Duke Earl- A nobleman of high rank above Lord Consummated- to solidify a marriage through sexual intercourse Dukedom- the given title to a Duke/Duchess but usually inherited by the eldest son of the duke Wardship- the legal guardianship of a minor and their estate by a court-appointed guardian (a bit like a godparent) Royal Charter- a grant by the King/Queen of independent legal personality on an organisation and defines its privilege and purpose Margaret Beaufort Margaret Beaufort was born in Bletsoe, Bedfordshire, on the 31st of May 1443 (sometimes disputed as 1441). Her parents were Margaret Beauchamp, a widow, and the 3rd Earl and 1st Duke of Somerset, John Beaufort. Let’s just be grateful that young Margaret had a (slightly) different last name to her mother; otherwise, this would have been a very confusing start to her biography. Margaret Beauchamp and John Beaufort, 1st Duke of Somerset Margaret’s Mother and Father Margaret has been described as the walking, talking concept of medieval adversity throughout her life. She was nearly a year old when her father passed away under suspected, but not confirmed, suicide after causing the failure of a serious expedition. John’s death meant that Margaret Senior would be a widow; this brought about some unusual laws regarding the custody of Maggie Junior. Usually, the law did not allow women guardianship due to the rules of holding land. The child (in this case, Margaret) and the feudal lands are returned to the King, which, at the time, was Henry VI. Margaret could be given custody of Maggie Junior if granted by the King. This seems to have happened before John went on the expedition, as he had negotiated with Henry VI that Margaret Senior would have the rights to their daughter’s wardship and marriage upon his death. Due to the issues caused by her father in life, the King went back on the negotiation and the wardship of Margaret’s extensive lands was granted to William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk. Margaret did remain in her mother’s custody, as set out in John’s will/negotiations with the King. Henry VI of England Being with her mother appeared to be a blessing as she became well-educated; evidence proves this. For example, her French was excellent, and she translated many books from French to English. She practised her religion (Catholicism) in French, too. Her Latin wasn’t as strong, but this didn’t matter as women didn’t usually have an education like Margaret. Even knowing French was incredibly unique and impressive. It is also evident that this was part of the impression she had formed during the time, creating a legacy leading up to this day. As the only child of her father, she was the heir to his fortune, another unusual occurrence due to the same laws outlined above. Feudal lands could be held, in virtue, by an heiress on the death of the patriarch if there were no male heirs. Whilst John’s younger brother, Edmund, inherited the dukedom and some estates, Margaret inherited the riches. This made her susceptible to people wanting her wardship and hand in marriage. This leads us to discuss Margaret’s very brief first marriage. At just six years old, Margaret was desirable for marriage because she was financially stable. This, and her weak link to the throne of England caught the eye of William de la Pole, 1st Duke of Suffolk. He was given, by Henry VI, both the wardship and the right to pick Margaret’s marriage. Naturally, he chose his son, John de la Pole, 2nd Duke of Suffolk, who was seven. Their marriage was through Papal Dispensation, meaning the pope had the right to exempt the union from the Catholic canon law article 1083, which states, “ A man before he has completed his sixteenth year of age and a woman before she has completed her fourteenth year of age cannot enter into a valid marriage .” The idea behind William’s unusual and, frankly, impatient plan was that he could secure the throne for his son through Margaret by claiming her to be the next inheritor of the crown. This claim became a part of his impeachment later on. The marriage was annulled when William was charged; his wardship over Margaret was removed. She was a free child again…for a moment. Margaret was 12 years old when she married her second husband, Edmund Tudor, in 1455. This was a marriage that Henry VI seemingly encouraged after he passed the wardship on to his half-brothers Jasper and Edmund. Whilst this marriage was legal, her age was considered to be too young for sex and pregnancy, most indivuals married at this age would not have a full marriage until they were sixteen. Edmund, more concerned about politics and the legitimacy of the marriage, decided not to wait for Margaret to mature to consummate. Margaret became pregnant for the first (and only) time. The birth of this child would be a crucial development towards the so-called ‘Wars of the Roses’. Edmund was the 1st Earl of Richmond, born in Hertfordshire in 1430 and a Lancastrian supporter. This means he supported the House of Lancaster, a male-line branch of the Plantagenets, which started when Henry III created the Earldom of Lancaster. Edmund was the half-brother of Henry VI through Catherine of Valois. Fighting for the Lancastrians and his brother, he was eventually captured by the Yorkists. The Yorkists belong to the House of York, another male-line branch of the Plantagenets but started by Edmund of Langley, the 1st Duke of York. During Edmund's capture at Carmarthen Castle, Wales, he contracted the Plague and passed away. Margaret was seven months pregnant. She was terrified of dying from the plague and how the ongoing issues between the Yorkists and Lancastrians could affect her and her child. She travelled to Pembroke Castle to seek protection from Jasper Tudor, Edmund and Henry VI’s brother, to ensure her and her unborn child's safety. Because of how young and small she was, the birth was considered highly traumatising to her physical health. She never had another child despite a further two marriages after Edmund. She and her son, who (spoiler alert) would become Henry VII, survived the traumatic birth, a testament to their strength. Despite the trauma of the delivery, she looked back on the day as nothing but a blessing. She referred to Henry in letters as her “ only desired joy ” and “ my good and gracious prince ”. Edmund Tudor and Jasper Tudor As a Catholic, Margaret was welcomed back into society with a ceremony called Churching. This took place around six to eight weeks after the child's birth. In this ceremony, the new mother is blessed, and God is thanked for the safe delivery of the child. Once this was done, Jasper Tudor, as the carer of both her and his nephew, arranged Margaret’s subsequent marriage to Sir Henry Stafford. She was 14. Margaret’s third marriage was to Henry Stafford, the first cousin of Edward IV and Richard III, the aforementioned Yorkist Kings. His grandmother was also Margaret’s great-aunt. Stafford and Edward fought on the same battlefield at Townton but on opposing sides. Stafford’s side, the Lancastrians, had been defeated in 1461, and Henry VI was deposed. Edward IV took Pembroke Castle, where Jasper had managed to escape, but Henry (Margaret’s son and the future king) was captured and stripped of his land at age five. Why? Because land was power in the Middle Ages, and Henry and Margaret were on the wrong side to keep it. Over the course of five years, Stafford secured their pardon by swearing allegiance to Edward VI and the Yorkist faction, whilst Margaret worked hard to show she was an ally. Eventually, some land was restored to herself and her son. Playing favourites of the King was a dangerous but essential game, and Margaret was very successful at it (she may have even invented it!) In 1470, Henry VI was restored to the throne. Edward IV was in hiding after the imminent threat from Richard Neville, the “Kingmaker”. Margaret wanted all her son’s lands back, so she mustered the courage to visit Henry VI at Westminster. With Edward VI gone, she was reunited with Henry after nine years and took him to meet his uncle. What made this meeting so unique was the prediction Henry VI had bestowed upon Margaret’s son; he would be king someday. He wasn’t wrong. Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, aka “The Kingmaker” The restoration of Henry VI’s reign didn’t last, and Edward IV was back in 1471. Stafford reluctantly returned to fighting alongside Edward after dodging the invitation to fight alongside the Lancastrians. The Battle of Barnet was short and violent. Stafford was severely injured. Edward IV retook full power of the throne after the Battle of Tewkesbury in May, a month after Barnet. Henry VI was taken to the Tower of London, never to be seen alive again. With allies of Henry VI being killed left, right, and centre, Margaret had no choice but to send her Henry off to his Uncle Jasper, where they fled into exile to France. In October, Stafford succumbed to his injuries and died. Margaret was widowed and without her son once again. Her subsequent marriage, seven months after the death of Stafford in 1472, was the first marriage of her adulthood, and the first time she made the choice to marry. This marriage was tactical, it was for her own protection. Her superpower was her ability to make the best decisions for herself and her son. She chose Thomas, Lord Stanley: forty, widowed and ready to mingle. The Lancastrians and Yorkists highly desired his support throughout the ‘Wars of the Roses’ (the War of the Cousins as it was known during this period) due to the large amount of land he owned in Lancashire. He never dabbled in such frivolous things as war. Well, not yet, anyway. Thomas Stanley (Lord Stanley), 1st Earl of Derby In 1482, Margaret’s mother and only parent died, which was devastating. She pushed on and, throughout the resumed reign of Edward IV, Margaret used her husband to cosy back up to him to make it safe enough for Henry to return from exile. He was in Brittany after a storm had thrown himself and Jasper off course to France. In particular throughout this period, Margaret fostered a good relationship with Elizabeth Woodville, Edward IV’s wife and queen, and talks of a marriage between the eldest child of Edward and Elizabeth, Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor came to fruition. Eventually, Edward IV agreed with Margaret that it would benefit Henry to return to England. A pardon was drafted, but in the series of unfortunate events that was Margaret’s life, Edward died in 1483, leaving the pardon incomplete. After his death, the legitimacy of Edward IV’s marriage to Woodville was questioned, suggesting Edward V (their son) was not a legitimate heir. Margaret, along with many others, believed Edward and Elizabeth’s marriage was legitimate and that these talks were… well, all talk. Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Edward IV’s younger brother, kept both Edward’s sons, Edward V, aged twelve and Richard of Shrewsbury and 1st Duke of York, aged ten, in the Tower of London. He did this under the guise of protecting them after demanding them both from their mother. After 1483, they were never seen again. To this day, their demise is a mystery. Edward IV of England and Richard III of England Margaret, who had maintained constant contact with her son, conversed on the matters of England and continued to plan his return. Yet again, she played up to his desire to be king and was prominent in the coronation of Richard III and Anne Neville. Many believe this was all part of Margaret’s brilliant master plan. She was, after all, suspected of being part of the plot to set the Princes in the Tower free. Unlike the past few kings, Richard III was most suspicious of Margaret and her husband, despite Stanley’s bid for loyalty. She used her shared physician with Elizabeth Woodville to continue the marriage negotiations between Henry and Elizabeth of York. Margaret could never go to Woodville personally; Richard’s men heavily watched the sanctuary at Westminster as Richard was very suspicious of everyone. In secret, they plotted the downfall of Richard. Henry Stafford, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, also began Buckingham’s rebellion against Richard, and the two plots of Margaret and Buckingham overlapped. Buckingham was unlucky with timing and weather, leading to him being caught and killed in Salisbury town. Amongst all this, Stanley remained loyal to Richard and, if he knew of anything Margaret was plotting, kept incredibly quiet about it. With Buckingham dead and everyone else in the conspiracy in exile or sanctuary (here’s looking at you, Woodville), Margaret was in danger, and all the king’s wrath was heading her way. Elizabeth Woodville, Queen Consort of England (Edward IV’s Wife) Margaret's final marriage choice proved only more intelligent when it saved her from the charge of high treason. Richard favoured the support of Stanley more than the fact that Margaret was on the verge of taking him down. She was in trouble, also, for sending money to her son to aid in the rebellion against Richard, another treasonous act. She was sentenced to life in prison, and all her land and money were removed from her and given…to her husband (she essentially lost nothing). What’s more, she was imprisoned in her own house. Stanley was extremely lenient and allowed continued contact between her and her son. If there was any doubt of affection in their marriage, his actions regarding Margaret were sure to squash it. He proved even more loyal to her when he overheard Richard’s efforts to capture Henry (still in Brittany) and alerted Margaret, who ultimately warned Henry. He fled with only an hour to spare. In 1485, Margaret gained support from Elizabeth of York (Woodville and Edward’s daughter) and raised money for Henry, whilst Henry had the help of the French King Charles VIII and his men. Stanley remained a mere fly on the wall whilst his wife and stepson worked to take Richard down whilst Richard held Stanley’s son hostage to control Stanley’s support. Eventually, the two sides came to blows in the Battle of Bosworth. Until the very last minute, Stanley watched from afar as Richard, on foot, headed straight for Henry. At this moment, Stanley moved in…to support Henry. The crown, fallen from the beheaded Richard, was placed upon Henry by Stanley as he proclaimed the young Tudor, Henry VII, King of England. Margaret had done it. What was next for our Lady Kingmaker? After weeping joyfully at her son’s coronation and subsequent marriage, she took part in many political activities. After the Battle of Bosworth, her first role was to keep custody of Edward Plantagenet, 17th Earl of Warwick (Richard III and Edward IV’s nephew). He was a potential threat to Henry’s already weak claimant on the thrown, so keeping a close eye on him was important. Eventually, he was placed in the Tower of London, but this brief custody showed Henry's trust in his mother. Of course, her title also became ‘The King’s Mother’. She had the power to appoint the officers of lordship in Ware. She was given the wardships of her great nephews, Edward and Henry Stafford, who came with some excellent revenues for Margaret. At this point, Margaret also outranked her husband and essentially was allowed to act independently without her husband's approval- she was a widow without death. This fell under the attainder called ‘femme sole’, meaning alone woman, which was usually granted to women wanting to do business alone. This made sense if Margaret was of such high power. She also took a vow of chastity, continuing throughout and after her marriage to Stanley. It is believed there was affection between Margaret and Stanley during their marriage. To be seen as legally widowed and vowing to refrain from sex showed that despite historians’ beliefs that the two were affectionate, Margaret’s decision to marry Stanley was most likely primarily political. It worked. However, my interpretation is that her marriage probably was intimate and loving; otherwise, she would have taken the vow of chastity sooner. Consequent actions would not have taken place, either. In 1485 Margaret's signature changed from M. Richmond to Margaret R. Now, you could argue she was shortening Richmond to R, but I think we all know that the more likely case was to establish her ‘royalty’, so R in this case most likely stands for Regina (or ‘Queen’). (Interestingly, this refashioning of her name strongly resembles Cecily, Duke of York’s change to be known only as ‘The King’s Mother’ upon Edward IV’s earlier victory in The Cousin’s War, perhaps there is more to be considered about women's names and dynastic legitimacy?) Margaret was adamant about establishing her position and power. At her son’s wedding, her outfit was the same quality as that of the bride, Elizabeth of York. She also walked only half a pace behind her new daughter-in-law, which was usually custom at medieaval weddings. Still, it speaks volumes. Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, Queen Consort (Henry VII’s wife) The dynamic between Margaret and Elizabeth is incredibly typical of in-laws. Elizabeth showed her authority in simple ways, she had been raised the daughter of a king, afterall, a significant thing Elizabeth controlled was shopping for her children. Also, although one of Margaret’s granddaughters was named after her, which led to Margaret showing some favouritism towards her, Elizabeth proved her authority through little Margaret’s marriage to James IV, King of Scots, at Richmond Palace in 1502 in Elizabeth’s chamber. She even gave her away. Margaret was never in actual competition with her daughter-in-law. She grieved with her son when Elizabeth of York died, soon after giving birth to her last child, on her birthday, 11th of February 1503. She organised all the grieving and mourning procedures which helped keep her busy. She also saw Margaret off when she went to marry James IV in June of the same year. Death did not stay away for long, as Margaret’s spouse died in July 1504. Still, she remained busy and focused, keeping her mind off the grief for her husband of thirty-plus years. Her involvement in the Universities started in 1502 when she developed ‘The Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity’, which she initially established as a readership. Readerships are a position between senior lecturer and professor, acknowledging those with outstanding international recognition research. In 1505, Margaret also sponsored the re-establishment of Christ’s College, Cambridge (originally named God’s House), with a Royal Charter supplied by Henry. Earlier than this, in 1496, Margaret founded the lectureship in theology at Oxford College first but then at Cambridge soon after. Her money went into funding both universities throughout the later years of the 15th century and the early years of the 16th century. She had much influence at both universities and whilst Oxford was her first passion, she soon began to show favouritism to Cambridge. Her final project was her most gut-wrenching. Henry was sick by March of 1509 and did not have long left; he knew it, and so did everyone else. Margaret, his most humble supporter, was the only person he felt would uphold his wishes upon his death. She was responsible for organising the mourning procedures and was named chief executor of his Will. His death in April 1509 was the cruellest thing to have happened to Margaret during the trials and tribulations of her life. Whilst Margaret prepared for Henry VII to be buried with Elizabeth of York in his newly built Lady’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey, she had to help her grandson, Henry VIII, to the throne. He was seventeen and classed still as a minor. Margaret was to act as regent and take to being the head of government until the younger Henry was of age. Her motherly instincts had kicked in once more, and she did this of her own volition rather than the official position. Despite her failing health, her influence and abilities were recognised by others. Their faith in her allowed her to be the uncrowned queen she was. And it was very much deserved. Effigies of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York seen in Lady Chapel , Westminster Abbey Her own declining health had been known even before her son's death, and a Will of her own existed. She worked hard to set things up before she died and ensured that men surrounded Henry VIII, which was trustworthy and would benefit England and the King. Margaret never missed an opportunity for petty revenge. After causing a failed deal over a property with Margaret and becoming one of the most hated tax collectors in England, Edmund Dudley (along with Richard Empson) was arrested and executed under the encouragement of Margaret. Smells like some sweet justice. Henry VIII was officially crowned king and married his brother’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. Margaret watched this all unfold from afar. Eventually, she decided her final days must be at Westminster Abbey. She stayed at the abbot’s house (the house of the head of Westminster Abbey). She was physically closer to her son and safe in a place that played a large part in her life. Ironically, her predictions in her dying state were that her grandson would shy away from God, a fear that caused her to weep. And he does just this by defying the laws of the Catholic Church and creating his own! A scary coincidence or an astute observation? Who knows. It is said that Margaret passed on as the bishop lifted the host (the bread representing the body of Christ). This final representation of her enthusiasm for her faith was a fitting end for her. She was now with her beloved and only child and was buried alongside him in the Lady’s Chapel. Did death cease her power and title? Absolutely not. For one, in her Will, she referred to herself as Princess. She also left a large sum of £133, 6 shillings and 8 pence to the poor. This would be worth £88,800 today. She also wished many of her belongings to be separated between Christ’s College and College of St John for the foundations she had established in Cambridge. She was generous, and her self-proclaimed title as Princess or Regina was warranted. The ultimate Kingmaker and Mother. Effigy of Margaret Beaufort in Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey Sources and Further Reading: Brain, Jessica. (2021). Lady Margaret Beaufort. [Online]. Historic UK. Available at: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Lady-Margaret-Beaufort/ Britain’s Bloody Crown. (2016). Episode 4. Channel 5, 28th January. Cooper, Charles. H. (1874). Memoir of Margaret (Beaufort), countess of Richmond and Derby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dean and Chapter of Westminster. (2023). History: Lady Chapel. [Online]. Westminster Abbey. Available at: https://www.westminster-abbey.org/about-the-abbey/history/lady-chapel Johnson, Ben. (2011). The Life of King Edward IV. [Online]. Historic UK. Available at: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/King-Edward-IV/ License, Amy. (2013). Elizabeth of York, the Forthcoming Biography: Interview with Amy Licence. [Online]. His Story, Her Story Blogspot. Available at: http://authorherstorianparent.blogspot.com/2013/02/elizabeth-of-york-forthcoming-biography.html Norton, Elizabeth. (2010). Margaret Beaufort: Mother of the Tudor Dynasty. Stroud: Amberley Publishing. Seward, Desmond (1995). The Wars of the Roses: And the Lives of Five Men and Women in the Fifteenth Century. London: Constable and Company Limited. Tallis, Nicola. (2019). Uncrowned Queen: The Fateful Life of Margaret Beaufort, Tudor Matriarch. London: Michael O'Mara.

Figure 1: Eleanor of Aquitaine Queen Consort of Henry 2 nd  of England, Illustration by E Hargrave from a Contemporary Portrait. Accessed December 17, 2025. https://www.maryevans.com/contributors/mep/eleanor-aquitane-47198863.html Eleanor of Aquitaine is considered to be one of the most powerful and formidable women of the High Middle Ages (c.1100-1300); she was brave, outrageous, artistic, adventurous, and political. As the Duchess of Aquitaine, Eleanor’s holdings made her a highly influential figure and positioned her as an equal, in terms of power, to her two husbands, King Louis VII of France and King Henry II of England. Her power was both a threat and a desire to the men around her, making her a target for multiple kidnapping attempts. Additionally, jealousy from her counterparts made Eleanor the subject of a number of derogatory comments, which described Eleanor as an evil-doer and a demon-queen. Despite this, Eleanor remained a strong and independent leader with a renowned ‘Court of Love’ in Aquitaine. A true she-wolf, Eleanor’s influence spanned countries & lifetimes. Born in c.1124 to Duke William X of Aquitaine and Aenor de Chatellerault, Eleanor was the eldest of three children in a powerful, ruling family. Although little is known about Eleanor’s childhood, there is evidence to suggest that she was highly educated, and she was believed to be literate and fluent in her native tongue. Eleanor was encouraged to love literature and the arts, largely due to her grandfather, Duke William IX. The Duke had been a leading figure in the development of Provencal literature (bodies of texts written in Occitan, predominantly in the South of France). William IX was an active poet at the close of the Eleventh Century, and was noted as being one of the first Troubadours, who were renowned in courts for their romantic literary poems. Eleanor was, therefore, surrounded by people who encouraged her education, and this manifested in a great love for romantic literature later in her life. In fact, when Eleanor was an adult, she became a patroness to great Provencal poets, such as Bernard de Ventadour. Marie de France, Eleanor’s eldest daughter, continued this legacy and similarly inspired the works of poets like Chretien de Troyes. Chretien was one of the most influential poets of courtly love and the Arthurian legend, and he credits Marie with the idea for his work Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart.   By 1130, both Eleanor’s mother and younger brother, William, had died. Unfortunately, as the eldest daughter, this tragedy put Eleanor in a position of significant danger. She was now a young heiress sitting on the lands and wealth of the powerful duchy of Aquitaine (modern-day Southwestern France). To put it simply, Eleanor was a target: her status became desirable to those who could inherit her power through marriage, making her one of the most eligible women in Europe. Figure 2: The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Prince Louis of France on July 25, 1137, from a 14 th  Century French manuscript. Accessed November 3, 2025. https://www.alamy.com/the-marriage-of-eleanor-of-aquitaine-c1122-1204-and-prince-louis-of-france-later-louis-vii-of-france-1120-1180-on-25th-july-1137-14th-century-french-illuminated-manuscript-before-1399-image623357340.html In 1137, Eleanor’s father, Duke William X passed away from dysentery while away on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. Eleanor and her younger sister, Petronilla, both of whom were still just teenagers, were now orphans. However, while William X was ill, he knew he had to protect his daughters and, in turn, protect their family fortune. William wrote to King Louis VI of France, entrusting his daughters into his care. King Louis, seeing the vast lands that Eleanor owned, which were larger than his own kingdom, betrothed her to his son, Prince Louis, and the pair were married on 25 July 1137. Within a few months, King Louis VI was dead. Louis VII became King at just eighteen, and Eleanor became the Queen of France.  In this marriage, Eleanor proved to be the dominant partner, but this was largely due to Louis’ upbringing: he was never meant to be King. Louis was raised to be a part of the clergy and had spent most of his life in monasteries, but the death of his elder brother Philip changed this, leaving the inexperienced, untravelled, quiet Louis as King. On the other hand, Eleanor had travelled throughout Aquitaine as the heiress of the duchy, had a well-rounded education, and was surrounded by politics throughout her life. In 1147, Louis accepted the lead on the Second Crusade, and Eleanor insisted on going with him. This showed her determination to reject the restrictive gender norms of the era, as it was not common for women to engage in military matters. Eleanor brought with her three hundred ladies-in-waiting and a baggage train, and she also led her own knights, known as the ‘Amazons.’ In comparison, Louis proved to be an ineffectual and weak leader in the crusade, abandoning more than three thousand men near Antioch. Ultimately, the crusade was a disaster, and, after being defeated at Damascus, Louis and the reluctant Eleanor returned to Paris. Although Eleanor bore him their second child, another daughter, in 1150, the marriage was a failure. Louis agreed to an annulment on the grounds of consanguinity (they were third cousins), and also Eleanor’s inability to provide a male heir and secure the line of succession. In 1152, after fifteen-years, their marriage was dissolved. Their two daughters, Marie and Alix, were declared legitimate, and Louis was awarded custody as per the custom and law. Figure 3: Henry II, from the Topographia Hibernica c.1186-1188 Accessed December 17, 2025.  https://monarchies.fandom.com/wiki/Henry_II,_King_of_England/Gallery Eleanor was once again a single woman with powerful possessions, and was thus at risk of abduction and forced marriage. In March of 1152, while enroute to Poitiers, Eleanor evaded a kidnapping attempt from Theobald V of Blois by taking a boat to Tours. While at Tours, Eleanor was warned that Geoffrey of Anjou was waiting for her at Port-de-Piles, so her route was changed to evade capture once more. Geoffrey’s younger brother Henry, Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, appeared to be a much better match for Eleanor, so she sent an envoy to Henry demanding that he marry her. Eleanor, who was experienced in war, politics, and was immensely powerful in her own right, was also a desirable match, and the pair were married on 18 May 1152. Just two years later, Henry became King Henry II of England, and Eleanor was his Queen. The couple inherited kingdom in crisis – there was lawlessness, civil war, and rebellions. This was a result of ‘The Anarchy’ which was a war of succession between Empress Matilda, Henry II’s mother, and her cousin Stephen of Blois who stole the throne from her. Henry II was both militarily and politically involved in his mother’s efforts to secure the English throne. In 1153, King Stephen agreed to the Treaty of Wallingford, which named Henry as his heir; Henry inherited the kingdom upon Stephen’s death a year later. Henry’s character suited the challenge of taking on a kingdom of unrest. He was noted for having a controlling temper and being impulsive, yet this caused clashes with Eleanor’s equally powerful personality. Despite this, the couple had eight children together, including two future kings of England – Richard I and John I. By 1167, however, Eleanor had returned to Aquitaine, leaving Henry behind. Historians have long speculated on the reasons why she left. For example, Eleanor may have been jealous of Henry’s unfaithful behaviour, which including having an affair with Rosamund Clifford. It could also have been due to his neglect of their children. Perhaps more simply, Eleanor had been pregnant for seventeen years consecutively, and it was likely that she was tired of having children and needed a break. The couples personality clashes likely gave Eleanor yet another reason to leave and return home to Aquitaine. In Aquitaine, now protected from outsiders and kidnappers by marriage, and knowing that her childbearing years were behind her, Eleanor was free to run her own lavish court in a way that many women could only dream of. However, Eleanor’s departure was not received well by her counterparts. In 1173, Peter of Blois wrote to the Queen at the request of his patron, the Archbishop of Rouen. Eleanor was told that “you will be the cause of widespread disaster” and will leave the “kingdom” in “ruin.” While Peter does compliment Eleanor as an “illustrious” Queen, he contrasts this by commenting on her “childish council” and “delinquent” nature. Yet Eleanor’s ruling of Aquitaine proved how effectively she could rule a Kingdom without her husband and without disaster. She filled the courts with poets and artists, and also addressed administrative matters, proving that she was a powerful ruler in her own right. Under Eleanor’s guidance, Aquitaine gained a reputation as ‘The Court of Love,’ and the poets, songs, and artworks that flourished here continued to be passed down through generations, becoming a key part of European culture. The monk Richard of Devizes, one of Eleanor’s contemporaries, described her as an “incomparable woman” who was “influential yet moderate” and “humble and learned.” However, Eleanor’s triumph in Aquitaine would only last a few years as, unbeknownst to her, Henry II had mortgaged Aquitaine to pay for his military campaigns. Henry II was also unpopular with his children, and, in 1173, Henry the Young King, Richard, and Geoffrey rebelled against Henry in a coup that lasted eighteen months. After their defeat, the three sons were forgiven, but for support of her sons, Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry for what would be the remainder of his life – sixteen years. Figure 4: Richard I "the Lionheart", in an 1841 portrait by Merry-Joseph Blondel. Accessed December 18, 2025. https://monarchies.fandom.com/wiki/Richard_I,_King_of_England   When King Henry II died in 1189, Richard, now the heir apparent, became King Richard I, or ‘Richard the Lionheart’, and one of his first actions as King was to release Eleanor from imprisonment. When Richard left England for the Third Crusade, Eleanor was effectively left in charge of his kingdom, but this was no easy feat, as England had been left in disrepair after funding Henry II’s military campaigns. Richard spent only six months of his ten-year reign in the country, and Eleanor could therefore rule and instigate her policies without much restraint. However, much like his father, Richard’s military ventures also caused serious monetary issues as he essentially used England purely for revenue to fund his crusade. In 1192, Richard had made little progress in his quest, and was forced to arrange a truce. His whereabouts were unknown until January 1193, when Eleanor learned that he had been captured in Vienna by Duke Leopold and imprisoned in Dürnstein Castle. Richard was handed over to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry VI, who demanded a colossal ransom of 150,000 marks. Raising this money was an extraordinary fiscal feat, and demonstrates the prosperity of England under Eleanor’s regency. Therefore, while Eleanor attempted to restore balance and peace to a kingdom in revolt, she had no choice but to implement high taxation and effectively bankrupt the country as a result of Richard’s endeavours. When King John took over the rule of a weakened England in 1199, Eleanor lost control as regent, but remained significantly influential. Eleanor escorted her granddaughter, Blanche, to the French Court to marry the Dauphin, which was a strategic match to secure peace between the bickering nations. This did not last long, however, due to her son’s unpopular reign in England, where strategic and diplomatic mistakes caused tensions to arise between the nations once more. Although Eleanor’s role in English rule had ceased, she remained intricately linked to the affairs of Aquitaine and continued her legacy there until her death at the impressive age of eighty-two in 1204. Overall, Eleanor of Aquitaine proved to be one of the most authoritative and charismatic figures of the Middle Ages. From a young age, Eleanor’s power and lands intimated those around her, and made her an equal match for her two husbands Louis VII of France and Henry II of England. As Louis’ Queen, Eleanor demonstrated her strong-willed personality and ability to reject the restrictive gender norms of the time. Marie and Alix, her two daughters from this marriage, both married into ruling families and continued her love affair with the literary arts. As Henry’s Queen, Eleanor helped bring stability to a Kingdom in ruin, and gave birth to a lineage of Europe’s future rulers. Two of her sons, Richard and John, became Kings of England, while her daughters, Matilda, Eleanor, and Joan, married into ruling families throughout Europe. As an independent leader, Eleanor’s court in Aquitaine was filled with poets and artists, and became renowned as the ‘Court of Love.’ Despite this, Eleanor was not loved by everyone, and was painted as a delinquent and evil Queen by her counterparts. However, her contemporaries reiterated that she was an influential and humble leader. Eleanor therefore proved to be a formidable she-wolf, and, with fifty-eight grandchildren including future Kings, Queens, Emperors, and Empresses, her legacy rocked Europe for centuries to come. Figure 5: 13th Century depiction of Henry II and his legitimate children. Accessed December 17, 2025. https://monarchies.fandom.com/wiki/Henry_II,_King_of_England#Legacy Bibliography Primary: Translation by M. Markowski of Peter of Blois' Letter 154 from the Latin text in Chartres Ms #208; Cf. Migne, P.L. 207:448-9.                                                                                    Secondary: “Eleanor of Aquitaine.” Women in History.  Accessed October 15, 2025. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/women-in-history/eleanor-aquitaine/ Brooks, Polly Schoyer. Queen Eleanor, Independent Spirit of the Medieval World: A Biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine.  United States: Houghton Mifflin, 1999 Carrasco, Isabel. “Eleanor of Aquitaine, the Forgotten Amazon Warrior That Fought in the Crusades and Was Then Vilified.” Cultura Colectiva , January 21, 2023. https://culturacolectiva.com/en/history/eleanor-of-aquitaine-the-forgotten-queen-from-the-crusades/ Chapman, Robert L. "A Note on the Demon Queen Eleanor - Eleanor of Aquitaine."  Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism,  edited by Jelena O. Krstovic´, Vol. 39. Gale Cengage, 2000. https://www.enotes.com/topics/eleanor-aquitaine/criticism/criticism/robert-l-chapman-essay-date-1955 Mark, Joshua J. “Eleanor of Aquitaine.” World History Encyclopedia , March 29, 2019. https://www.worldhistory.org/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine/ Kelly, Amy. Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950 Meade, Marion. Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Biography. United States: Penguin Publishing Group, 1991 Galloway, Monique. “Eleanor of Aquitaine: The Queen Who Chose Her Kings.” The Collector , February 4, 2021. https://www.thecollector.com/eleanor-of-aquitaine/ Owen, D. D. R. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen and Legend. Oxford: Wiley, 1996 Pernoud, Régine. Eleanor of Aquitaine.  United Kingdom: Collins, 1967

The Caryatid Porch, Erechtheion, Athens. 2023. Sophia Charchalou. Last year, an AI generated video went viral across social media platforms depicting a caryatid, currently displayed in the British Museum, springing to life as she runs back home to her waiting ‘sisters’ in the Acropolis Museum, Athens. For those unfamiliar with the Acropolis monuments at the heart of the Greek capital, the caryatid was an architectural feature of the Erechtheion in which a sculpted woman was used in place of a conventional column. Some have argued that the caryatid specifically represented maidens from Caryae, a town in the Peloponnese whose women were condemned to slavery after siding with Persia in the Greco-Persian Wars. This theory is supported by the sculpting of the female figures, which appear restrained and burdened by the weight of a structure. Hence, it is important to note that the caryatids were potentially imagined as real, living individuals in the ancient world- distinct from each other, rendered with unique hair types and various curl thicknesses. The British Museum’s possession of this lone caryatid, taken by Lord Elgin in 1802, has fuelled controversy for decades. The Greek government has repeatedly demanded its return, along with other looted artefacts, but to no avail. In 2023, Rishi Sunak bluntly dismissed the appeals of Greek Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, effectively silencing the fight for justice. With Mitsotakis’ resolve seemingly broken, it now falls to AI to champion the cause that human diplomacy has failed to uphold. The ‘Buddha’ Jewels returned by Sotheby’s to India. Soutik Biswas, BBC News, 2025. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kz8r6gxrro [Accessed: 30.08.2025] Since around 2023, both media outlets and Mitsotakis have shown waning effort in challenging the caryatid’s repatriation, even as headlines increasingly celebrate the return of other artefacts in their homelands. This contrast only deepens the injustice. BBC News recently reported Sotheby’s return of the ‘Buddha jewels’ to India- sacred relics believed to be buried with bone fragments of Buddha himself. The cultural and religious weight of these objects underscores the glaring question: why not the caryatid, a relic from the sacred heart of Athens? She once stood in the Erectheion, facing Athena’s place of worship, above the tombs of the mythical kings Cecrops and Erectheius, where Poseidon supposedly struck the earth with his trident. If one artefact is returned, why not the other? Where is the line drawn? Dame Mary Beard, classicist and trustee of the British Museum, once described the Parthenon Marbles case as a “messy divorce”. Though one might say that the high-sounding excuse of ‘humanity’s collective treasure’ is more forced than a divorce. Her take exposes a rift among classicists: whilst some cheer on the British Museum’s stubborn grip, others, including the ‘British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles’, are waving their metaphorical divorce papers and demanding the marbles be returned. The Erechtheion, Athens. Sophia Charchalou, 2023. The scholars on both sides of this marble tug-of-war are amongst the most learned in their fields. Ironically, Mary Beard herself published a book called The   Parthenon, which supposedly celebrates the monument’s cultural glory. One might assume that anyone who wrote such a book would be a staunch defender of seeing it whole, not cheering on its slow-motion dismemberment - a fate the Greek Prime Minister once compared to the Mona Lisa being hacked in half. In the face of this academic stalemate, perhaps only AI, the new vanguard of modern intelligence, can rescue the lost sister. Until now, the caryatid has mostly been treated as little more than a pawn in a diplomatic chess game between museums and their countries, a stance reinforced by the Brtitish Museum Act of 1963 which still ties the museum’s hands, allowing them to loan artefacts but never fully deaccession them. But this viral AI clip flips the script. The caryatid is no longer a lifeless marble column; she is a woman with legs that move, a mind that decides, and the autonomy to break free under the male gaze, to run, to travel and to reclaim her homeland. More than that, the clip gives her a voice and perspective. She is a stranger in a foreign land, surrounded by a foreign language, unfamiliar faces and the ache of being ripped from her family. Afterall, these marbles were once living stories, not just stately ornaments. The viral plea of the Caryatid: I want to go home. George Vardas, Greek City Times, 2025. https://greekcitytimes.com/2025/08/25/the-viral-plea-of-a-caryatid-i-want-to-go-home/ [Accessed 30.08.2025] Ingeniously, AI gives voice to the caryatid, transforming her from a silent marble relic into a fierce advocate for justice against British colonial appropriation. The clip revives a fierce debate long dismissed, framing it in the context of contemporary issues such as immigration, forced displacement and the displacement of culture under the guise of stewardship. In this light, AI emerges as a tool of remarkable expression and voice amplification for those who, whether human or marble, have been uprooted and silenced.   So, who are we to enslave the women of Caryae? Marble is more than art, it is a symbol of silenced women, stolen lives and yet we’ve stopped asking the hard questions about why women’s stories are so easily erased from history.     Bibliography: Primary Sources Greek City Times (2025) The viral plea of a Caryatid: I want to go home . Available at: https://greekcitytimes.com/2025/08/25/the-viral-plea-of-a-caryatid-i-want-to-go-home/ (Accessed: 30.08.2025)   Secondary Sources The Art Newspaper (2024) ‘Like a child in a messy divorce’: Mary Beard and David Olusoga tackle Parthenon Marbles debate in British Museum panel.  Available at: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2024/07/08/like-a-child-in-a-messy-divorce-mary-beard-and-david-olusoga-tackle-parthenon-marbles-debate-in-british-museum-panel (Accessed: 30.08.2025) BBC News (2023) Sunak cancels Greek PM meeting in Parthenon Sculptures row . Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67549044 (Accessed: 30.08.2025) BBC News (2025) Sotheby’s returns Buddha jewels to India after uproar . Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0kz8r6gxrro (Accessed: 30.08.2025) The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (unknown) Who We Are . Available at: https://parthenonuk.com/about-bcrpm/who-we-are (Accessed: 30.08.2025) The British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (unknown) The Case for the Return. Available at: https://parthenonuk.com/the-case-for-the-return (Accessed: 30.08.2025) The British Museum (unknown) Governance . Available at: https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/governance (Accessed: 30.08.2025) Channel 4 News (2023) Elgin Marbles row is ‘minor thing’ compared to ‘big international issues’, Tory chair of Culture, Media and Sport Committee says . Available at: https://www.channel4.com/news/elgin-marbles-row-is-minor-thing-compared-to-big-international-issues-tory-chair-of-culture-media-and-sport-committee-says (Accessed: 30.08.2025) Channel 4 News (2014) Contested artefacts: should Britain lose its marbles? Available at: https://www.channel4.com/news/elgin-marbles-russia-greece-britain-contested-artefacts (Accessed: 30.08.2025) Independent (2023) Keeping Elgin Marbles in UK akin to ‘cutting Mona Lisa in half’- Greek leader.  Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/kyriakos-mitsotakis-mona-lisa-greek-greece-london-b2453656.html (Accessed: 30.08.2025) Independent (2024) New British Museum boss opens door to Parthenon marbles return with ‘lending library’ model . Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-museum-parthenon-marbles-sculptures-artefacts-b2581828.html (Accessed: 30.08.2025)   Legislation.gov.uk (unknown) British Museum Act 1963.  Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1963/24/contents (Accessed: 30.08.2025) UK Parliament (2023) Elgin Marbles: UK government assessment of loaning the sculptures to Greece. Available at: https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/elgin-marbles-uk-government-assessment-of-loaning-the-sculptures-to-greece/ (Accessed: 30.08.2025)

Nancy Wake in 1945 The endless rivalry between Tom and Jerry is a story as old as time. The cat-and-mouse chase has manifested across literary, cinematic, metaphoric, historic, and political realms. One of the most striking examples being the story of Nancy Wake (1912-2011), or, as the Nazis called her, "The White Mouse." Always outsmarting, manipulating, and evading brutal adversaries hiding behind their uniforms with her feminine charms, Nancy Wake, much like Jerry escaping from Tom each time, consistently eluded the Nazis' grasp. This earned her the fitting nickname: "The White Mouse." 1   As a secret agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE), a British organization created in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europe, Wake honed her expertise in espionage, becoming a singular public enemy in the eyes of the Gestapo. 2 She was placed on their most-wanted list with a bounty of five million francs on her head. 3 Defying the stereotypical, misogynistic social conventions of her time and standing as a fierce advocate for humanity, Nancy Wake’s fiery spirit and bravery instilled fear in the supposedly "fearless" Nazi regime. 4   The 20th century was globally plagued with a cycle of turbulent uncertainty. When many people fled from the disarray taking gruesome shape, Nancy Wake chose instead to survive, thrive, and seek out the chaos. At age 20, she left her quiet life in Australia and began her career in journalism in 1932 London. Young, ambitious, and driven by a passion for uncovering the truth, Nancy quickly immersed herself in the rapidly shifting political landscape of Europe in the years leading up to the Second World War. As a journalist, she was able to travel and witness first-hand the monstrosity and cruelty of the Nazi regime towards Jews. “In the middle of that beautiful city of Vienna, there was a big wheel in the square, and the Jews were tied to the wheel. The SS was whipping them. If ever I could do something one day, I’ll do it,” Nancy recalled in an interview decades after the incident. 5 Amid Europe’s turmoil, Henri Fiocca, a wealthy French industrialist, captured Nancy's heart, and the two wed shortly after meeting. Their matrimony transpired in 1939, the same year World War II would commence.  The UK and France then declared war on Germany in 1939. When Nancy offered to serve at a British recruitment centre, she was informed that she was not required and that she would be working only in the canteen. 6 Greater opportunities awaited her in France, where her husband Henri was called up in 1940 to fight with the French Army. In the meantime, Nancy contributed to the Allied cause by helping neighbours, delivering clandestine messages, supporting soldiers staying at local hotels, and purchasing a car to use as an ambulance driver. 7   Even being financially able to flee the growing unrest, Nancy and Henri chose to fight back. Their shared interest and resistance were well-suited to them as strong allies against Hitler's growing regime. When Germany invaded France in 1942, there emerged a loose association of resistance to Nazi occupation, called the French Resistance, and Nancy discovered her calling. She distributed clothing, false identification papers, and identity cards to help men avoid capture by the Nazis. With Henri, she purchased a hideaway house near Marseille to house escapees and organize underground operations. 8   With her insurgent work, Nancy became acquainted with the top resistance leaders, including Ian Garrow, a British officer who established the O'Leary Line, an escape route for British prisoners of war. Her contact with such leaders and growing prominence soon placed her at the head of the Gestapo hit list. Despite regular encounters with Nazi officers, Nancy Wake successfully transported secret messages, coordinated safe houses, and orchestrated prison breaks, all while avoiding capture. She achieved this not only through meticulous planning and bravery but also by skilfully manipulating perceptions; by leaning into her femininity, through  fluttering her eyelashes, seductive language, and the disarming charm of a femme fatale. Nancy often engaged Nazi officers in conversation without arousing suspicion, using flirtation as a calculated tool to make herself appear non-threatening and above suspicion.9 Her keen intelligence and aptitude for espionage soon made her too great a threat to ignore. By 1943, she was placed on the Gestapo's Most Wanted list, prompting an extensive manhunt. Aware she had to flee alone to avoid suspicion, she left Henri behind. Her three-month journey to England was nearly cut short when she was captured by the Milice, a paramilitary force aligned with the Nazis. After four days of interrogation and physical abuse, they failed to uncover her identity or her codename, “the White Mouse.” She was released after Garrow claimed she was his mistress, allowing her escape to continue.10 Nancy's flight was the turning point. Discovering about the Special Operations Executive (SOE), an organization set up by Churchill to hamper Nazi operations, she enlisted. Having undergone months of intensive training, she became a fully trained spy and agent (a rare role for a woman at the time), ready to take the fight back to Europe. From 1943 until the war's end, Nancy's dedication to the cause was clear through her deployment to France, where she conducted missions against the Nazis and led numerous resistance networks.11 However, being part of a war entails great sacrifice, something that Nancy could not fight off. This sacrifice would be the death of her late husband, the love of her life Henri. Call it intuition, but Nancy vividly remembered having a troubling dream about her husband’s death just before he was killed in 1944. Executed by the Nazis, Fiocca's actions and involvement as a resistance fighter led to his capture. 