top of page

Search Results

56 items found for ""

  • Màiri Mhòr nan Òran: The Voice of Highland Land Agitation

    Photograph of Màiri Mhòr with her spinning whorl. 1 January 1890. Wikipedia Commons. < https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mairi_Mhor_nan_Oran.jpg > [accessed 18 December 2024] Ma thog neach eisir ann an cliabh, No maorach ann am meadhon mara, Théid an cur fo ghlais ‘s fo dhìon, Le laghan diongmhalt’ dìon an fhearainn. If someone lifts a creel with an oyster, or in the open sea they find a clam, they’ll be apprehended and locked away, under the law protecting the land. -Brosnachadh nan Gaidheal / Incitement of the Gael In the mid-eighteenth century, an Enlightenment-driven push for economic progress and agricultural 'improvement' swept through Scotland, dramatically altering the Highland way of life. The concept of dùthchas , the inalienable right of clansmen to protection, security, and a share of ancestral land, was forsaken as chiefs, who had once acted as custodians of communal land, became commercial landlords focused on profit. The first phase of the Highland Clearances (1780-1825) saw clan chiefs adopt new agricultural practices to maximise estate income. Prior to ‘improvement’, the social structure of Highland township, called the baile , had consisted of common land and the traditional run rig system. This was where arable land was divided into strips and rotated among tenants, and families took collective responsibility for agricultural work and survival. However, this system was abandoned as common grazing land was fenced off, the baile was dismantled, and crofting communities were established alongside large-scale sheep farming.  Land became the clan chief’s personal property, and their clansmen became their tenants. These tenants, known as crofters, were assigned small landholdings insufficient to sustain their families. Forced to take on supplementary employment in local industries, like fishing or kelp, to survive, they were further disadvantaged by short-term leases that provided no guaranteed access to land, leaving them vulnerable to evictions and displacement by sheep farming. The region was further strained by the second wave of clearances (1825-1855), which was marked by recurrent famine, the decline of the kelp and fishing industries, widespread evictions, and mass emigration to industrial centres such as Glasgow, and beyond.  The daughter of a crofter and one of the most influential and celebrated Gaelic poets of all time, Màiri Mhòr nan Òran (‘Big Mary of the Songs’) was born Mary MacDonald at Skeabost on the Isle of Skye in March 1821. She witnessed the devastating effects of the Clearances on her community and, at age 50, became a key political voice in highlighting the Highlanders’ struggles, especially those displaced by the Clearances. Her poetry and songs, as this article will highlight, sought to preserve the endangered Gaelic language and culture, galvanised a sense of identity, protested against unjust rents and land practices, and incited support for the Crofters’ Wars of the 1880s.  In place of a formal education, her childhood on Skye equipped her with ‘ample experience in the management of cattle and all that pertains to the conduct of a house in the olden days, from cooking to cloth making, and, further, in storing her mind with the lays and lyrics of her native isle’. Poetry and song were intrinsic to Gaelic society and village bards remained important figures and spokespersons for their communities until after the Second World War. They recorded ‘the human experiences of the Gaels… they react to every major event affecting the lives of their community, and their songs mirror their folk-history’. These songs, which were passed down orally through generations, relied on use of ‘formulae, fugitive passages, runs, [and] stock characters’, and, most importantly, the acceptance of the piece by the community to survive. In many ways, Bateman explains, Màiri’s compositions were ‘an extension of the 18,000 lines of traditional poetry she knew by heart’. Although she could read English and Gaelic, she was never taught to write and relied on existing rhyme schemes to compose her songs- blending new words with old tunes. However, it wasn’t until 1872, when she was 50 years old, that Màiri began to share her poetry. Amidst the Great Highland Famine of 1846, which blighted potato crops for a whole decade and initiated a momentous surge in emigration, Màiri relocated to Inverness to marry a shoemaker called Isaac Macperson at the age of 27. Upon his death in 1871, she was pushed to find employment to support her four surviving children, and found work as a domestic servant. Unfortunately, this was short-lived as Màiri was accused of stealing clothing by her employer. Despite claims of her innocence, she was charged and sentenced to forty days of imprisonment. It was this humiliation and miscarriage of justice which changed the course of her life as she later claimed: S e na dh’fhulaing mi de thamailt a thug mo bhàrdachd beò  (‘It’s the injustice I suffered that brought my poetry to life’).  This mortifying experience lent her poetry an ‘unrivalled emotional drive’ and an abiding resentment of the establishment which encouraged her to link her sense of personal injustice to that of the crofters. Bitterly, in Tha mi sgìth de luchd na Beurla  (I'm tired of the English speakers), she expressed frustration, lamenting that if she was ‘in my own land, where I was first raised, there was not any English-speaker in the service of the Crown, who would look on me unjustly’.  The same year, Màiri joined the waves of mass emigration which served as a safety valve in the Highlands for the ‘rurally impoverished, hungry and evicted’, and relocated again to Glasgow, and then Greenock in 1876. In Glasgow she enrolled at the Royal Infirmary and studied nursing and obstetrics at the Royal Infirmary for five years before practising as a midwife. Here she was welcomed by a vibrant community of Highlanders, regularly participating in Gaelic music hall culture and performing at social gatherings and cèilidhs. In 1892, she competed at the first ever National Mòd in Oban, a celebration of Gaelic language and culture which gave poets another platform to showcase their talent, though she did not win a medal. Màiri’s poetry played a significant public function for her newfound community of displaced Highlanders for whom her songs were created to be nostalgic and comforting.   In ‘When I Was Young’, she painted a highly romanticised image of her childhood on Skye and mourned the modernisation of the island where lies ‘Andrew’s croft, overgrown with nettles’, and the steamship which carried her away: Nuair chuir mi cùl ris an eilean chùbhraidh, ‘S a ghabh mi iùbhrach na smùid gun seòl, Nuair shéid i ‘n dùdach ‘s a shìn an ùspairt, ‘S a thog i cùrsa o Thir a’ Cheo; Mo chridhe brùite ‘s na deòir le m’ shùilean, A’ faibh gu dùthaich gun sùrd, gun cheòl When I turned my back on the fragrant island, And boarded the steam-ship with has no jib, when she blew her horn and began her churning and made her way from the Isle of Mist, my heart was broken, my eyes tear-filled, leaving for a land without cheer or song By reminding emigrants of their endangered way of life and promoting Gaelic culture in urban centres, Màiri’s music helped foster a growing ‘migrant Gaelic cultural consciousness’ which, in turn, contributed to the ‘politicisation of crofter unrest’. As Newby highlighted, a surge in temporary migration brought urban Highlanders into direct contact with radical reform philosophies, such as Irish Land Agitation.  As a result, second-generation Highlanders in urban Scotland became some of the most enthusiastic supporters of the crofters agitation in the 1880s. Furthermore, Gaelic songs and poetry served as a powerful medium for distributing information to Gaelic speakers who couldn’t read English and, therefore, were marginalised by the printed press. As such, poets could wield significant political influence. This tradition stemmed from medieval Gaelic Scotland where, through the public praise or ridicule of clan chiefs, skilled poets were tools for the endorsement of the social and political status quo. With the decline of traditional Gaelic learning throughout the 17th century, the role of poets developed. Poetry was increasingly written by less formally educated, largely unpaid, or even illiterate poets, who shifted their focus from clan chiefs to celebrating the common man and leaders as heroes. By the 19th century, as Meek illustrates, every community in the Highlands possessed its own poet. As the struggle for land rights gained momentum after 1874, poets emerged as spokespersons for their communities.  While this role was not exclusive to male poets, as Gaelic culture has a strong tradition of female poets, women were often challenged by a paradoxical ‘threshold’ status. There are many examples of women possessing a high status within Gaelic oral tradition, such as Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh and Mairghread nighean Lachlainn, and Ò Baoill has advocated that the better-known women poets after 1600 were ‘public poets’ in the sense that their work dealt with political rather than personal or lyrical subjects. However, it is also true that their gender made them vulnerable to suspicion, and even accusations of witchcraft. For example, both Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh and Mairghread Nighean Lachlainn were reportedly buried face down. Ò Baoill linked this to a Norse tradition for burying witches, suggesting that these two female poets may have been viewed ‘by the tradition-bearers as wielders of sinister supernatural powers’. McKean likewise has identified these traditions as acknowledgment or punishment for their bardic activities. As a result, women were often confined to composing lullabies and wool-felting songs, rather than the male-dominated grand panegyrics dedicated to clan heroes. In this light, Màiri’s accomplishments can be read as exceptional as her commentary on the Highland clearances transformed her into an icon of Gaelic poetry. On the other hand, however, older women were often assigned roles as ‘storytellers, teachers, and advice-givers’. It should be considered that the highly emotional nature of the clearances, along with the role of women as preservers of family and tradition, may have enabled Màiri to assume this matriarchal poetic role, gaining widespread societal approval, and becoming a powerful voice in defence of the Highland people. Her exceptional success and status within Gaelic tradition can then be partly attributed to societal upheaval which created a space for women’s voices within public and politicised discourse and allowed her to break through barriers that typically confined women to domestic genres. Màiri’s poetic and political voice was recognised and harnessed by Highland politicians. During her trial in 1872, Màiri was offered support by John Murdoch, the editor of the Highlander  newspaper, a high-profile advocate for land reform, Gaelic education, and Scottish home rule. Support was also offered by Charles Fraser Mackintosh, the Liberal MP for Inverness and a proponent of land reform, who acted on Màiri’s behalf during the trial. Whilst likely that Mackintosh's actions were elicited by Murdoch’s influence, the nature of Mackintosh’s interaction with Màiri remains unclear. What is certain, however, is that their relationship continued as two years later, during his campaign for the Inverness Burghs, Mackintosh enlisted Màiri’s help to create a sympathetic image among his constituents. This involved composing songs in support for land reform, such as  Nuair a chaidh na ceithir ùr oirre which named Mackintosh alongside other leading land campaigners. As Meek noted: ‘The power of poetry was no romantic delusion; it could help to make or break the prospective candidate.’ Unlike other ‘township bards’ or ‘community poets’, such as Alexander MacLean of Glendale, Skye, and John MacLean of Balemartin, Tiree, Màiri’s allegiance was not confined to a single district. Her mobility- from Skye to Inverness to Glasgow- and her active role in rallying support for Mackintosh elevated her profile and allowed her to cultivate a ‘greater bardic persona’. As McKean notes, her village, ‘if she were to be called a village bard, would have to be the entire Gàidhealtachd [Gaelic region], wherever Gaels were downtrodden’. Màiri’s most famous works, ‘The Song of Ben Li’ and ‘Incitement of the Gaels’ were composed upon her return to Skye in 1882 at the age of 61. This coincided with the outbreak of the Crofters War at the Battle of the Braes. Despite Richard’s findings that there were approximately fifty known instances of Highland resistance between 1780 and 1855,  historians of the Highland clearances have long puzzled over the Highlanders’ failure to actively resist landlord policies before the 1880s. Resistance was typically ‘highly localised, sporadic and uncoordinated’, and were often desperate, spontaneous responses to the threat of eviction that easily crumbled in the face of police or military intervention.  The first example of direct action by Skye crofters occurred in Valtos, Skye, 1881, in the form of a rent strike against their landlord’s high rent and threat of eviction. The success of this altercation, as Newby highlights, had two crucial short-term consequences: it sparked significant publicity which spread unrest throughout the island, creating a ‘siege mentality’ and an ‘air of confrontation’; and it was widely publicised through the wider British and Irish press. The scene was then set for the famed ‘Battle of the Braes’ which kicked off other widespread acts of protest on Highland estates.   In the decades preceding the battle, evictions had caused serious overcrowding of the land in the township of Braes. The landowner, Lord MacDonald, exacerbated the situation when he denied the crofters access to common grazing land, instead leasing it to a sheep farmer. Despite being forced onto smaller, less fertile plots, the crofter’s rent was not reduced. When the tenancy for the land came up for renewal in 1881 due to the new tenant’s inability to pay rent, a petition was sent to ask for the restoration of former pastures. This was staunchly denied. In retaliation, the crofters proactively organised a movement to regain the grazing rights they had lost 17 years prior, and defiantly grazed their livestock on Ben Lee and withheld rent payments until their right was redressed. On rent collection day, the 8th of December 1881, none of the Braes tenants paid their rent and were threatened with eviction.  Màiri described the events in ‘Incitement of the Gaels’. In contrast to elegies, such as ‘When I was Young’, which lamented the social and physical changes on Skye, this song followed the tradition of stirring the bravery of warriors before battle, and aimed to incite crofters to engage in acts of land agitation. In response to the rent strikes, the landowners: Sgrìobh iad àithne dhaingeann dhian, Do’n ionad air nach dèan sinn labhairt, Na h-aingle is am fear nach b’fhiach A thighinn a riaghladh lagh an fhearainn. They wrote an urgent pressing letter, to the accursed angels and that scurrilous man, stationed at the place we will not mention to come and enforce the law of the land The ‘scurrilous man’ in question was Sheriff William Ivory. In April 1882, a sheriff officer left Portree with witnesses to serve eviction notices to eleven tenants identified by the landowner as ringleaders. On the way, however, they were met by a large crowd of protestors who chased them back to Portree and burnt the papers. Having obstructed the officer from fulfilling his legal duties, the protestors committed the crime of deforcement. In response, the authorities contacted Sheriff Ivory, instructing him to gather 50 officers from Glasgow and Inverness to apprehend the guilty parties. Nuair leugh Ivory an àithne, Chùnnt e chuid a b’fheàrr d’a aingil Ivory counted out the best of his angels, having read all that was in the demand While the arrests themselves were not disputed, as officers passed through the township of Gedintailor on their return journey to Inverness, riots started when it became clear that the men were being removed from Skye. As the officers traversed a narrow gorge and crossed the burn, Allt nan Gobhlag , a crowd gathered and the Battle took place.  Nuair a ràinig iad na glinn, ‘S ann bha na suinn nach dèanadh mearachd Air an crioslachadh le fìrinn, ‘S cha robh innleachd air am prannadh. When Ivory and his army reached the glens, before them stood the men that wouldn’t falter girded about with righteousness, Evil had not made them slacken. In addition to praising the brave men who stood against Sheriff Ivory and his forces, Màiri highlighted the role of women in the ‘Song of Ben Li’, thanking ‘ The kind women who carry themselves so courteously, their skulls were broken on the slopes of Ben Li ’. While the vivid imagery arguably delivers a shock value and capitalises off sensitive attitudes which would be disgusted by the violent treatment of up-standing women, it also accurately reflects female agency. As Richards later recognised, ‘Highland riots were women’s riots’.  The Scotsman reported on 20 April 1883: ‘one poor woman, said to be enceinte, was seriously hurt- cut terribly about the head with a stone or baton. She was left bleeding and fainting on the road side. Another old woman said to be about seventy years of age, was hurled down a steep hill and badly injured’. Despite the violence of the account, It was also largely thought that women could protest with impunity and were less likely to be injured by constables and army troops compared to their male counterparts.  Praising the community’s courage, the poem is an active appeal to crofters on Skye to resist their landlords’ extractions. Significantly, Màiri lays the blame on Ivory. Nicknamed ‘the Satan’ in the ‘Song of Ben Li’ Màiri exhibited a vendetta against the man, who she perceived as a threat against her local community, and celebrated his sudden death in 1886 with a mock elegy which held him up to public censure and ridicule. Most poets craved the preservation of the traditional Gaelic community and even after the clearances, the concept of dùthchas  remained entrenched. The Napier Commission, in 1883, observed that the poor still held  ‘much reverence for the owner of the soil’. Typically, nineteenth century Gaelic poets blamed tenants, tacksmen, sheep-farmers, and even sheep for the Highland plight; they rarely singled out individual landowners, and criticisms of the landed class were often anonymous.   Màiri was not immune to this trap and was guilty of romanticising a ‘golden age of kindly cooperation and harmony’ by not critiquing land-owners or referencing the 1846 famine. However, this is perhaps less surprising due to the fact that the Laird of Skeabost, Lachlan MacDonald, provided Màiri with a rent-free cottage upon her return to Skye.  