12 Facing imminent execution, Henri showed no fear or remorse, paying the ultimate price for his loyalty to his country and love for his wife.  War is the material expression of novel practices. No matter war's cyclical form (rising tension, mobilization, fighting, and the escalation of conflict), war's nature is uncertainty, the product of human behaviour's complexity. Not only in the practice of war as a whole but also in the roles and knowledge of women does this uncertainty surface, best attested to by Nancy Wake's experience. 13 My main argument is that war, in disordering the social order, presents moments of resistance and redefinition by people, primarily women like Wake, against deeply ingrained societal attitudes. The twentieth century's prevailing vision of women as wives, mothers, and homemakers narrowly restricted their education and working lives, with the likes of Nazi Germany reinstating domestic responsibilities for girls while preparing boys for warrior life. 14 But with wars forcing record-breaking societal upheaval, women like Nancy Wake transferred to the fields of nursing, factory labour, and, in Wake's case, combat and intelligence gathering. 15 Not only did her actions thwart the Nazis but also undermined their rigid concepts of womanhood by using her femininity as a strategic weapon. 16 It is evident from Wake that war reveals and has the ability to dismantle the foundations of what is expected of society. It is evident from Wake that war reveals and has the ability to dismantle the foundations of what is expected of society. Yet, despite the radical nature of her contributions, Wake’s story is often side-lined in mainstream war historiography, which tends to centre male combatants or cast women primarily in support roles. Nancy Wake's affiliation with the Special Operations Executive illustrates the idea of complexity in historical thinking by presenting contradictions and complexities in the wartime roles of women. Rather than adhering to one or stereotypical story, Wake embodied multiple identities: femme fatale, strategist, and combatant, which illustrates how her action violated women's role expectations in the early twentieth century. Her history interrupts traditional narrative by revealing how war reaffirms and deconstructs cultural norms. The Nazi state enforced a rigid dichotomy of male virility and female domesticity, but Wake worked and manipulated within and against those limits with both her intelligence and her gendered expectation to her benefit. 17 Her history closes off easy binary oppositions such as hero or criminal, feminine or militant, victim or agent. Rather, it calls for a closer look at the socio-political forces driving and driven by individual agency in times of war. Ultimately, Wake's legacy demonstrates how the choices of historical actors are driven by, and drive changes in, broader ideological, cultural, and political systems.  Nancy Wake became the most decorated British servicewoman, celebrated for her courage, resilience, and ingenuity in resisting the Nazis. The once-feared men of steel were reduced to fools in their failure to capture the elusive "White Mouse”… a petite yet formidable force. Wake redefined what it meant to be a modern rebel, pioneering a new path in female espionage. She weaponized her gender and femininity, using charm and flirtation to escape enemy grasps and exploit the widespread belief that a woman couldn’t possibly outsmart them. Like Jerry evading Tom, she consistently outwitted brutal men hiding behind uniforms, earning her infamous nickname.  War exposes the worst of humanity, but also its best. Nancy’s fearlessness pushed her to fight for justice against tyranny, and her sharp mind kept her one step ahead. Everyone becomes an outlaw in war, and she was no exception. Yet she knew her actions were justified in the name of freedom. Time and again, she slipped through the Nazis’ fingers with almost playful precision, moving with the kind of boldness that bordered on cockiness, as if daring them to catch her. They called her “The White Mouse,” a name as fitting as it was telling: like a certain clever cartoon mouse endlessly outwitting his pursuers, Nancy turned evasion into an art form. She helped shape history not just through violence or victory, but through conviction. Nancy Wake ran toward the fire when the world was burning. Her story is not just one of resistance, but of rewriting who gets remembered. To honour her is to demand space for women in the history books, not as exceptions, but as essential.  1 Nancy Wake, The White Mouse: The Autobiography of Australia’s Greatest War Heroine (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985), 1  2 The National Archives (UK), “Nancy Wake – Special Operations Executive,” accessed April 22, 2025, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/nancy-wake/ .  3 National Archives of Australia, “Nancy Wake: Second World War Heroine,”  https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/student-research-portal/learning-resource-themes/government-and-d e mocracy/activism/second-world-war-heroine-nancy-wake.  4 Peter FitzSimons, Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2001), 98. 5 NZ On Screen, Nancy Wake Remembered , 2019, https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/nancy-wake-remembered-2019 .  6 Russell Braddon, Nancy Wake: SOE’s Greatest Heroine (London: Cassell, 1956), 64.  7 Ibid., 78.  8 FitzSimons, Nancy Wake , 123.  9 Wake, The White Mouse , 105.  10 Braddon, Nancy Wake , 99.  11 The National Archives (UK), “Nancy Wake – Special Operations Executive.”  12 FitzSimons, Nancy Wake , 150.  13 Nancy Wake, The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the White Mouse (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985).  14 Women and the National Community , Facing History & Ourselves, last modified August 2, 2016, https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/women-national-community .  15 “Women of Steel: LIFE With Female Factory Workers in World War II,” TIME , March 8, 2017, https://time.com/4679011/women-factory-workers-wwii-life/ .  16 “Nancy Wake, the White Mouse,” War History Online , June 21, 2017,  https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/nancy-wake-white-mouse.html .  17 Nancy Wake, The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the White Mouse (South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985).  Bibliography Primary Wake, Nancy. The White Mouse: The Autobiography of Australia’s Greatest War Heroine. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985.  Wake, Nancy. The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the White Mouse . South Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985., https://archive.org/details/nancywhite-mouseautobio1985 - The National Archives (UK). “Nancy Wake – Special Operations Executive.”  https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/nancy-wake/   Wake, Nancy. The White Mouse: The Autobiography of the Woman the Gestapo Called the White Mouse. Melbourne: Macmillan, 1985.  NZ On Screen. Nancy Wake Remembered. Documentary, 2019.  https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/nancy-wake-remembered-2019 Secondary Facing History & Ourselves. Women and the National Community. Last modified August 2, 2016. https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/women-national-community . - FitzSimons, Peter. Nancy Wake: A Biography of Our Greatest War Heroine. Sydney: HarperCollins, 2001.  https://www.amazon.com/Nancy-Wake-Fitzsimons-Peter/dp/0732295254 - Braddon, Russell. Nancy Wake: SOE’s Greatest Heroine. London: Cassell, 1956.  https://archive.org/details/nancywakesoesgre0000brad   "Nancy Wake, the White Mouse.” War History Online . June 21, 2017. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/nancy-wake-white-mouse.html - National Archives of Australia.“Nancy Wake: Second World War Heroine.” https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/student-research-portal/learning-resource t hemes/government-and-democracy/activism/second-world-war-heroine-nancy-wake - “Women of Steel: LIFE With Female Factory Workers in World War II.” TIME , March 8, 2017. https://time.com/4679011/women-factory-workers-wwii-life/ .

“There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason she cannot master every technicality of the art”. - Alice Guy-Blaché Like many industries today, the film industry has been subject to much scrutiny over gender discrimination, sexism and predatory behaviours within the last decade. For good reason a light has been shone on the institutional mistreatment of women - a culture that has been allowed to exist due to decades of male control within the hegemony of the large, market-leading studios. Since 2017, the #MeToo movement has been pivotal in initiating awareness and justice for victims of predators within Hollywood and the wider industry. Along with equality and diversity policies and earlier feminist efforts, the attention on the industry’s systemic gender issues is creating a platform for more women to claim positions of power and influence. This progress is perceived today as pushing the film industry forward in its inclusion of women in directorial, production-based and corporate roles. However, to talk about progress is to insinuate that the film industry of the past excluded women and forced them into positions of inferiority. While this was partly the case for a long time, the formative years of the film industry were shaped by many women who pioneered the practice and dared to experiment with the burgeoning technology of the time. For over a century these women’s contributions to cinema history have been all but forgotten. Their works have been lost, overlooked and miscredited. It’s time that these women are restored to their former glory and remembered for their valuable influence on the film industry and its future. Alice Guy-Blaché photographed in 1913 The mother of narrative film: Alice Guy-Blaché Towards the end of the 19th century, many inventors, engineers, and entrepreneurs were caught up in the race to develop the leading method of filming and exhibiting moving pictures. Ultimately, the Lumière brothers are widely credited as the ones to do this in Paris, France, in March 1895 when they showcased their invention the Cinématographe. The Lumières’ films were essentially documentaries: minute-long depictions of ordinary life made purely to show off their new technology. While the earliest film exhibitions did attract crowds, this was based more on the aesthetic and sensational appeal of moving pictures and their novelty as a relatively new medium of entertainment. It wasn’t until later that the potential of narrative film was realised. Twenty-two year old Alice Guy was in attendance at that first commercial film screening. Secretary to Léon Gaumont (who went on to found Gaumont Film Company which became the first film studio in the world), she had developed interest and expertise in cameras through her dealings with clients and a handful of engineers. Excited by the potential of film, Guy asked Gaumont if she could make her own film, to which he agreed (as long as it didn’t interfere with her secretarial work). With the creation of La Fée Aux Choux / The Cabbage Fairy (1896), narrative film was born. Like many early films, the original version perished; Guy’s 1900 remake, depicting a fairy who conjures babies out of cabbage patches, is the version most familiar to audiences today. From 1896 to 1906, Guy was the only woman in the world creating films, making her the first female filmmaker. Gaumont soon made Guy head of production for the entire company, solidifying her significance in the history of film. She held this position until she departed to the United States in 1907 with her husband Herbert Blaché. La Fée Aux Choux/ The Cabbage Fairy (Alice Guy-Blaché, 1900) They relocated because Herbert, who also worked for the Gaumont company, was transferred to Flushing, New York to oversee the studio there. Due to disputes over technology and film distribution rights involving Thomas Edison, by 1910 operation at the Gaumont plant had essentially ended. Seeing the opportunity presented to her, Alice Guy-Blaché established her own production company on the Gaumont site, thus founding the Solax Company. Guy-Blaché’s films at Solax are characterised by their on-location shooting and preference for realism, which differed from the convention of studio-shooting; a sign telling actors to “Be Natural” hung on one studio wall. By 1912 the Solax Company had raised enough funds for Alice (who was pregnant) and Herbert to build their own studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Fort Lee was emerging as a centre for early silent film production so Guy-Blaché’s presence among industry leaders signifies her success as a filmmaker. The studio successfully moved from only producing shorts to also releasing feature-length films, however growing costs and the ever-growing appeal of the West Coast later caused trouble for Solax. Alice Guy-Blaché is believed to have written, directed and produced around 1,000 films during her career. Unfortunately, only 150 are currently known to have survived; others may have been attributed to other directors, but Guy-Blaché worked tirelessly to reclaim many of her works before her death in 1963. One of her notable films from her Solax years was In The Year 2000 (1912), a remake of her 1906 Gaumont production Les Résultats du Féminisme . These films depict a world in which male and female gender roles are reversed (I'm sure Alice would've loved Greta Gerwig's Barbie ). She also created a handful of female action films, which were a timely response to the ‘serial queens’ trend in silent cinema. The ‘serial queens’ were well-loved stars of serialised short films about the adventures of female action heroes, including serials like The Perils of Pauline (1914) and The Hazards of Helen (1914-1917). Guy-Blaché is also recognised for directing one of the first films with an all-black cast, if not the first. A Fool and His Money (1912) is by no means progressive in its representation of race, but its cast represents a significant piece of cinema history. Guy-Blaché in her final years After her divorce from Herbert and handling the bankruptcy of the Solax Company in 1922, Guy-Blaché returned to Paris where she began lecturing in film. Despite assisting her ex-husband on three films in Los Angeles, Alice was largely uninvolved in the booming Hollywood scene of cinema, and her name was omitted from many historical accounts of the early cinema industry. Towards the end of her life she became focused on reclaiming her name and tracking down lost works, endeavouring to have herself remembered as the pioneer she was. Slowly, she received some film accreditation, however it was not until 1968, some years after her death, that feminist film scholars acknowledged Alice’s existence and her role in cinema history was rightfully recognised. Pamela B. Green’s 2018 documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché is a tender and informative exploration of Guy-Blaché’s work I absolutely recommend to anyone interested in learning more . America’s first female director: Lois Weber Director, screenwriter, pioneer: Lois Weber Lois Weber’s film career began in New York, where she had worked in theatre with her husband, Phillips Smalley, before working with the Rex Motion Picture Company. In 1913, the couple relocated to the ever-growing film community in Los Angeles where they signed contracts to write and direct under Universal studios. Before long, Weber, often publicly known as Mrs. Smalley, was a leading director at Universal Pictures. An early pop-culture ‘power couple’, the Smalleys collaborated on films together, but by 1916 it was evident that Lois was the dominant force in their filmmaking partnership. She wrote their scripts and directed many of their works. Phillips understood his wife’s expertise to such an extent that he was frequently observed turning to Lois for advice on important decisions. Her knowledge and artistic authority was evident in their working relationship. Weber experienced the height of her success in the mid-1910s. In these years she was often mentioned in print as one of the top Hollywood talents, considered with key filmmakers like D.W. Griffith (director of the racist film Birth Of A Nation (1915)), and Cecil B. DeMille, who later directed Sunset Boulevard (1950). In 1916 she was also the first and only woman elected to the Motion Picture Directors Association, remaining the only woman to do so before the association made way for the Screen Actors Guild in 1936. Throughout her career, Weber fostered not only her own successful career, but also the careers of various rising stars by supporting them in their journey to becoming Hollywood actresses. Husband and wife team, Phillips Smalley and Lois Weber Following her successful years at Universal, Weber established her own company called Lois Weber Productions, in 1917. Here she was able to forgo the thematic constraints Universal placed on her (they thought the films she wanted to make were too ‘domestic’) and began making the most intimate films of her career. Under the name of her own studio she endeavoured to write more complex parts for women. She was aware of Hollywood’s inclination to prescribe women one-dimensional labels like ‘flapper’ or ‘wife.’ Weber always had a tendency to write and direct films speaking to the social issues of her time. Films such as John Doe (1916), Where Are My Children? (1916) and Shoes (1916) discussed the abolition of capital punishment, legalisation of birth control, and urban poverty, demonstrating her penchant for social commentary in her filmmaking. One of the earliest proponents for film as a powerful medium for narrative drama, Weber hoped for her films to “have an influence for good on the public mind”, distinguishing herself from other (male) filmmakers whose aim for film was to associate it with highbrow culture in order to validate itself as an artform. Like her contemporaries, Lois used new filmmaking techniques, such as split-screen ( Suspense , from 1913, or over-exposure effects ( Where Are My Children? ), but in some cases before they did. These are elements of their filmmaking that have long been praised by film historians and early film fans. However, Weber’s recognition as an experimenter has not been well documented. Weber’s use of over-exposure in Where Are My Children? (1916) After only a few years, Lois Weber Productions began to struggle and Weber’s output slowed from 1922. Some have noted that the end of her marriage that year was partly to do with this, citing her dependence on Phillips in the business-side of the company as more necessary to her success than she had led people to think. However, she was not the only person or company to struggle at this time; in fact, Lois did continue making a few more films after her divorce- something that her ex-husband never attempted. More important than the divorce to her eventual decline was the changing structure of the Hollywood film industry which favoured the mass-production and investment only the large studios could afford. Many independent studios could not compete. It is commendable that Lois’ career weathered the transition from silent to sound cinema after 1929 with her final feature White Heat (1934). Remaining as early Hollywood’s only female director during the, Weber’s films took on a low cultural value. Her work was marketed as ‘women’s films’, no longer perceived with the prestige and quality of her earlier releases. Upon her death at age 60 in 1939, Lois Weber’s eulogy described her as only a “star maker”, remembered not for her own successful and celebrated career, but for her ability to begin other actresses’ careers. Tragically, her 25 years in the film industry and writing and directing credits on 40 features and 100 shorts were omitted. Fading to obscurity Towards the end of the 1920s, many filmmakers and performers failed to hold the same prestige in the film industry that they had experienced at the peak of their silent film careers since the early 1900s. Anyone who’s seen Singin’ In The Rain (1952) will understand the difficulties many careers faced during this shift to synchronised sound. Most production had moved to Hollywood, capitalist studios were beginning to hold the monopoly on distribution and exhibition, and positions within studios were becoming increasingly gendered, pushing women out of executive roles. At the beginning of their careers, female filmmakers had been relatively free to contribute to the new medium behind the scenes as no expectations of what the commercial film industry should be, or what it would become, existed. Women’s ‘moral superiority’ was actually used as a legitimation force, assuring audiences of the virtue of the new means of entertainment. As time progressed and a small collection of studios consolidated their power over the entire industry, men asserted themselves in positions of authority, while the artistic qualities associated with women and their femininity were no longer a hallmark of quality filmmaking, seen rather as excessive and outdated. Lois Weber was essentially written out of history while she was still an active filmmaker; her male contemporaries cemented their legacy while she battled to find work. Alice Guy-Blaché directs Themes of being lost, disregarded, and unappreciated arise when considering early film’s female pioneers. MacMahan has named Alice Guy-Blaché “the lost visionary of cinema” and her work a “lost garden”, while Weber was “forgotten with a vengeance” according to Richard Koszarski. In fact, the presence of women within the dominant Hollywood film industry was all but nothing until many decades later, and even then it is debatable whether that has changed enough. Dorothy Arzner is regarded by many as the only female director in the “Golden Age” of Hollywood, with this title remaining well into the twentieth century. Remembering film’s female pioneers When elevating contemporary women within the film industry we should draw attention to their predecessors, who not only were a part of this burgeoning craft, but influenced the conventions we associate with commercial cinema today. Alice Guy-Blaché told The Moving Picture World in 1914 that “there is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason she cannot master every technicality of the art”. These words have never felt truer than today, when more women’s voices are being heard as they claim positions of artistic authority. There was never any inevitability that men would dominate filmmaking. In fact, the women active in the earliest version of the film industry held a significant share of the workload. In the act of bringing more women to the forefront today, we can also lift up these women of the past who did so much to Lois Weber surrounded by crew of The Angel of Broadway (1927) put their mark on the history of cinema. It’s also worth noting that I’ve only mentioned two women in this article. Ruth Ann Baldwin, Nell Shipman, and the first Black female filmmaker Maria P. Williams are just a few of the incredible women whose works have been lost and unappreciated over the last 100 years. By recognising them as not only women who were trailblazers, but also as pioneering filmmakers in their own right, we challenge contemporary representations of historical women. These women’s personal achievements and names should be recognised for their importance to film history alongside other well-documented visionaries in the story of film. Further reading: Dargis, Manohla, ‘Overlooked No More: Alice Guy-Blaché, the World’s First Female Filmmaker’, The New York Times , 2019, via < https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/06/obituaries/alice-guy-blache-overlooked.html > Gaines, Jane and Radha Vatsal, ‘How Women Worked in the US Silent Film Industry’, Women Film Pioneers Project , 2011, via < https://wfpp.columbia.edu/essay/how-women-worked-in-the-us-silent-film-industry/ > McMahan, Alison, ‘Alice Guy-Blaché’, Women Film Pioneers Project , 2018, via < https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-alice-guy-blache/ > The Moving Picture World , 11 July 1914 O’Hara, Helen, Women Vs Hollywood: The Fall and Rise of Women in Film (London: Robinson, 2021) Photoplay , 1913, p. 73 Rose, Steve, ‘Why was pioneering director Alice Guy-Blaché erased from film-making history?’, The Guardian , 2020, via < https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/jan/20/why-was-pioneering-director-alice-guy-blache-erased-from-film-making-history#:~:text=Being%20a%20woman%20was%20no,even%20attributed%20to%20the%20men. > Stamp, Shelley, ‘Lois Weber’, Women Film Pioneers Project , 2013, via < https://wfpp.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-lois-weber/ > Lois Weber in Early Hollywood (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015), via < https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt13x1gnm > Filmography A Fool and His Money , dir. by Alice Guy-Blaché (The Solax Company, 1912) Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché , dir. by Pamela B. Green (Zeitgeist Films, 2018) Danse Des Papillons , dir. by Alice Guy-Blaché (Gaumont, 1897) In The Year 2000 , dir. by Alice Guy-Blaché (The Solax Company, 1912) La Fée Aux Choux/ The Cabbage Fairy , dir. by Alice Guy-Blaché (Gaumont, 1896) Les Résultats du Féminisme , dir. by Alice Guy-Blaché (Gaumont, 1906) The People vs. John Doe , dir. by Lois Weber and Phillips Smalley (Universal, 1916) Shoes , dir. by Lois Weber (Universal, 1916) Suspense , dir. by Lois Weber (Universal, 1913) Where Are My Children? , dir. by Lois Weber (Universal, 1916) White Heat , dir. by Lois Weber (Pinnacle Production Company, 1934)

Motorsport has never been a welcoming space for women. But that never stopped Susie Wolff from karting at eight to becoming a Formula One test driver, proving that talent doesn't recognize gender. Her influence, however, runs far deeper than the racetrack. She is now using all that she has learned to create opportunities for future generations of women racers, women who would not have to fight so hard for their chances. Susie Wolff Susie Wolff's Journey: From Karting to Formula One Born on December 6, 1982, in Scotland, Susie was introduced to the world of motorcars through her family's keen interest in motorsport. From the age of eight, she quickly made a name for herself as a natural talent. Her karting prowess earned her a place in Formula Renault and Formula 3, two of the most competitive junior single-seater categories. Here, she honed her racecraft, battling wheel to wheel with some of the best young racers globally. However, breaking into Formula One was a different challenge altogether. Women have reached the highest tier in the sport only in a handful of cases. A prime example is Lella Lombardi, who made history in the 1970s as the only woman to score points in a Formula 1 Grand Prix, finishing sixth at the 1975 Spanish Grand Prix. Then came Susie's opportunity in 2012. Williams F1, one of the oldest teams in the sport, recognised her potential and signed her as a development driver. This was a significant moment, not just for Susie but for all women in motorsport. In 2014, she became the first woman to participate in an official Formula One Grand Prix weekend, driving in free practice for the British and German Grands Prix. While she may not have secured a permanent F1 seat, limited track time—especially after a mechanical failure in her first session—meant she never had a full chance to prove herself in race conditions. Nevertheless, she accomplished something phenomenal: she demonstrated that female drivers had a rightful place at the pinnacle of motorsport. More Than Just a Driver: Building a Legacy For many drivers, stepping away from the cockpit often means fading into the background. However, for Susie Wolff, this was hardly the case. She resolved to take on an even bigger challenge, aiming to change the sport from within. After retiring from racing, she transitioned into management and took on the role of team principal at Venturi Racing in Formula E, the world’s foremost electric racing series. Under her decisive guidance, the team made significant progress, showcasing her talents beyond the cockpit. Yet, her most significant contribution to racing came in 2023 when she was appointed managing director for the F1 Academy. This groundbreaking initiative aims to provide aspiring female drivers with a genuine opportunity to compete at the highest levels of motorsport. Rise of F1 Academy: Changing the Future of Women in Racing Over the years, female racing drivers have struggled to ascend the ranks, not due to a lack of talent but because of the absence of opportunities. The F1 Academy seeks to change that narrative. Specifically designed for young female drivers, this championship offers the resources, funding, and high-level competition necessary to cultivate the next generation of female racing stars. Unlike other junior series, the F1 Academy focuses not only on racing but also on education. Susie fully understands that motorsport demands more than just speed; many other factors contribute to successful driving, including training and the significance of being in the right place at the right time. Her leadership in the F1 Academy is already paving the way for change. Never before have so many female drivers gained serious recognition as genuine competitors, and the sport as a whole has been making strides toward greater inclusivity. A prime example of this progress occurred in 2024 when Jessica Hawkins became the first woman in nearly five years to test a Formula 1 car, driving for Aston Martin. The goal is not merely to place women in F1 cars; it's to ensure that young girls watching at home believe that it is possible. The F1 Academy is just the beginning. A post race cuddle Through Susie Wolff's vision and hard work, a new generation of female drivers is ready to step out and take on the world, showing that women do belong in every corner of F1. Susie Wolff on the Impact of F1 Academy Reflecting on the Academy’s impact, Wolff shared in an interview with Formula 1 Official Website (2025): “We can be very proud of what we’ve achieved in a short space of time, but this was always a long-term project. We need to see more young girls in karting, and they’re calling it ‘the F1 Academy effect.’ I’ve never seen so many young girls in karting, and that for me is just as important as the success of the series because we need to inspire the next generation. We need to get more young women racing for the best to rise to the top.” Why Susie Wolff’s Work Matters Motorsport is changing, but change does not happen overnight. It takes pioneers, leaders, and individuals willing to push the boundaries. Susie Wolff embodies all of these qualities. Her career illustrates that with determination, resilience, and the right opportunities, women can compete at the highest levels of motorsport. More importantly, she is making it easier for the next generation. The Future: What’s Next? Thanks to initiatives like the rise of the F1 Academy and the promotion of diversity in motorsport, the future appears bright. More female drivers are competing than ever before, and the barriers that once held them back are starting to crumble. Will we see a female driver on the Formula One grid soon? If Susie Wolff has anything to do with it, the answer is a resounding yes. She has already altered the landscape of motorsport. Now, she’s shaping its future. And that future looks faster, more competitive, and more inclusive than ever before. The future of race car driving Susie Wolff's journey is a testament to resilience and passion. Despite the challenges she faced as a woman in a male-dominated sport, she never allowed societal norms to dictate her path. Her determination and skill earned her respect in the racing community, breaking barriers and inspiring future generations of female drivers. Beyond the racetrack, she has become a symbol of empowerment and courage for women everywhere. Her legacy continues to remind us that with dedication and support, we can achieve remarkable feats, no matter the obstacles. The Importance of Representation in Motorsport Representation matters in every field, and motorsport is no exception. When young girls see women like Susie Wolff in prominent roles, it sends a powerful message. It tells them that they, too, can aspire to greatness in a field that has historically sidelined them. The visibility of female drivers and leaders in motorsport can inspire a new generation to pursue their dreams, regardless of gender. The Role of Mentorship Mentorship plays a crucial role in nurturing talent. Susie Wolff's commitment to mentoring young female drivers is vital. By sharing her experiences and insights, she helps pave the way for others. This mentorship fosters a supportive environment where aspiring racers can thrive. It is through such initiatives that we can build a more inclusive future in motorsport. The Broader Impact of Diversity in Sports The push for diversity in motorsport is part of a larger movement across all sports. As we see more women and underrepresented groups entering various athletic arenas, the conversation around inclusivity is becoming more prominent. This shift not only benefits the individuals involved but also enriches the sport itself. Diverse perspectives lead to innovative ideas and approaches, ultimately enhancing the overall experience for fans and participants alike. Conclusion: A New Era in Motorsport As we look ahead, it is clear that Susie Wolff's influence will continue to resonate within the world of motorsport. Her journey from karting to Formula One and her efforts to create opportunities for future generations signify a new era. This era is characterised by inclusivity, empowerment, and the breaking down of barriers. With the F1 Academy and other initiatives, we are witnessing a transformation in the landscape of motorsport. The future is bright, and it is one where women can compete, lead, and inspire. Susie Wolff has not only changed the game; she is redefining it for generations to come.