She often blamed the English for the conditions on Skye, as Tanner highlights, ‘though it was very plain that not one clearance had been made in Skye by anyone who had not a name as Gaelic as her own’. Instead of traditional hardships or natural disasters, as Devine highlights, it was the intrusion of a new, foreign, economic order, imposed from the outside that threatened the local community, and alarmed the poets. The presence of lowland shepherds, officials, and gunboats, and the removal of people, were a perceived violation and infringement of the traditional system of mutual support between tenants and landlords. Following the battle, five crofters were found guilty and charged with ‘deforcing an officer of the law in the execution of his duty’ before the Sheriff Court in Inverness Castle in May 1882. However, the crofters continued to protest, and tenants continued to graze their stock on Ben Li. Further writs were issued in 1882, with deforcement committed again when the sheriff officers attempted to serve summonses on the 2nd of September and the 24th of October 1882. Finally, at the end of 1882, Lord MacDonald compromised and the crofters were victorious, able to graze their sheep on Ben Li. Although the Battle of the Braes did not directly lead to immediate legislation protecting crofters’ rights,  it coincided with the emergence of ‘an effective political campaign for crofters rights’ and was instrumental in the establishment of the 1883 Napier Commission. Throughout 1882, authorities became increasingly cognisant of the parallels of the Highland and Irish land questions. Irish agrarian protest had pressured the British government into passing the 1881 Irish Land Act and critics of land reform were increasingly highlighting the growing influence of ‘Fenianism’ among crofters. More than any other factor, such as growing public support for the crofters’ cause and the determination of the Highland League which was formed in 1884 (who advocated security of tenure, fair rents, and the redistribution of land to crofters, and were instrumental in raising public awareness and widespread support),  Macoll argues that it was the anxiety of the governments to stem the rise of Highland agrarian and political discontent before it reached Irish proportions that pushed them to establish the Commission, and forced government legislation on the crofters’ behalf.  Indeed, Cameron similarly posited that the formation of the Commission and following legislation was the first time that the British government acknowledged the persistent and unique nature of the Highland issue and paid sustained interest in the region. This culminated in the drafting and passing of the Crofters’ Holding (Scotland) Act of 1886. This was a major victory for the movement as it limited the powers of landlords to evict their tenants and granted several key rights to all crofters, regardless of their rent. These included: security of tenure, the right to fair rents (determined by impartial bodies), and compensation for land improvements. It also recognised their right to use natural resources like common grazing land and materials like peat, seaweed, and heather. While it did not fully resolve the crofters’ demands (for example, it failed to protect the needs of landless cottars or redistribute land), it was a significant step forward and set the stage for further land reform. As Cameron explained, ‘it did not give the crofters the world, but it made them secure in their own little patch, and that was no small gain.’ The land agitations of the 1880s were perceived to be a series of battles by contemporary poets and the public, beginning with the first documented legal victory for Highland crofters at the Bernera Riot of 1874 in the Outer Hebrides; the Battle of the Braes in 1882; and the General Election of November-December in 1885. When the Voting Act of 1884 extended suffrage to many crofters, Màiri was called upon again to support parliamentary election campaigns, particularly for Land Law Reform Association candidates in the 1885 and 1886 elections. The Crofters Movement had nominated candidates in all the crofting counties and northern burghs, and five were successfully elected for parliament-including her friend, Charles Fraser Mackintosh. As Devine stipulates, it would be wrong to see a causal relationship between the general election of 1885 and the 1886 legislation as the main clauses had been drafted the previous year with minimal involvement by the five candidates. However, Gaelic poets had a remarkable involvement in this victory because they empowered people to discriminate between candidates and participate in elections. In doing so, the franchise was portrayed as a weapon no less effective than the sword, with the ballot box as a battleground.  Màiri Mhòr nan Òran remained on Skye until her death on the 7th of November 1898, aged 77. It is thanks to Lachlann MacDonald that her prose was preserved as he paid for the transcription of some 8000 lines of Màiri’s poetry, which was published in 1891 in a volume entitled Gaelic Songs and Poems . Due to her involvement in ensuring the success of the crofter candidates in the 1885-6 elections, Màiri has been crowned the Bard of the movement. Through her works, which functioned both as tools for cultural preservation and incitement and galvanised the crofters’ fight for land reform, she remains an iconic figure in Gaelic literature. As Batemen argued, the political forthrightness evident in her work would not be seen in a published form by Scottish women poets until the 1980s. In 2022, she joined the only three Gaelic (and male) writers to be honoured in Makars’ Court in 2022, where Scottish wordsmiths have been honoured since 1998. Here, her words continue to inspire Gaelic speakers to protect their cultural heritage, as her commemorative flagstone reads: Cuimhnichibh gur sluagh sibh/ Is cumaibh suas ur còir (Remember that you are a people / And stand up for your rights). Màiri Mhòr nan Òran’s commemorative flagstone at Makar’s Court - Pickering, Dave.Màiri Mhòr nan Òran is the latest addition to Scotland’s literary greats at Makar’s Court.October 2022. Photograph. North Edinburgh News. < https://nen.press/2022/10/13/mairi-mhor-nan-oran-is-the-latest-addition-to-scotlands-literary-greats-at-makars-court/ > [accessed 18 December 2024] Bibliography Bateman, Meg, ‘Women’s Writing in Scottish Gaelic Since 1750’, in A History of Scottish Women’s Writing , eds. by Douglas Gifford and Dorothy McMillan (Edinburgh University Press, 1997),  pp. 684-701 Bloomfield, Morton W. and Charles W. Dunn,  The Role of the Poet in Early Societies  (Cambridge and Wolfeboro: D. S. Brewer, 1989) Boos, Florence, “We Would Know Again the Fields…’: The Rural Poetry of Elizabeth Campbell, Jane Stevenson and Mary Macpherson’, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature , 17.2 (1998), pp. 325-347 Cameron, A. D.,  Go Listen to the Crofters: The Napier Commission and Crofting a Century Ago  (Acair, 1986) Cameron, Ewen A., ‘Journalism in the Late Victorian Scottish Highlands: John Murdoch, Duncan Campbell, and the ‘Northern Chronicle’’, Victorian Periodicals Review,  40.4 (2007), pp. 281-306 Cameron, Ewen A., ‘Politics, Ideology and the Highland Land Issue, 1886 to the 1920s’, The Scottish Historical Review , 72.193 (1993), pp. 60-79 Devine, T. M., Clanship to Crofters’ War: The Social Transformation of the Scottish Highlands (Manchester University Press, 1994) Highlife Highland, ‘Battle of the Braes: Agitation at Braes’ (n.d) < https://www.highlifehighland.com/archives-service/highland-archive-service-online-exhibitions/battle-of-the-braes/battle-of-the-braes-agitation-at-braes/ > [accessed 18 December 2024]  Highlife Highland, ‘Battle of the Braes: The Battle and Trail’ (n.d) < https://www.highlifehighland.com/archives-service/highland-archive-service-online-exhibitions/battle-of-the-braes/battle-of-the-braes-the-battle-and-trail/ > [accessed 18 December 2024] Highlife Highland, ‘Battle of the Braes: The Legacy’ (n.d) < https://www.highlifehighland.com/archives-service/highland-archive-service-online-exhibitions/battle-of-the-braes/battle-of-the-braes-the-legacy/ > [accessed 18 December 2024] Hunter, J., The Making of the Crofting Community  (Edinburgh, 1976) Kerrigan, Catherine, An Anthology of Scottish Women Poets  (Edinburgh University Press, 1991) Lodge, Christine, ‘The clearers and the cleared: women, economy and land in the Scottish Highlands’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Glasgow, 1996) < https://theses.gla.ac.uk/819/#:~:text=Lodge,%20Christine%20(1996)%20The%20clearers%20and%20the%20cleared :> [accessed 6 October 2024] MacColl, Allan W., Land, Faith and the Crofting Community  (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) MacPherson, Hamish, ‘Màiri Mhòr nan Òran: Celebrating one of our greatest Gaelic poets’, National , 9 March 2021 < https://www.thenational.scot/news/19145415.mairi-mhor-nan-oran-celebrating-one-greatest-gaelic-poets/ > [accessed 6 October 2024] McKean, Thomas, ‘A Gaelic Songmaker’s Response to an English-speaking Nation’, Oral Tradition , 7.1 (1992), pp. 3-27 McLeod, Wilson and Michael Newton, The Highest Apple/An Ubhal as Àirde: An Anthology of Scottish Gaelic Literature  (Francis Boutle Press, 2019), Meek, Donald E., Tuath Is Tighearna = Tenants and Landlords : An Anthology of Gaelic Poetry of Social and Political Protest from the Clearances to the Land Agitation, 1800-1890  (Scottish Academic Press for the Scottish Gaelic Texts Society, 1995) Newby, Andrew G., ‘Land and the ‘Crofter Question’ in Nineteenth-Century Scotland’, International Review of Scottish Studies, 35 (2010), pp. 7-36 Ò Baoill, Colm, “Neither Out nor In’: Scottish Gaelic Women Poets 1650-1750’, in Women and the Feminine in Medieval and Early Modern Scottish Writing, eds. By Sarah C. Dunnigan, Marie Harker and Evelyn S. Newlyn (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 136-152) ‘Òran Beinn Lì (Song of Ben Li)’, The People’s Voice, n.d.< https://thepeoplesvoice.glasgow.ac.uk/song-ben-li-cathy-ann/ > [accessed 6 October 2024] Orr, Willie, Deer Forests, Landlords and the Crofters  (John Donald, 1982) Richards, Eric, Debating the Highland Clearances  (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) Tanner, Marcus, The Last of the Celts  (Yale University Press, 2004) Withers, Charles W. J., Urban Highlanders: Highland Lowland migration and urban Gaelic culture, 1700-1900  (Tuckwell Press, 1998)

  • Lee Miller: Model, Surrealist, War Journalist

    Lee Miller (1907-1977) US Army official photograph. Lee Miller initially rose to fame as a model and surrealist, notably through her close working and personal relationship with artist Man Ray. However, Miller’s most profound work was created during her time as a war journalist and photographer. She spoke of this time so rarely that it was completely unknown to her only son, Anthony Penrose until he uncovered boxes of manuscripts and negatives in the attic of their family home after her death in 1977.   Born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907, Lee Miller’s relationship with the camera began at home. Her father was an amateur photographer and she often modelled for him throughout her early years. At just 19 years old, Miller began her modelling career through extraordinary circumstances. Whilst living in New York, she was almost hit by a car and was saved by none other than Conde Nast, publisher of Vogue  magazine. It was not long before she appeared on the cover of Vogue , and soon became interested in becoming a photographer herself. Her career as a model however was quickly derailed when Kotex, a period product company, used her image without consent. With little work available for a model who was the face of a period product brand, Miller decided to move to Paris and pursue photography. In Paris, Miller sought out Surrealist artist Man Ray and the pair would quickly become lovers and collaborators. They worked so closely together during this time that it is hard to decipher which artist made what work. Man Ray introduced Miller to the Surrealists, whose philosophy would profoundly influence Miller for the rest of her career. A key theme of surrealism that reoccurs in Miller’s work was the idea of the found object, where easily accessible objects are reconfigured or combined to create something new and interesting. For instance, whilst Miller was living in Paris she also worked as a medical photographer. On one occasion, after a mastectomy procedure, Miller asked the surgeon if she could take the woman’s breast that had been removed and place it on a dinner plate so that she could photograph it.   After she left Man Ray and Paris behind, Miller returned to New York to start a photography studio, which she also abandoned when she decided to move to Cairo in 1934 to marry Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey. Although she was not formally working at this time, she continued taking photographs, which are considered some of her best work. Growing bored of her life in Egypt, her husband suggested that Miller take a trip back to Paris to catch up with her many friends and intellectual circles. During this trip, she met artist Roland Penrose, who Miller would leave her husband for and move to London with.   While residing in London with Roland Penrose, Miller supported herself by working as a fashion photographer for Vogue. When the Blitz started in London in 1940, Miller began photographing the ruined remnants left behind by the bombing. In true Surrealist fashion Miller’s photographs captured comedic and absurdist elements of the bombed city, once again through the lens of the found object. The title of her photograph Bridge of Sighs refers to the bridge in Venice of the same name, where crossing prisoners would sigh at their last view of Venice before being sent to their cells. Miller’s interpretation comes in the form of a bridge created through the hollowed out remains of a bombed out apartment building. This version perhaps echoes the sentiment of the prisoners in Venice, with the citizens of London looking out at the city as the sun sets, not knowing what a night of bombing could destroy next. This photograph, like many others that Miller took during the war, highlights her ability to capture the absurd leftovers of the carnage of war without losing any sense of pathos for the tragedy. Lee Miller, Bridge of Sighs, 1940.    As an American citizen, Miller was prohibited from contributing to the British war effort. Instead, she captured the activities of women serving in the British royal navy, known as Wrens. Miller highlights the uncanniness of modern warfare by placing women behind fire safety masks and machinery as if they are a fashion accessory. In her 1944 image Behind the Sight ,  she photographs a woman standing in front of a mounted gun. This playful image blurs the woman into the gun and her smile perfectly aligns with the mesh of the gun sight. The metal below this appears like two breasts, perhaps commenting on the boundaries being crossed by men and machines during the war. Lee Miller, Behind the Sight, 1944. Just days before D-day at the suggestion of her friend, David Scherman, Miller signed up to be a war correspondent for the US forces. She soon found herself on Omaha Beach, covering a story about an evacuation hospital. Her first story was published in Vogue in August 1944 entitled 'Unarmed Warriors', where she captured pictures of nurses doing their daily tasks, surgeries in progress and the many wounded men waiting for treatment or waiting to be sent back to the UK. One burn victim asked Miller to take his photo because he wanted to see how funny he looked. Miller later said that it was “pretty grim and I didn't focus good.” Lee Miller, 1944. Initially, Miller was confined to the field hospital, as female journalists were prohibited from venturing to the front lines. However, Miller unintentionally broke this rule when she arrived at St Malo in Brittany, for a story that was supposed to cover 'how the Civil Affairs team moved in after hostilities to get things running smoothly again'. The press had published that St Malo had been 'captured but not occupied'. In reality, the Germans had just been isolated from the mainland and had to be driven back into the fortress. Due to heavy machine gun fire, Miller was not allowed near the action and instead joined a group of soldiers to watch from a hotel window, where she captured incredible images of distant artillery explosions as Allied forces laid siege on the German fortress. Lee Miller, 1944. Miller covered the Allied forces in France all the way through to the campaign’s success. She became the first female journalist present during the liberation of Paris and travelled extensively in Europe throughout the rest of the war, covering the German retreat through Luxembourg, and eventually into Germany itself. Towards the end of the war, with her friend and fellow journalist, David Scherman, Miller visited the recently liberated Nazi concentration camps Buchenwald and Dachau. Many of the photos she took of the camps were later destroyed but she saved enough that the horrific events would not be forgotten. Shortly after visiting Dachau, Miller and Scherman went to Munich and were staying at Hitler's apartment when the news of his suicide was announced. On that same day, the pair decided to stage a photoshoot in Hitler’s bathtub. In the picture, the bathroom’s white carpet was soiled by the dirt of Dachau on the photographer's shoes. Nearly a whole roll of film was used on pictures of Miller in the bath. However, one of the most poignant images is one of the last, with a skinny looking David Scherman, uncomfortably sitting in the bath looking at the camera. Scherman was Jewish, and the carefully aligned shower over his uncomfortable body holds a different meaning considering that days before the pair had witnessed the horrors of the concentration camps and the gas chambers. When the war ended, Miller struggled to return to England, emotionally shaken and angered by what she had witnessed. She continued to wander around Europe living on a diet of amphetamines, coffee and alcohol. She somehow ended up in a children’s hospital in Vienna. Her last photographs as a war correspondent were of children in this hospital, who were well taken care of with the cruel paradox of the complete lack of medicine available. She wrote to her editor, “for an hour I watched a baby die… this tiny baby fought for his only possession, life, as if it might be worth something.” Miller was haunted by what she had seen during her time in the war and was permanently changed when she returned to England, and was prone to alcoholism and periods of depression. She continued being a photographer for Vogue until completely giving it up in the mid 1950s, where her passion for photography turned to the kitchen and she became a gourmet cook. Lee Miller strongly believed her war photography simply documented the war - she claimed “I’m busy making documents not art”. Despite this, without her time as a fashion model and Surrealist, her wartime work would not have shown the war as brutally and honestly as it was. Her son wrote that 'being a Surrealist artist must be the only possible training to enable a person to retain their objectivity in the face of the total illogicality of War - to make sense of the nonsensical.' The images she captured are arguably some of the most important and poignant images of the last century, let alone the war itself. The full extent of her impact has only emerged after her death with the efforts of her son, Anthony Penrose and their relationship is explored in the excellent film, Lee (2023)   starring Kate Winslet that focuses on Miller’s time during the war.   