The Ladies of Llangollen, Anne Lister, Anna Seward, and the problem of "Modern History's First Lesbians" Lesbians, sapphics, tribades, lesbi-gays, dykes, clitorist, beanflicker, Amy-John, clam smacker, scissor sister, invert. There’s plenty of names for women who love women, but what is our history, and who was the first lezza? Historical Sapphism Some historians believe that prior to the twentieth century there was simply no such thing as female homoeroticism, even arguing that women prior to this century couldn’t experience ‘lesbianism’ or lesbian sex because such concepts were invented by sexologists in the late nineteenth century. It’s laughable, and a brief look into the history books tell us quite opposite. In an article published in 2017, Anna Clark discusses historic sapphic subcultures among dancers and prostitutes, especially in metropolitan Paris in the early eighteenth-century. (Of course it's Paris.) Additionally, recent study of ‘deviant’ sexualities in European courts have explored Christina of Sweden’s affairs with women, notably Ebba Spare, as well as Marie Antoinette’s ‘lesbian’ sexual exploits which were the subject of several pamphlets during the French Revolution. Furthermore, in her 1789 denunciation, Hester Thrale Piozzi described Marie Antoinette as “ the Head of a Set of Monsters call’d by each other Sapphists ” Simeon Solomon, Sappho and Erinna in a Garden at Mytilene, 1864 Used liberally in this article and by this historian generally, the terms 'Sapphic', and ‘Sapphist’ were understood to be insults relating to female homoeroticism based on the comprehension that the Ancient Greek poet Sappho had sexual and romantic relationships with women as early as the fifteenth century. Sappho is also where we get the term ‘lesbian’, as this was the term for people from the Isle of Lesbos, where she lived. This terminology is evidenced as early as the fifteenth century . Furthermore, Rebecca Jennings’ A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500, provides a valuable discussion of evidence of female homoeroticism throughout ancient, medieval and early modern history in medical texts, literature, visual art and travel journals. In fact, female sexual gratification during the fourteenth - seventeenth centuries was thought to be fundamental to conception and to curing symptoms of female hysteria; if a husband was thought to be incapable of administering an orgasm, it was expected that a midwife would do so. Thus, female ‘administered’ sexual gratification was well established. A lack of awareness may be attributable to a lack of legal jurisdiction regarding female homoeroticism in comparison to strict laws and punishments for male homoeroticism throughout the centuries. Phallic-free sex couldn’t really be comprehended in strictly patriarchal societies, so even when and where there were laws regarding ‘lesbianism’, they were based on the use of ‘tools’ which weren’t a real penis in intercourse with women. For example, women in the fifteenth and sixteenth century in the Southern Netherlands faced strict prosecution for the crime of sodomy. These facts did little to disprove dominant historiography concerning female homoeroticism (or rather lack thereof) in historical study until the publication of Anne Lister’s explicit sexual exploits in the 1980s. Emma Donoghue has described these texts as the 'Dead Sea Scrolls of lesbian history’ for their incomparable impact in proving female homoeroticism prior to the twentieth century. Since the rediscovery and decoding of her diaries, Anne Lister has become a sapphic icon comparable to Sappho herself. Her apparent singularity in her efforts to live freely in matrimony with another woman has elicited a wealth of historical and cultural media attention. Most recently, she has dominated BBC ratings in the series ‘Gentleman Jack’, named for Lister’s malicious nickname among Halifax residents for the way she appeared ‘like a man’ according to her dress and engagement in business. The show is well worth a watch, and has been developed according to the 26 volumes that Lister wrote, specifically focussing on the last eight years of her life, when she decided to settle down and ‘marry’. There are inaccuracies, and several liberties taken with costume (she didn’t wear a tall hat, for example), and her height, but the changes are not particularly important to the narrative of the show, nor how we remember her. (This isn’t a historical-fiction article, so no more comments about the accuracy of dress, I promise.) Suranne Jones as Anne Lister and Sophie Rundle as Ann Walker in Gentleman Jack, BBC The first series depicts Lister's determined mission to court and marry the much younger and often bewildered local heiress, Ann Walker. The final episode of the first series depicts the pair ‘marrying’ at the Holy Trinity Church in York on Easter Sunday, 1834. Series two follows their ‘marriage’ and Lister pushing Walker into making Lister a large beneficiary of her estate, something Lister had previously done for the 'love of her life' Mariana Lawton (née Belcombe). These events, depicted in remarkable accuracy support a popular belief that Lister was the first modern lesbian, and her ‘marriage’ to Walker unique. However, we know for a fact that female homoeroticism was not invented by this dashing sapphic in the eighteenth century, and if you cast your eye slightly broader, even the idea of marriage to another woman was not her own. (Shockingly, lesbians have always been trying to move in with each other and live their lives together.) Lister has had an undeniable impact on Sapphic history, yet her popular legacy as ‘Modern History’s first Lesbian’ is ridiculously unfair. For starters, the term lesbian, although used throughout this article, isn’t really one that we can use as the term was not popularly known or used, certainly not by the women we are discussing. Secondly, Anne Lister was not the only woman to fancy other women, otherwise she wouldn’t have found anyone to shag. And finally, if Anne Lister had to give an opinion on the subject, she would likely argue that she was 'Modern History’s First Lesbian', after the Ladies of Llangollen. Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby In July 1822, Anne Lister, along with her aunt, the elder Anne Lister, embarked on a long-awaited tour of North Wales, the shining moment of which was a stay in the Vale of Llangollen and two visits to a Tudor Style Cottage named Plas-Newydd. Meaning New-House’, Plas-Newydd was the home to the Anglo-Irish gentlewomen Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby. This pair of women were significant because they had done something completely out of the ordinary for eighteenth-century women, they had run away, and set up their own home, completely cutting ties with their families. Now that’s a simplified summary of events, so let’s go into more detail. Plas Newydd, the Ladies of Llangollen's Tudor home, is now a museum and historic house open to the public Ponsonby and Butler met in around 1776, Butler was already a spinster (she was in her 30s, scandalous!), and Ponsonby, an eighteen-year-old. They would meet for tutoring, long walks and deep conversations, when Butler travelled, they sent rambling letters, telling how much they missed the other. It became clear quite quickly, that the pair were completely obsessed with each other. (Typical.) In April 1778, discovering that Ponsonby’s family were discussing her marriage, they decided to sneak out from their respective homes in Kilkenny and escape to Wales, where Butler had found a discrete cottage for their elopement. The first escape effort failed, and they were both imprisoned in their homes, until Butler, learning that she was to be packed off to a convent, escaped, and managed to get into Ponsonby’s chambers, where she hid for several days whilst the families debated what to do with their unruly girls. Eventually, on the 6th May, they were allowed to leave, with Ponsonby’s trusted maid, on the premise that they would not take any income from their families, nor return to Kilkenny. (Such a hardship…) So, Butler and Ponsonby ran off to Wales, eloping in ‘exquisite retirement’. They found a home in Llangollen and spent their days engaging in literary scholarship and lengthy walks around the Welsh hills, and their evenings in the same bed. They became a site of fascination for society, their ‘romantic friendship’ as it was known, thought of as an exquisite form of platonic love. Even Queen Charlotte (yes that one) adored them, and the Ladies engaged with her by sending a plan of their home and gardens. They welcomed a constant stream of visitors there to view the extensive literary collection, and the spectacle of the ladies themselves. These visitors included Anna Seward, who we will discuss in a moment, William Wordsworth, and even Lord Byron. Portrait of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby out walking with their dog. Lister’s intrigue with these ‘Ladies of Llangollen’ as they were nicknamed, was two-fold; firstly, regarding their extensive literary scholarship, and secondly, the exact intimate nature of their relationship. During her visit on the 23rd July 1822, Lister attempted to ask Ponsonby about the true nature of their relationship, asking if they were ‘classical’, meaning homoerotic, which Ponsonby denied. Although she was unable to discern the true extent of the intimacy shared between Butler and Ponsonby, the impact on the then 31-year-old Lister was made. Later that day Lister writes, ‘I cannot help but thinking that surely it [their relationship] was not platonic’. (Very astute, Anne.) Romantic Friendship or homo-eroticism? Whilst historical study on the Ladies of Llangollen has not been lacking in quantity, in terms of ‘queer’ studies it has certainly been lacking in quality. The story of the pair’s attempted secret flight and eventual successful elopement, against the best efforts of their families, would, had either been male have been an undeniably sexually charged tale of forbidden lovers. However, dominant historiography continues to consider Butler and Ponsonby’s relationship as the idyllic platonic ‘Romantic Friendship’ of the long eighteenth century: a fairly common intimate relationship between women which surpassed any other friendship, but was not sexual. This is despite substantial evidence which supports an argument that their elopement was every bit the twenty-first century cottage-core fantasy it appears. As well as the basic fact that other romantic friendships would last for a few years at the most, and end with one or both women involved marrying men and moving on. Historians have struggled to conceptualise this relationship in light of the facts, for example, the 1936 narrative biography Chase of the Wild Goose by lesbian, doctor, and author, Mary Gordon presents the Ladies as proto-feminist and proto-lesbian. In her fantastical epilogue she alludes to the queer connotations of their partnership and thanks them for making ‘the way straight for the time that we inherited …’. However, she does not entertain a possibility of a sexual relationship. Similarly, Elizabeth Mavor, writing in 1971 strives to decry claims of a sexual relationship, or ‘Freud-ism’, concluding that whilst the Ladies of Llangollen are an example of an extraordinarily close ‘Romantic Friendship’ the ambiguity of their intimacy stems from their longevity, and nothing more. Now we know that these arguments are fundamentally flawed, female homoeroticism was an established fact, Gordon and Mavor’s obsessive attempts to avoid any implication of a sexual relationship, or ‘Freud-ism’ in their portrayals of the Ladies of Llangollen has resulted in texts which ignore glaring and simple facts. Such as their dramatic elopement; fifty years of cohabitation; bed sharing; exclusive use of the phrase ‘My Beloved’; never spending a night apart; and their uninhibited and unwavering dedication to each other from the moment of their meeting. (It's all very straight, isn't it?) If this were truly an innocent Romantic Friendship, why was their elopement scandalous? Lady Betty Fownes, Ponsonby's guardian, wrote of her happiness on hearing of Butler's impending confinement, 'I wish she had been safe in one [a convent] long ago; she would have made us [all] happy. Many an unhappy hour she has cost me, and, I am convinced, years to Sally [Sarah]' . Despite Mavor and Gordon’s wilful ignorance, the retirement to Wales was clearly understood by all parties to not be a temporary excursion. The dedication shown by these women was indicative even to their earliest contemporaries of something greater than a ‘Romantic Friendship’. Furthermore, considering primary texts such as the Hamwood Papers (Butler’s diaries and their correspondence) it is clear that Butler and Ponsonby thought of themselves as good as married. In convincing Fownes that she could be trusted with her guard, Butler promised that she would care for her ‘for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health’. Whilst Ponsonby, in response to Mrs Lucy Goddard’s fearful warning that Butler was a woman who ‘does not understand virtue…’ adding, ‘…she might make love to you,” replied laughing , ‘I hope that she will love me… she does so beautifully. ’ Regardless of if these comments were meant in sincerity or jest, it is clear that they were aware of, and unafraid of the connotations their intimate relationship encouraged. In a discussion of their self-awareness it is also worth noting that the Ladies of Llangollen had a string of dogs named Sappho. As literary scholars this may be ignored as simple poetic favour, fragments of Sappho’s poetry which may have been considered homoerotic were typically censored throughout the eighteenth century. However, as stated, Sappho was already synonymous with female homoeroticism, Emma Donoghue and Susan Lanser have established that any exclusion of these excerpts indicate an inherent, and fearful understanding of deviance, but this censorship wasn’t complete, and the texts could be accessed. It would be ignorant to argue that the Ladies of Llangollen, whose literary scholarship was almost unparalleled, were unaware of the implication of this name. Why is it so difficult to accept historic sapphism? Jennings explains that the fundamental obstacle to studies of ambiguous sapphic relationships is ‘essentialism’ (the idea that same-sex relationships have always existed and need to be rescued) and ‘constructionism’ (that sexual practises and identities are defined by wider culture and thus, how we define them tells us more about ourselves than of the relationships in question). It is perhaps because of this difficulty, and because of what Jennings describes as an obsession with defining ‘lesbianism’ through sex, that the Ladies of Llangollen are overlooked as an example of female same-sex love and homoeroticism. To put it simply, it seems to suit conservatism to consider Anne Lister entirely singular in her vulgarity. Portrait of Anne Lister Fiona Brideoake provides the most effective rebuttal of reductive studies, starting with a criticism of Faderman’s conclusion that ‘lesbianism’ is a gendered commitment to another woman. Brideoake argues that these relationships are in fact, indicative of a multifaceted identity which should be considered equal to heterosexuality. However, the issues surrounding comprehending these relationships remain, thus, the terminology used to discuss them must be carefully chosen. Brideoake favours the umbrella term ‘ queer’ meaning alternative to heteronormativity, Sarah Bentley defines their relationship, or rather our understanding of ‘Romantic Friendships’ to be ‘queer platonic’. However, is the accuracy of their intimacy the most significant factor of their relationship? As Elin Salt, the playwright of ‘Celebrated Virgins’ a 2022 play about the Ladies of Llangollen, states ‘if this was a man and a woman... We'd just accept they were two people who loved each other .” It is not the complexities of their relationship which are important, it is their impact as perceived Sapphists which needs to be considered. An anti- ‘lesbian’ argument could be supported by Hester Thrale Piozzi’s good friendship with Butler and Ponsonby. Piozzi is damning of perceived sapphism. For example, in her in 1789 denunciation of Marie Antoinette; Piozi also accused Anne Seymour Damer, an artist who was a rumoured sapphist of ‘ liking her own sex in a criminal way... ’. Piozzi would have been aware of the suggestions made concerning the intimacy of Butler and Ponsonby’s relationship thanks to a number of news publications disparaging the Ladies and their relationship, such as an article titled ‘Extraordinary Female Affection’ for a 1790 issue of the St James’ Chronicle . It is perhaps due to the