Further Reading: Davis, Caitlin S. (2006) ‘Lee Miller’s Revenge on Culture: Photojournalism, Surrealism, and Autobiography.’ Woman’s Art Journal  27, no. 1, pp. 3–9. Hessel, Katy. (2019) ‘Ami Bouhassane on Lee Miller.’ The Great Women Artists Podcast.   How Lee Miller became such an influential force in Surrealist Britain  (2018) The Independent . Available at: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/lee-miller-surrealism-uk-photo-man-ray-avant-garde-a8409826.html   Liu, J.-C. (2015) ‘Beholding the feminine sublime: Lee Miller’s war photography’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society , 40(2), pp. 308–319. Penrose, Anthony. (2005) Lee Miller’s war . London: Thames and Hudson. Salvio, P.M. (2009) ‘Uncanny exposures: A study of the wartime photojournalism of Lee Miller’, Curriculum Inquiry , 39(4), pp. 521–536. Sliwinski, S. (2011) ‘Air War and dream: Photographing the London blitz’, American Imago , 68(3), pp. 489–516. The big picture: Lee Miller’s Sphinx-like Blitz spirit  (2021) The Guardian . Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/mar/28/the-big-picture-lee-miller-self-portrait-with-sphinxes-vogue-blitz-second-world-war

  • Girlhood and Christmas: Little Women and expectations of young women in nineteenth-century America

    ‘Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents’ is the memorable opening line to Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women (1). Beginning with Alcott’s 1868 novel and considering nineteenth century gender roles for women more broadly, I am picking up threads of the experience of ‘girlhood’ through the festive period. My particular focus is on Christmas traditions of piety and theatrical performance, exemplified by the March sisters’ representation as both moral daughters and artistic performers. The so-called confines of girlhood as experienced by a nineteenth century girl to the home is questioned by the theatre world created by the sisters, which I view as a positive construction of girlhood and shaping ideas of coming of age. I will also turn to how nineteenth century girlhood has been depicted in adaptations of Little Women by Gillian Armstrong (1994) and Greta Gerwig (2019), as they imagine the female-centric world of the girls and their relationship to the festive period. By examining young women’s relationship to the festive period in the nineteenth-century, one can see how modern-day adaptations recall the nostalgia and sisterly world of the novel, and equally how Little Women  represents a particular experience of being a young woman coming of age through the moral codes and types of performance they engaged in. What is girlhood? It is important to define the concept of girlhood as Alcott and her contemporaries would have understood it. Girlhood is part of our modern-day vernacular, widely documented on social media, a celebration of the female experience, the good, the bad and the ugly. First documented in literature in Samuel Ricardson’s Clarissa in 1748, and for a 19th century audience, the title itself, Little Women , offers one perspective of the role middle-class teenage girls held in society ( OED ). They are women in training, with a somewhat diminutive adjective ‘little’ to denote youth and inexperience. Frances Armstrong has described the period of the novel as significant to understanding the coming of age of the sisters: ‘"Little womanhood" is a stage on the journey to greatness… Their memories of girlhood can remind them of the advantages of the real littleness of childhood, which provided a safely contained space for the direct and physical acting out of desires’ (Armstrong 454). Armstrong posits coming of age for these girls as a an ultimately positive experience, these formative years leading them to ‘greatness’ in the adult world (454). She draws out a contrast between this nurturing and nostalgic view of childhood and the adverb ‘littleness’, denoting the social and physical limitations to the girls’ world living in Civil War America. They are restricted by their economic situation, the conflict at home and their gender, which limits their education, and yet they find joy in each other as sisters able to express their desires. Turning to Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women  in 2019, she connects girlhood with memory, delineating the female-centric world of the characters. Her first flashback sets up the theme of memory and girlhood as she brings the viewers to Christmastime 1861. The script reads: ‘the sisters, all together again in the past, in the snowglobe of girlhood and memory that is ever present but forever gone, are in a flurry of getting ready for a holiday party’ (Gerwig 11). The nostalgia that pervades the audience’s mind is encapsulated in Gerwig’s stage direction. Their home is ‘a snowglobe of girlhood and memory’, a festive metaphor for girlhood itself, a glistening, beautiful landscape of comfort and a flurry of movement. It is a contained space, and Gerwig poignantly adds that this memory is ‘ever present but forever gone’ (11). The girls are grown up, but the memory of Christmas is what transports us to the past, to the first scene with the sisters all together as a pure moment of joy and coming together that holidays bring. The use of flashbacks in Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of the novel serves to enact this idea of both reminiscing on the safety and comfort of childhood as well as expressing frustrations about their economic and physical limits. Gerwig’s non-linear film shifts from childhood to adulthood, perhaps suggesting that the girls never truly leave this behind. Gerwig’s thematic style as a filmmaker is preoccupied with young women escaping their social world, as seen in Lady Bird  and Barbie , but this dream of flight also leads to an acknowledgment of the beauty of their childhood and relationships with women. Critics Dr. Niña Jen R. Canayong and Ms. Rey-ann C. Matalines underline that ‘the matriarchal circle of the family stays completely self-contained and entirely female’, which shapes our reading of the novel as it is an exclusive world (7). The harmonious world of the sisters is not without disputes and family pressure, particularly around their class and lack of mobility, but my focus within this self-containment of the March sisters is the element of fantasy which moves them outside of their social sphere. It may be unfair to say that Alcott confines her March sisters to a conservative narrative. Their options of free time would be limited, and the experience of childhood for women was much shorter than men’s as they reached marriageable age much sooner, as young as twenty for Amy. Girlhood as encapsulated by the title ‘Little Women’ is only small inasmuch as society judges women’s lives to be small, and Alcott (and later Gerwig) resists this in portraying a rich world of sisterly troubles and triumphs, socially and morally confined and yet artistically rewarding, as we will see next. Morality and the festive period for girls I am now turning my focus back to Alcott’s novel and how Christmas represented the pinnacle of expectations of charity and piety for young women in nineteenth century America and England. Beginning with the March sisters’ Christmas celebrations and then considering Christian celebrations through music and the work of Christina Rossetti (Alcott’s contemporary), there is a trend to be found in the moral and domestic role women occupied. The enigmatic, independent Jo March complains about their lack of money in the festive opening chapter of the 1868 novel. It soon transpires that the four sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, are in no need of material gifts: they are the heart and soul of each other’s worlds in their warm yet simple home. The wintery scenes which open the novel and famous cinematic retellings of Little Women  are iconic in cultural imagination, especially the Christmas play that the sisters put on and their candlelit singing in an intimate moment of sisterhood. In the iconic opening to the novel, Alcott declares the lack of agency that these young women have in the same moment as marking Christmas as a pivotal moment in a Christian child’s calendar. Specifically for young girls then, Christmastime plays a key part in their social formation and, as we will see later, creative freedom.      