inaccuracies of such articles that Piozzi does not disparage Butler and Ponsonby as she does other women who appear unsuitably single , describing them instead as ‘ enchantresses’. However, as established ‘lesbians’ Anne Lister and Anna Seward both considered the Ladies of Llangollen as their emotional and erotic ‘kin’ it is in a study of these latter women that their position as ‘Modern History’s First Lesbians’ can be understood. Understanding sapphism through tragedy Queer history is often quite tragic, between forced heterosexuality, death and separation, you're hard pressed to find a truly happy queer relationship. Even Sarah and Eleanor's de facto marriage necessitated an almost permanent split from their families and homes. Queer individuals and relationships are recognisable through tragedy, a good example of this is Anna Seward, queer, a romantic poet and friend to the Ladies of Llangollen. Seward's writing and letters support an argument of lesbianism; she wrote to Mrs M. Powys in 1796 describing the Ladies of Llangollen as a modern Rosalind and Celia, the cross-dressing ‘lesbians’ of Shakespeare’s As You Like It . More significant however, is the suggestion that through their Portrait of romantic poet Anna Seward relationship, Seward was able to mourn the loss of her own love, living somewhat vicariously through her friends. The majority of Seward’s biographical studies pay little attention to the cause of her lifelong depression, perhaps to avoid a discussion of the poet’s sexuality. Literary studies of her work have however highlighted the cause of her heartbreak as the loss of Honora Sneyd, first to marriage and later to death, primary to that of the other numerous griefs Seward suffered, including the death of her sister and father, to both of whom she was remarkably close. Sneyd, who Seward refers to as the ‘sun of my youthful horizon’, ‘my lost Honora’ and ‘my constant companion’ is considered to be an equal or greater inspiration to Seward’s Ossianic literature than the death of her other famous lover Major Andre. She describes her grief for her lost lovers simultaneously, writing [the memory of them is] ‘rising, like an exhalation, in my memory’ . In her 2015 publication, Joellen DuLucia situates Seward’s grief and her sapphism in the context of her epic, Llangollen Vale, which personifies Butler and Ponsonby . This, along with William Wordsworth’s later sonnet were significant contributors to the Ladies’ popular celebrity, and the language used by both is thought to have protected the Ladies of Llangollen from scandal regarding the nature of their relationship. However, if read through a queer lens, Seward’s epic narrative in particular, can be read as an ode not only to ‘Eleanora and Zara’, but through the lack of tragedy, a melancholic ode to the tragic Honora Sneyd. Particularly enlightening is the line which hopes that they [Butler and Ponsonby] will ‘perish together beneath “one kind icebolt,” a peace she and Sneyd could never share. ‘Modern History’s First Lesbian’ herself, Anne Lister, first read about the Ladies of Llangollen in an 1810 article in the fashionable magazine La Belle Assemblee. However, Lister’s sapphism could not be attributed to the reading of an article. As her diaries indicate, Lister had been considered ‘odd’ throughout her childhood, too masculine, too daring and too vulgar. Her first relationship began when Lister was 15, and confined to the attic of her boarding school in fears that she would negatively influence the other girls. Her roommate, Eliza Raine, an Anglo-Indian girl who was also considered too non-conformist to share the usual dormitories, became her first love from 1806 until 1814. Moreover, Lister’s relationship with Mariana Lawton began in 1812, however, it is only once Mariana visits Llangollen in 1817 and writes of Butler and Ponsonby’s unparalleled devotion that the pair began to seriously envisage a future together, despite Lawton’s marriage and the unfortunate eventuality that her husband did not die. Initially pushed by Lawton, from the moment of her own visit in 1822, Lister too was entirely convinced; she wrote days after her visit ‘ I should not like to live in Wales – but if it must be so, and I could choose the spot, it should be Plas-Newydd at Llangollen, which is already endeared even to me by the association of ideas. ’ (Very platonic!) Plas-Newydd and Llangollen Vale became, during the lifetimes of Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Sarah Ponsonby and continues to be to this day, a destination of pilgrimage for LGBTQIA+ individuals. This is indicative of their legacy as identifiable non-conformists to a cis and heteronormative society with which countless cannot identify. In considering the impact of these women on Anne Lister and Anna Seward it is clear that in a discussion of the ‘Modern History’s First Lesbians’ the Ladies of Llangollen do precede Anne Lister, regardless of the sexual intensity of their relationship. Further reading: ‘The Hamwood Manuscripts’, papers of Lady Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, comprising diaries and correspondence, together with related papers, (1774-1831) The National Library of Wales, < https://archives.library.wales/index.php/hamwood-manuscripts > Norton, Rictor (Ed.), "Extraordinary Female Affection, 1790", Homosexuality in Eighteenth-Century England: A Sourcebook , (22 April 2005, updated 15 June 2005) http://rictornorton.co.uk/eighteen/1790extr.htm l Seward, Anna, ‘Llangollen Vale, inscribed to the Right Honourable Lady Eleanor Butler, and Miss Ponsonby’, in Llangollen Vale, with Other Poems, (London: 1796), Published online at Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive, < https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/bse96-w0010.shtml > Thrale, Hester Lynch, Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale (Later Mrs Piozzi), 1776-1809, Ed. Katherine C. Balderston, Vol.2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942) The Diaries of Anne Lister Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), I know My Own Heart: The Diaries of Anne Lister, (New York and London, 1988) Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), No Priest but Love: The Journals of Anne Lister from 1824-1826, (New York: New York University Press, 1992) Lister, Anne, Whitbread, Helena (ed.), The Secret Diaries of Anne Lister, (London: Virago Press, 2010) ‘Courageous and Audacious Ladies of Llangollen’, Duke University Libraries, (06/03/2018), < https://blogs.library.duke.edu/rubenstein/2018/03/06/courageous-audacious-ladies-llangollen/ > ‘Female Sodomy’, Not Just the Tudors, (2022), https://open.spotify.com/episode/1UVn5aESC9aIf2ShXyEKKZ?si=OD_AV7_AR8ano9Qr7G3WcA Baigent, Elizabeth, ‘Lister, Anne’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/updated 2019), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/37678 > Bentley, Sarah, ‘The Ladies of Llangollen’, Wellcome Collection, (13/03/2018), < https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/WqewRSUAAB8sVaKN > Bowerbank, Sylvia, ‘Seward, Anna ( called the Swan of Lichfield), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004). < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/25135 > Brideoake, Fiona, ‘” Extraordinary Female Affection”: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Endurance of Queer Community’, Romanticism on the Net, Number 36-27, (November 2004, February 2005), < https://doi.org/10.7202/011141ar > Bryan, Nicola, ‘Gentleman Jack: The Ladies of Llangollen who intrigued Anne Lister’, BBC News, (02/04/2022), < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-60917657 > Castle, Terry, The Apparitional Lesbian: Female Homosexuality and Modern Culture, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993) Clark, Anna, ‘Secrets and Lies: Anne Lister’s Love for Women and the Natural Self’, in Clark, Anna, Alternative Histories of the Self: A Cultural History of Sexuality and Secrets, 1762-1917, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), pp.5-77, <: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3840441 > Colwill, Elizabeth, ‘Pass as a Woman, Act like a Man: Marie-Antoinette as Tribade in the Pornography of the French Revolution’, in Merrick, Jeffrey, and Ragan, Bryant T., (eds.) Homosexuality in Modern France, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Coyle, Eugene, ‘The Irish Ladies of Llangollen: ‘The two most celebrated virgins in Europe’’, History Ireland, Vol.23, No.6 (Nov/Dec 2015), pp.18-20, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/43598746 > Crampton, Caroline, ‘The lesbian Dead Sea Scrolls: Anne Lister’s diaries’, The New Statesman, (05/12/2013), < https://www.newstatesman.com/uncategorized/2013/12/lesbian-dead-sea-scrolls > DeLucia, JoEllen, ‘Queering Progress: Anna Seward and Llangollen Vale’, in DeLucia, JoEllen, A Feminine Enlightenment: British Women Writers and the Philosophy of Progress, 1759-1820, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp.87-116, < DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748695942.003.0003 > Euler, Catherine A., Moving Between Worlds: Gender, Class, Politics, Sexuality and Women’s Networks in the Diaries of Anne Lister of Shibden Hall, Halifax, Yorkshire, 1830-1840, (D. Phil: University of York, May 1995), Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men, (London: The Women’s Press LTD., 1985) Figes, Lydia, ‘Lesbian love and coded diaries: the remarkable story of Anne Lister’, Art UK, (10/05/2019), Gordon, Mary, The Llangollen Ladies, originally titled Chase of the Wild Goose (North Wales: John Jones, 1936, this ed. 1999) Grant, Allison, ‘The Dangers of Playing House: Celia’s Subversive Role in As You Like It’, Selected Papers of the Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference, Vol.4, Article 5, (2011), <: http://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/spovsc/vol4/iss2011/5 > Griffiths, Hannah, ‘The Ladies of Llangollen’, The National Archives Blog, (08/02/2022), < https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/the-ladies-of-llangollen/ > Hallett, Judith P., ‘Sappho and Her Social Context: Sense and Sensuality’, Signs, Vol.4, No.3, (Spring 1979), pp.447-464, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/3173393 > Hunt, Margaret R., ‘The Sapphic Strain: English Lesbians in the Long Eighteenth Century’, in Bennett, Judith M., and Froide, Amy M., (eds.) Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250-1800 , (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), pp.270-296 Iglikowski-Broad, Vicky, ‘Gentleman Jack: Anne Lister - the first modern lesbian?’ the National Archives Blog, (09/07/2022), Jennings, Rebecca, A Lesbian History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Women Since 1500, (Oxford, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood World Publishing, 2007) Katz, Brigit, ‘The 19th-century Lesbian Landowner who set out to find a wife’, Smithsonian Magazine, (19/04/2019), < https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/19th-century-lesbian-landowner-who-set-out-find-wife-180971995/ > Mavor, Elizabeth, ‘Butler, Lady (Charlotte) Eleanor’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2006), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/4182 > Mavor, Elizabeth, The Ladies of Llangollen: A Study in Romantic Friendship, (London: Penguin Books, 1971) Reynolds, Nicole, ‘Cottage Industry: The Ladies of Llangollen and the Symbolic Capital of the Cottage Ornee’, The Eighteenth Century, Vol.51, No.1/2, (Spring/Summer 2010), pp.211-227, < https://www.jstor.org/stable/41468095 > Saunders, Amy, ‘The Afterlife of Christina of Sweden: Gender and Sexuality in Heritage and Fiction’, Royal Studies Journal, Issue 6, (2019), pp.204-221, < http://doi.org/10.21039/rsj.199 > Valladares, Susan, ‘” An introduction to the Literary Person[s]” of Anne Lister and the Ladies of Llangollen’, Literature Compass, Issue 10, (2013), pp.353-368 Willis, Matthew, ‘Who were the Ladies of Llangollen?’, JSTOR Daily, (10/04/2022), < https://daily.jstor.org/who-were-the-ladies-of-llangollen/ >

Is Vita and Virginia good for women's history? Gemma Arterton as Vita Sackville-West and Elizabeth Debicki as Virginia Woolf Gemma Arterton has been the main reason I’ve recommended Vita and Virginia since first watching, not just because of the death grip she has had on me since St Trinian’s , but rather because she has the rare quality of being able to depict female queer experiences in a relatable and convincing way. (If you haven’t watched the film, or Summerland, another queer period drama starring Arterton, go and watch them now). It wasn’t until I rewatched the film for the purposes of this article that I noticed just how well Elizabeth Debicki portrays female queerness. In fact, the subtleties of Debicki’s Virginia, as opposed to Arterton’s Vita make for, in my opinion, a more convincing narrative of female queerness. Debicki and Arterton Vita and Virginia is a film, adapted from a play, which is in turn based on the love letters of authors Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf. You might be wondering, if it’s a historical-fiction film based on a sapphic relationship, surely you’re not asking ‘Is this good for women’s history?’? Well, actually, yes. The narrative doesn’t simply depict that a homoerotic relationship happened between the two women. It also feeds into a narrative that queer, in particular bisexual women are either sexually promiscuous, or mentally unstable. That’s not to say that these women weren’t these things, Vita, as we will explore, was certainly sexually promiscuous, and to say that Virginia wasn’t mentally unstable would be an oversight of a lifetime. My criticism of this depiction isn’t that these women weren’t promiscuous and mentally unwell. However, Vita wasn’t simply a woman who fell in love quickly and dramatically, and Virginia wasn’t just a woman who paced the floor waiting for Vita. To skip ahead, whilst this film is not bad for women’s history, there are ways it could better represent and advocate for both queer women’s history and women’s literary history. N.b. as well as homoerotic scandal, sexuality, and identity, this article will also reference Woolf’s mental health (who is suspected to have had bipolar disorder). Virginia Woolf died by suicide in 1941, and some aspects of the film are hard to watch. There will be specific trigger warnings prior to discussions of these scenes. Please feel free not to read these parts if you may be affected by them. Accuracy Virginia Woolf is an author who needs little introduction. Born to a middle-class family in South Kensington, she married a friend of her brother, Leonard Woolf, to whom she reportedly had no attraction to at the start of their marriage. Despite this, the Woolfs were, as they appear in the film, reliant on each other emotionally and professionally. Together with contemporaries including Nessa and Clive Bell, (Virginia’s sister and brother-in-law) the Woolfs helped form the ‘Bloomsbury Group’ (basically your intellectually elite, sexually liberal, potential revolutionaries) and co-founded The Hogarth Press, an oft struggling publishing house which was, much to Virginia’s chagrin, saved from ruin by Vita’s work. Virginia was of course also the author of works such as Mrs Dalloway , A Room of One’s Own, and Orlando , a semi-biographical novelisation about none other than Vita Sackville-West. Recent work concerning Virginia Woolf often cites her relationship with Vita Sackville-West as the trigger to her most successful literary period. Personally, I think this is hyperbolic. The work written throughout and after the relationship the women shared was exemplary, this much is true. But assigning Virginia's success to Vita's influence would not pass by feminists if Vita were a man, hence her literary talent is not attributed to her husband, despite his influence on the author. Vita Sackville-West as a child The film spends more time on the typically Sapphic life of Vita Sackville-West. Despite being the only child of the third Baron Sackville and his cousin-wife, Vita was barred from inheriting her father’s estate and title, because, well, she was a girl. This was a point of lifelong contention, and some have (inaccurately) suggested that this contributed to her relationships with women. If there is evidence in Vita’s childhood of her sexual leanings, it is in what she would later describe as being psychologically “divided in two”: one side being feminine, soft, submissive, and attracted to men, the other masculine, hard, aggressive, and attracted to women. Her granddaughter, Juliet, has said that “ From the age of 12, Vita was sure she was gay… She would play in a khaki uniform then come in and put on her silks and pearls. ” Perhaps we could best describe Vita Sackville-West as suffering with compulsory-heterosexuality? Both her parents had lovers throughout her childhood, whom Vita was not only aware of, but partially raised by. For example, her fluency in French was largely thanks to the time spent in the Parisian home of Sir John Murray-Scott, her mother’s lover. Whilst her father’s mistress, an opera singer, lived with the family at Knole. Vita seems to have continued this informal familiarity with love and sex as she grew up, embarking on several affairs throughout her teenage years, early adulthood and indeed her marriage. For example, by the time of her formal society debut in 1910, she had a sexual relationship with Rosamund Grosvenor and a perpetually chaotic love affair with Violet Keppel, later Trefusis, the daughter of Alice Keppel, mistress to Edward VII. Vita and Violet met at Helen Wolff’s school for girls with their sexual relationship starting in their teen years and continuing for much of their adult lives. Vita married Harold Nicholson in 1913, after what she described as a “completely chaste” courtship . The pair immediately embarked on an open marriage, with both Vita and Harold enjoying same-sex relationships. Vita had secured herself a double bearded marriage. Each gave the other liberty to pursue the love and freedom they wanted, however, they were also aware of their marital duties as upper-class, and they dutifully had two children, Benedict, born in 1914 and Nigel, in 1917. Vita would also begrudgingly fulfil her duties as a diplomat’s wife when she absolutely needed to. Now you might be wondering, so, what was Vita? Gay, Bi? Straight up confused? If you Google ‘Was Vita Sackville-West gay?’, you’ll find several articles about the ‘fabulous forgotten history of Vita Sackville West,’ her lesbianism, relationship with Virginia, and her and her husband’s astounding gayness. Not to burst the bubble, but to quote Nick Nelson in Heartstopper . “I’m bisexual, actually.” Both Vita and Harold had relationships with men and women, they both, shockingly, seem to have genuinely loved each other and had sex at least three times (they had a third stillborn son) so if we must label them (something I try not to do) then bisexual definitely appears to be the more fitting terminology here. It’s worth mentioning here that bisexuality and historical study is a tricky subject, largely because historians don’t seem to be fully aware that attraction to more than one gender is a possibility. There is also a justified reluctance to label historical figures with twenty-first century awareness, but that's a different discussion. Violet Trefusis (Keppel) and Vita Sackville-West To turn to the drama of Violet Keppel… Vita and Violet had been in a sort of exclusive ‘lesbian’ relationship since their teens, this came to a crashing halt when Violet, depressed and abandoned by Vita since her marriage, agreed to an arranged marriage to Denys Trefusis. Vita, as the irrational woman that she was, made Violet promise to never have sex with her husband during a trip to France in 1918. Violet in turn forced Denys to this sexless marriage as a caveat of her agreement, and in 1919 they married. Shortly afterwards, Vita and Violet ran off to France, but Violet was swiftly retrieved by her husband. In February 1920 when they ran off again, news of the drama reached London almost immediately, in desperation, both husbands followed the couple in a two-seater aeroplane and dragged the women back to England and to their marriages. Later that year, Harold told Vita that Violet had broken her promise and slept with Denys. Violet attempted to keep her hold on Vita with love letters throughout the year, and in 1921 Vita eloped with her again, being called back by Harold’s threats to break off their marriage (and likely restrict her from her sons). Vita returned to England, and Violet to Italy. This characteristic Sapphic-drama is the immediate pretext to the opening of the film, in which Vita, freshly returned to England, now wants to focus on her legitimacy as a writer, gain access to the elite ‘Bloomsbury Group’, and is absolutely fascinated by the elusive figure that is Virginia Woolf. The film opens with cut scenes of Harold and Vita giving a radio interview about their successful marriage, Vita’s mother threatening to remove her sons from her custody, Vita herself arriving at a party hosted in Bloomsbury, gazing in awe at Virginia dancing, and then pursuing both Virginia and a place for her own novels within The Hogarth Press. Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West with their dogs The film is largely told from Vita’s perspective and is based on the letters exchanged between Vita and Virginia from 1922-1928. Broadly speaking, the screenplay does a fair job of depicting their complex romance, its strengths lying in Arterton’s depiction of Vita as somewhat self-obsessed, whilst simultaneously disparaging of her talents as a writer, especially in comparison to Virginia. As you watch, you find yourself struggling to believe Vita’s genuine feelings. Is she using Virginia for access to the Press? Yet the viewer also understands that Vita’s published works are far more successful than that of Virginia’s, or indeed of The Hogarth Press in its entirety. The publishing of her work would boost the company’s reputation. Virginia and her husband are wary of Vita and her work, its popularity and how she fits into their world. Debicki, as Virginia, presents as frantic, confused, and socially freer than Vita. She does not share a desire to have wildly popular novels, though there is a recognition that slightly more successful publications would be financially beneficial. She is also conflicted by Vita’s person, does she follow her blindly, or does she stay where she is safe, in her apparently loveless marriage? Throughout the film, Virginia is in a state of queer confusion and obsession, and Vita pursues her with the same rigour and brief infatuation as she did her previous lovers, with little understanding of Virginia’s unstable personality. This is a clear case of obsession and control. Vita arriving at Nessa Bell's art show with Mary Campbell Vita eventually loses interest, and stops replying to Virginia’s letters, demonstrating her lack of understanding of the complexities of Virginia’s mental health. This is furthered by the scene which sees Vita bring another woman to Nessa’s art show. Virginia spirals, and the audience can understand her staring into the choppy water as a foreshadowing of her eventual suicide in the River Ouse. The obsessive writing of Orlando in the following scenes depicts both a manic episode of Virginia’s bipolar, and Vita’s malignant narcissism; as Virginia produces a novel based on the split lives, loves, masculinity and femininity of Vita Sackville-West, who then returns to Virginia, flattered by the attention. This appears to be a fairly accurate depiction of the development of their relationship in 1927-1928. It’s worth mentioning that much of the film is fictionalised and although based on letters and other primary sources, there is only so far a dramatisation can go in terms of accuracy. However, there are several moments which are interspersed throughout the film which assist the story's legitimacy. These include on Vita’s side: references to Violet and Vita’s elopements, Vita and Harold’s open marriage and her reluctance to partake in her duties as a diplomat’s wife, mention of their Garden Design at Sissinghurst, and Vita’s mother’s threats to remove the children from her custody due to Vita’s promiscuity. On Virginia’s side of events, notable accuracy comes in the form of the co-dependence of her marriage, the informality of the ‘Bloomsbury Group’, in particular their views on sexuality, medical advice which actually made her symptoms worse, and the literary creativity that Vita inspired in her. Photographing Orlando Sensitivity (TW: mention of sexual assault, s*lf-h*rm, and s*icide) Virginia instigates intimacy with Vita It feels more fitting to discuss the intricacies of their sexual relationship and Virginia’s mental health through a critical lens aiming at sensitivity rather than accuracy. Virginia Woolf’s sexual encounters were not as free and positively queer as Vita Sackville-West’s. In childhood, Virginia had been molested by her older half-brother Gerald Duckworth at six years-old. Virginia’s biographers believe that it was these experiences which led to her life-long fear of sexual relationships and masculinity, the abuse by her half-brother(s) and potentially also by her cousin is described by Virginia as being a consistent feature of her childhood, and has been discussed by Hermione Lee and Lyndall Gordon as fundamental to her character. These experiences would have undeniably had an impact on Virginia’s already precarious mental health, and can be used to understand her codependency and obsession both with her husband and Vita. The scenes depicting the Sapphic couple’s sexual relationship suggest that this was the first time Virginia enjoyed sex. Considering her writing of her relationship with Leonard this may be a slight exaggeration, however, there is a sense that with Vita, Virginia found fulfilment in her sexuality that had been hitherto repressed. Even if dramatised for the purposes of the film. Virginia in her first scenes The film faces the common difficulty of how to depict Virginia’s health without buying into the narrative of the hysterical woman. Historians and psychologists have suggested that Virginia had bipolar disorder, characterised by periods of intense depression and elevated moods, sometimes known as mania. During these periods of mania the individual will rarely sleep and often have increased anxiety, sometimes hallucinations, all of which are portrayed in the film. Several scenes allude to Virginia’s eventual suicide and this is particularly notable when Virginia is briefly suspected to have gone into the water after her sister’s art opening. This small but meaningful moment directly depicts Virginia’s inability to understand her own emotions (the viewer can understand her heartbreak over Vita more clearly than herself). This is followed by the writing process of Orlando, which arguably poses as a manifestation of Virginia’s mania concerning Vita, subsequently encouraged by Vita’s typified narcissism. Orlando is a love letter, featuring Vita as an English Noble named Orlando spanning multiple centuries and genders. Relationships such as that with Violet Keppel and Virginia are both featured throughout the narrative and the title character is an enigma to the very end. The novel is a complex biography of a complex individual, it continues to divide opinion of if you are meant to like Orlando or not, and thus, of Virginia’s true feelings towards her. Perhaps the best adjective would be obsession. On some levels, the pair seem to have shared a good understanding of the other, but their relationship feels unequal. Virginia’s love for Vita appears genuine, if obsessive. Vita’s love, on the other hand, is self-concerned, regarding the improvement of her own writing, engagement with the literary community she craves and, in some ways, about the power she could hold over her lovers. So, is this a fair representation? Of the women individually, it does feel fair, and in Virginia’s case in particular, sensitive; you can’t help but be struck by the constant expression of confusion, mild panic and anxiety that Debicki has. Arterton’s Vita is harsher, and less sympathetic. As a couple they aren’t greatly convincing, there is perhaps too much attention paid to their respective marriages, to feel as if they could have really had the impact on each other’s lives and literary careers that they did. Entertainment Like all historical-fiction, the point is to be entertaining before it is to be accurate. Which is why I hasten to add that although based on their letters, this film is not entirely accurate to the women it characterises and it can only speculate the gaps in the evidence. Regarding entertainment, the film is generally an enjoyable one. It is occasionally slow, and unless you know about Virginia’s experiences and Vita’s relationships, several of the references might go over your head. If you do understand these, however, they add to the entertainment brilliantly. Overall, Vita and Virginia is a film which aims to depict an adulterous Sapphic relationship without being vulgar. For all the words to describe this film, vulgarity is not one of them. Vita and Virginia manages to make a scandalous series of events natural and enjoyable to watch. Virginia later in the film, after a manic episode. Debicki's makeup is used to emphasise Virginia's insomnia and poor health at this moment. A stand out feature must be the wardrobe and set design. In particular, Vita’s silhouettes often depict the duality of how she considered her identity; split between the masculine, represented in clean tailored cuts intended to make Arterton appear taller than she is and dominant, and the feminine, shown in accessories, and glamourous make-up. She directly contrasts with the simpler femininity of the other women throughout the film, who wear more delicate, draped fabrics. Virginia’s wardrobe articulates her mental state and her lower social class. The fabrics for her outfits are noticeably lesser quality and the silhouettes are designed to be dishevelled. Often, her hair and makeup are used to present her worsening depression with great effect. Vita and Virginia are presented as flawed women and despite both being pretty unlikeable, they are easy to care for. Vita's costuming is a direct contrast to Virginia's Feminism The question of feminism when discussing Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf is an interesting one. Each are distinctly unique women, both shaped by their sex, identity, and experiences with men. Vita’s story, her sexual liberty, bearded relationship, and success in her professional and personal life is perhaps easier to depict as feminist in modern work. Her internal struggle regarding her sex and her inheritance as well as her determination to maintain her liberty and gain respect among her peers is admirable and relatable. Where she struggles against a recognisable patriarchal background, she gains sympathy and understanding. The modern audience enjoys a strong, independent woman. Virginia’s more tragic story, largely shaped by men, has often been subject to a feminist lens in an attempt to reclaim her story to fit modern definitions of gender, equality and sexuality. This film doesn’t really follow this pattern, and it is easy to forget that the Virginia on our screen was the wild, anarchical writer. It is Virginia’s, not Vita’s work which remains at the forefront of feminist literature. Vita and Virginia presents a narrative that Vita breathed life into Virginia throughout the narrative of this film, and that without her, Virginia would have struggled to be . Virginia’s writing is in danger of being pushed aside in this story, except of course for the work she produced about Vita. But, Virginia’s life was not about Vita, and the suggestion that it was, damages her impact on literary and feminist history. Is Vita and Virginia good for women’s history? Probably. Films like this one bring these individuals into the attention of audiences in an age when we can openly discuss the impact they had on each other as de facto muses, especially with the acknowledgement that Orlando is a love letter. But, as with any version of history, this shouldn’t be the only version of them. Both women were more than the people they loved, and I for one want to see Vita’s relationship with Violet explored on screen, and Virginia’s mental health, its causes and its repercussions shown in more depth. Further Reading: Vita and Virginia, dir. Chanya Button, (Bohemia Media, 2018), https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.3d8d1e48-e1bc-45d3-a4d2-aa2e34689b90?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb Beresford, George Charles, 'Woolf, (Adeline), Virginia', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004), < https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-1003284?rskey=pH0ozi&result=2> Gordon, Lyndall, Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Life, (Oxford University Press, 1984) Hochstrasser, T. J. , 'West, Victoria Mary [Vita] Sackville-', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (2004/2017), < https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35903> Lee, Hermione, Virginia Woolf, ( Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1999) Woolf, Virginia, Orlando, (London, The Hogarth Press, 1928) Sackville-West, Vita, Woolf, Virginia, The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf, (London: Virago Press, 1992)