Alcott provides a domestic social commentary where Christmas is a key season, accented by joy, childhood, and loss by writing the experience of Christmas for four girls somewhat confined to their home and small town in Massachusetts. Alcott has furnished readers with a lifetime of comfort in the fireside of the sisters’ attic and snowy escapades. The intersection between domesticity and religious teaching is significant in the novel, as Alcott represents the wider societal views of young women educated to be virtuous and moral. So how do 19th century girls spend their Christmas morning? First by reading Pilgrims’ Progress , the religious allegory by John Bunyan which was extremely popular in Protestant households (1678). The presence of this book speaks to the religious education that children undertook at this time, thus the domestic experience of Christmas is intrinsic to understanding girlhood for the March sisters in 19th century society. The Christian values taught by their mother are lucid throughout the novel, and her instruction on Christmas day is a potent metaphor for the piety expected of young women. Marmee instructs her daughters to ‘Look under your pillows on Christmas morning, and you will find your guidebook’, hinting to the spiritual book they will receive as a gift (13). The choice of a religious gift is telling of the teaching of daughters, and their goodness is received from their mother, emphasising the traditionally female role in a household. Importantly, in late 19th century America, celebrating Christmas was normalised, and Alcott was one of the first to depict a middle-class family Christmas in her novel (Murfin). When Marmee asks the girls about giving food to the Hummels, they obey immediately, their daughterly duty foregrounded as the sisters are completely devoted to their mother. Rachel Canayong and Rey-ann Matalines have noted that Beth symbolises the ‘ideal’ model of girlhood: ‘Out of the four sisters, Beth has been the best example in showing the normative behaviour of female sex at that time’ (60). Adding to Canayong and Mataline’s judgement of Beth, her portrayal is the most aligned with stereotypical expectations of femininity as she is devoted, quiet and self-sacrificing. As the pinnacle of the ‘dutiful daughter’, she is the first to agree to give food to their poorer neighbours, and the sisters do this heartily. Indeed, the capturing of this scene in the 1994 film adaptation is beautiful and light, rather than this moment serving as a doctrine, it becomes jubilant as they all break into an acapella rendition of ‘Here we come a-wassailing’. Director Gillian Armstrong’s interpretation focuses on the joy of the festive season and the message of goodwill that the sisters represent. ‘Wassailing means going door-to-door singing in exchange for food and drink and it is thought the tradition pre-dates Christianity and formed a mid-winter tradition’ (BBC Music). This song was popular in the mid-19th century and the lyrics reflect the good deed they are doing in offering their Christmas breakfast. This picture encapsulates girlhood and sorority, four sisters walking in the snow with food and a whistling hot kettle, singing joy and welcoming in a snowy day. The author however does not shy away from presenting the desires and vanity of the sisters in their childhood arguments and mishaps. One such example can be seen in Amy’s reluctance to give up her breakfast orange, offering a complication to the notion of being a kind and giving young woman. The presence or absence of food reveals a lot about social status, and here oranges are a luxury, as they had only just begun to be widely traded in civil war America. The symbol of the orange and the world beyond the March home is significant, as Shana Klein wrote that ‘Depictions of fruit were not just an accessory to the dining room. They were an accessory to the American empire and a device to endorse America’s growing territorial and economic gains’ ( Southern Cultures ). Situating the female world of Little women within its Civil war context of a plantation economy and the slave trade offers a glimpse at the world outside of the female characters, which they seemingly engage with very little. Here, Amy’s childish desire to keep the orange represents more the process of becoming a ‘good’ girl as stipulated by charitable and pious characteristics expected of American women. Therefore, Alcott outlines the transformation of these young women as they display piety and thus align with nineteenth century Christian expectations. Mrs Hummel describes them as ‘good angels’ in their Christmas offering of goodwill and although they do not attend church, the girls are portrayed in this angelic light through their good actions (17). They are described as ‘good’ and this adjective represents the god fearing behaviour expected of young women. The expectation of sacrifice, goodness and virtue at all times is seen in Coventry Patmore’s Victorian model of the ‘Angel in the House’, a moral woman who populates the domestic sphere (Melani). In fact, a contemporary of Alcott, Christina Rossetti’s, was painted by her brother in a similar fashion to the ‘good’ little women of Alcott’s novel. Her Christmastime hymn, ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ portrays ideal femininity through religious devotion. The speaker, despite their low status, offers their ‘heart’ as a gift, and this may also be found in the unconditional love taught by Marmee in Little Women and learnt by the sisters through their trials and tribulations. Marmee acts as a role model for the Christian, nurturing woman the sisters are expected to become, and this is intrinsic to their social formation as young women. Christina Rossetti in fact modelled for her brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s painting entitled ‘The Girlhood of Mary Virgin’ (1848-9), encapsulating the projection of girlhood in 19th century society. The religious lesson and meek pose of Mary, shown as a saint and accompanied by an angel, fits in with the reading of the novel as a wider commentary on expected gender roles that women struggle with as they grow up and express their desires. However, as we have seen, the sisters are more complicated than stereotypes of traditional moral femininity, and we will next see how the theme of performance both aligns the characters with expectations of young ladies and also resists such narrow societal roles as they experiment through theatre. Performance and spectacle: the pinnacle of girlhood? The theme of performance creates a space for girls to be whoever they desire, and travel far beyond their home. Girlhood in the society of Alcott is delineated by a heteronormative view of womanhood, and another mode of performance which shows the sisters’ inclusion and exclusion is through fashion and class. As a series of ‘repetitive acts’, Judith Butler’s seminal model of the repeated performance of gender asserts that the identity of ‘woman’ is never fixed, but that clothing is one mode of establishing a normative gender appearance (Butler 2543). In the instance of growing up and desiring to leave girlhood behind, Little Women ’s focus on performing being a ‘grown-up’ woman reflects the nineteenth century beliefs of what a woman should look like. Here, the focus on hair and costume to achieve what the young girls consider an ideal woman’s fashion is telling of their youth and act of being a ‘grown-up’ woman. They aspire to the lifestyle of a wealthier middle-class society woman. One comic example of this is when the older March sisters are getting ready for a Christmas ball. Alcott brings humour to the moment where Meg’s hair is burnt, as they are imitating how a grown-up woman would act. There is irony behind the so-called ‘all-important business of `getting ready for the party'’, which connects the performance of girlhood for the March sisters to contemporary readers who see the pressure to get ready for an event (Alcott 25) The desire to grow up and attend these parties is a desire that reveals the eve of womanhood, and perhaps this is a timeless wish. For example, Gerwig phrases Amy’s complaint to her sisters comically as she asks ‘Why can’t we all go to the party?! It’s not fair!’, suggesting her position as a girl wanting to be older and able to join her sisters (alas the youngest sister’s curse!) (Gerwig 11). She is excluded due to her age, class, and gender, but the tension here relates back to Butler’s useful model of performativity around gender roles. Amy’s wish is to conform and grow up, as she sees in her sisters’ participation in the grown-up world of dresses and ballgowns the model of womanhood. Alcott subverts the normative performance of girlhood however through Jo’s characterisation. She subverts codes of ‘proper’ behaviour for girls, exemplified at the party, where she observes the dancing as an outsider. She intentionally looks on from the curtain, symbolising her desire to not fit in and to not become another society woman. She meets Laurie, and in their first dance, another joyous experience of youth is captured by Gerwig’s script: ‘Laurie bows, Jo awkwardly curtsies and then they go dancing wildly up and down a wrap-around porch’ (16). They dance ‘wildly’, another image of youth and unbridled emotion which is much more natural that Jo’s ‘awkward’ curtsey (Gerwig 16). Alcott describes their dance as equally spontaneous and liberating, where Jo is ‘full of swing and spring’ (Alcott 31). This moment is crucial in establishing Jo’s journey to womanhood is non-traditional, as she rebels against the social circle represented by the ball. A harsh truth is made lucid by Canayong and Matalines, as they state that: ‘Following the norm receives acceptance and being deviant becomes a social outcast’, suggesting that Jo becomes a pariah in this resistance to the norm(59). Alcott’s representation of both traditional gender roles, particularly in the moral behaviour we have already seen, and the unconventional Jo, posits a new interpretation of nineteenth century girlhood that is more imaginative than Canayong and Matalines suggest. As the sisters both participate in the world of dressing as young women and following society events, but also keep a critical distance, the novel offers a reading of an alternative girlhood.  Furthermore, re-examining the space of the home repositions it as a place of escapism from the stereotypes of girlhood that I have outlined. The primary way in which the sisters occupy themselves at Christmas is through their acting . The theatre, or attic, is a space reserved for play and imagination, a world which the sisters define and control. As children, the Christmas show that they create is evidently a way to overcome class and gender limitations which prevent them from going out into society to see shows and spend money. We admire their ‘clever’ design of ‘antique lamps made of old-fashioned butter boats covered with silver paper, gorgeous robes of old cotton, glittering with tin spangles from a pickle factory’, (17). Evoking the glittery and colourful set design, Alcott underlines the second-hand nature of their set, costumes and props, but adopts a tone of admiration which reinforces how creativity is an incredible gift that marks sisterhood. Through their resourcefulness and imagination, they can make tin into glitter, and such a magical description places Christmas as a font of nostalgic memory for sisters. This spectacle and theatrical space for the sisters offers a wider view of girlhood as a creative time. Indeed, this is shared with other local girls, as Alcott describes their home becoming a theatre: ‘On Christmas night, a dozen girls piled onto the bed which was the dress circle, and sat before the blue and yellow chintz curtains in a most flattering state of expectancy’ (18). Readers are invited to share in the revelry and the homemade nature of their show. Theatre offers a creative outlet which is fulfilling and much more diverse than the stereotype of dutiful obedience in young girls. The message of the novel and its reflection on the role of young women in society may be to upkeep virtue and goodness, but, as I have shown, the portrayal of girlhood as purely pious is too narrow to describe the rich and colourful lives of the March sisters. The novel engages with societal trends where Christmas is a female centric celebration, following the Christian nineteenth century traditions of goodwill and morality. Equally, Little Women offers an alternative model of girlhood through the creative freedom to perform and experiment with the grown-up world of women as well as in their attic theatre. As the film adaptations have shown, the festive joy is a key facet of childhood memories and encapsulates their love and formative period coming of age as young girls. Alcott reflects on gender roles propagated by society and the performance of the girls, through the shared experiences of the sisters, effectively represents the 19th century experience of girlhood as a multidimensional and creative time in their lives. Coupled with the adaptations, the anxieties and joys of girlhood in Little Women  maintains the timeless experience of sisters which resonates with a modern-day audience, even if readers today are often much less restricted by their gender. Bibliography Primary Sources Alcott, Louisa May. Little Women . Vintage, 2012. Armstrong, Gillian. Little Women . Columbia Pictures, 1994. Gerwig, Greta. Little Women, in ‘Read Greta Gerwig’s ‘Little Women’ Screenplay’. Variety Magazine , 2019. https://variety.com/2019/film/news/little-women-screenplay-greta-gerwig-full-script-1203447712/ . Gerwig, Greta. Little Women . Sony Pictures, 2019. Rossetti, Christina. ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’, Poetry Foundation , https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53216/in-the-bleak-midwinter   Secondary Sources Armstrong, Frances. ‘‘Here Little, and Hereafter Bliss’: Little Women and the Deferral of Greatness’, American Literature , Vol. 64, No. 3, Duke UP, pp. 453-474, Sep. 1992. JSTOR , https://www.jstor.org/stable/2927747 BBC Music Magazine. ‘Here we come A wassailing lyrics’, Classical Music , 30th Oct. 2022. https://www.classical-music.com/articles/here-we-come-a-wassailing-lyrics Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity . London: Routledge, 2006. Canayong, Niña Jen R. and Matalines, Rey-ann C. ‘Gender Behaviour and Class Envy in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women ’, Asia Pacific Journal of Educational Perspective , Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 55-63, May 2022. Lyceum of the Philippines University , https://research.lpubatangas.edu.ph/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/7-APJEP-42-Canayong.pdf . Estes, A., & Lant, K. ‘Dismembering the Text: The Horror of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women ’ Children's Literature ,   John Hopkins UP, vol. 17, no.1, pp.98-123, 1989. Klein, Shana. The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion. California UP, 2020. Melani, Lilia.   ‘The Angel in the House’, The Nineteenth Century English Novel , March 2nd 2011. Brooklyn College , http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/thackeray/angel.html Murfin, Patrick. ‘Those Little Women Showed an Early Glimpse of the American Christmas’, Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout , 18th Dec. 2015. https://patrickmurfin.blogspot.com/2015/12/those-little-women-showed-early-glimpse.html

  • What's in a word? Understanding the history of queer

    I often describe myself as a queer researcher, and despite the multiplicity of meanings that phrase holds for me, I am still often taken aback when people ask me to explain exactly what that means. It is a personal title as much as it is an academic and professional one. I call myself a queer researcher because my identity falls under the umbrella of queer; because many of my research subjects similarly fall under the umbrella term queer, usually in more ways than one; because I am fascinated and excited by the ways artists queer identity, challenging its supposedly stable confines. However, the answer I often give people first is that my academic focus has primarily been utilising queer theory to research queer subjects who are queering identity in their cultural outputs. But this ‘simplified’ sentence itself hides a multiplicity of meanings and definitions because what exactly is queer theory,what is queer, and what is it to queer?  Reflecting on everything queer meant to me, I became curious as to the history of the word queer and how it had taken on so many meanings, not only in my life but in our social, cultural, and academic worlds. This article looks to trace the history of the word queer and how it has come to be an adjective, a noun, a verb, an insult, an identity, a theory, a methodology, a way of life and so much more. It is undoubtedly an imperfect history. As scholars like Kadji Amin in his article “Genealogies of Queer Theory” explain, there is “intrinsic difficulty in defining queer theory” (18), let alone the word queer given its multiple meanings, usages, and pasts, all of which are deeply personal to many. For instance, it is worth considering queer’s colonial roots and legacy, with some noting the word itself does not easily travel outside Western contexts. Though I will try to tell a full story of the word, my own narrative is still limited, impacted by my social positioning as a white Western queer academic. Nonetheless, I will try to give some sense of how we have gotten to a place where queer has become such a mad-libs ace.  "Snob Queers" From the 16th century, the word queer in English was an adjective describing something or someone weird, eccentric, or unconventional. However, in the late 19th century people started attaching the word to homosexual identities. Indeed, it is important to note that the modern idea of a set “homosexual” identity didn’t start to develop in Europe until the late 17th to early 18th centuries. To cut a very long (and much more nuanced) story short, before this period, homosexuality occurred in Europe, but it was not seen as a set identity. Rather, homosexuality was a practice one could participate in, or even a phase of life, often something done when one was young. Throughout the mediaeval and early modern period, practising homosexuality was illegal in much of Europe, but it was a practice one could get away with if kept quiet and done within certain social bounds. However, the Enlightenment’s obsession with categorisation coupled with the need to justify colonisation led Europeans to create a stream of new socio-cultural identities ranked from most to least civilised. Driven by a need to differentiate white colonisers from the colonised, settled ideas of what it meant and looked like to be straight or gay, Black or white, man or woman were developed. Such hierarchically structured binary views of identities solidified within European thinking and were violently exported globally via colonisation. A hierarchy of social identities formed, which, by the dawn of the 19th century, was taken as naturally occurring fact. With this came a strong belief that there was a right and wrong way to express one’s identity, where everyone was expected to mimic the behaviour of ‘civilised’ white men and women. Amongst these new dejected or ‘wrong’ identities was the homosexual.  The word queer’s attachment to this relatively new homosexual identity was popularised thanks to the 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde. Wilde had sued the Marquess of Queensbury for accusing him of being a sodomite. The issue was,  Wilde had been having an affair with the Marquess’s son, Lord Alfred Douglas, colloquially known as Bosie, for nearly four years. The defamation suit went horribly wrong as the details of Wilde and Bosie’s long sexual affair were made public. What followed was another wildly popular public trial of Wilde for sodomy. In the court case covered by nearly every major news outlet of the time, a letter written by the Marquess of Queensbury was read aloud accusing Wilde, and other supposedly homosexual men, of being “snob queers.”  The insult stuck.  Newspapers covering the trial, especially in America, rapidly picked up the phrase. Soon Americans adopted the new colloquialism beyond coverage of the trial as an easy insult to describe gays and lesbians. By 1914 the term seems to have become common parlance, travelling back to the UK. However, a 1934 dictionary entitled The Concise New Partridge Dictionary of Slang  notes that the term queer is an adjective describing a “Homosexual. Derogatory from the outside, not from within.” Additionally, letters from the period show some describing themselves as queer to denote their homosexual identification. Taken together, this suggests that while to the heterosexual English-speaking world queer was an insult, homosexuals as early as the mid 20th century were claiming the term as an identity they willingly attached to themselves without shame.  The Effect of the "Gay Plague": Reclaiming Queer The HIV-AIDS epidemic in the 1980s fundamentally reshaped the LGBT+ community, redefining LGBTQIA+ activism as well as academia. With this came a full and public reclamation of “queer”. HIV is a viral disease transmitted through bodily fluids which overactivates a body's t-cells, those primarily responsible for fighting infection, to the point of destruction, leaving those affected extremely vulnerable to disease. At its most advanced stages, HIV becomes AIDS, at which point the immune system is nearly non-existent.  HIV and AIDS made its way from Africa to the Western World as early as the late 1960s. By the mid-1980s gay men, as well as Black men and women and intravenous drug users, were dying at extortionate and disproportionate rates from the disease. The highest number of cases however, were amongst Gay men as HIV passes more easily via anal sex than vaginal. The disease quickly became known as the “Gay Plague” , and as such, was resolutely ignored by the American government with President Ronald Reagan having little interest in acting.Indeed in 1982, after 1,000 Americans had died of the disease, Larry Speakes, Reagan’s press secretary, laughed off a question by reporter Lester Kinsolving as to whether the administration planned to do anything about the disease's spread, showing just how flippantly the Reagan administration viewed the disease. Between 1981 and 1990, 100,777 deaths in the U.S. were attributed to AIDS. 59% of these deaths were gay or bisexual men, 21% were intravenous drug users. Unsurprisingly, such a massive death toll within a single community fundamentally changed the face of LGBTQIA+ organising.  LGBTQIA+ organising in America had grown exponentially in the post-war years. And by 1969 when the infamous Stonewall Riots occurred, a “Gay Liberation Movement” could be officially introduced. As its name suggests, this movement largely avoided using the term ‘queer’ or even ‘homosexual’, preferring terms like gay and lesbian. Though this movement undoubtedly had more radical edges, often pushed by people of colour, trans individuals, and others with intersectional identities, by the 1990s the mainstream Gay Liberation movement’s politics had become quite assimilatory. When the movement gained public recognition in the 1970s and 80s, it was white gay men whose voices and issues were centred, as the movement pushed for acceptance of gays and lesbians (often alone) into the normative structures of heterosexual society. Normative structures are those considered socially acceptable or ‘natural’, such as the idea that the ‘proper’ family is a heterosexual nuclear unit consisting of an active male father, passive female wife, and their children. LGBTQIA+ identities are generally non-normative, meaning they break with settled, stereotypical understandings of how male and female identity are meant to manifest. However, the mainstream gay liberation movement downplayed these non-normative characteristics by looking to mimic those of stereotypical heterosexual couples, such as the right to marry. What the AIDS movement made abundantly clear was this type of activism and inclusion would not protect gay men from the increasing violence inflicted by the state’s inaction during an epidemic ravishing their community. What emerged was a movement for Queer  liberation, and the mad-lib usage of queer began. Before this period, there were LGBTQIA+ individuals identifying as queer, as an identity marker denoting their homosexuality. This trend grew exponentially in the 1990s, with many proudly protesting as queer individuals and collectives during the AIDS epidemic. Through these organising efforts, many came to see queer as an umbrella identity under which a range of non-normative, LGBTQIA+ identities could organise. However, the term “queer” used to denote a non-normative identity was not solely limited to the LGBTQIA+ community. As Cathy Cohen notes in her seminal article “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” (1997), if queer is defined as a non-normative or ‘unconventional’ identity or social positioning, then it is not only LBTQIA+ individuals who could organise or identify with the adjective. Indeed, per her title, she denotes that “Welfare Queens”, or heterosexual Black single mothers on welfare, similarly exceed the boundaries of normative heterosexual identity by breaking the mould of the nuclear family, living without a ‘bread-winning’ patriarch. Cohen, alongside diverse activists and academics, used queer to denote not only LGBTQIA+ identities, but any non-normative identity, allowing for broader coalitional political organising under the label queer. Unfortunately, in popular parlance, the idea that queer is a term for all non-normative identities has largely been lost. Instead, today queer as an identity is often used solely to denote the umbrella of LGBTQIA+ identities, rather than any non-normative social position.  Alongside the reclamation of queer as a celebratory alternative identity came a new “queer” politics. The AIDS epidemic had clearly illustrated to the LGBTQIA+ community that assimilatory politics based largely in Civil Rights strategies of the 1960s had done little to stem the crisis of violence their community currently faced. As such, activists turned to a more radical politics, inspired by the Black Liberation Movement and radical Black scholars. These organisations, like the Black Panther’s, turned to alternative lifestyles and structures of community aid, celebrating their differences rather than looking for access to and acceptance from white society. It is here that the idea of “queer” became a verb, a type of politics one could enact rather than any set identity. In the scope of queer politics, to queer was to live outside of the bounds of the heterosexual, white, middle-class nuclear family. The goal of queer politics became dismantling the restrictive confines of a ‘proper’ identity, looking instead to celebrate ‘other’ ways of living. In other words, they looked to queer  identity.  Instead of looking to gain access to the structures of white capitalist society, queer activists looked to build new structures outside of these norms. This new queer politics is summarised in brash poetics by QUASH, or “Queers United Against Straight-acting Heterosexuals”, in 1993, stating:  Assimilation is killing us. …Getting a corporate job, a fierce car and a condo does not protect you from dying of AIDS or getting your head bashed in by neo-Nazis. The myth of assimilation much be shattered…Fuck the heterosexual, nuclear family. Let’s make families which promote sexual choices and liberation rather than sexual oppression. Thus, queer  became an action, a way of living and doing politics by publicly enacting different social structures and ways of life outside socially acceptable limits. To queer  was to upset or deconstruct socially accepted notions of something to open considerations of other possibilities, so to queer  sexual identity was to upset the notion that heterosexuality was natural and good and everything else a perverted subversion. By the mid 1990s, queer carried a multiplicity of meanings and usages to different groups. It was a noun used to denote an identity, an adjective used to insult those thought to be homosexual, and a verb used to describe a new way of living and enacting politics.  Queer in the Academy: Queer Theory The AIDS epidemic’s effects were not contained to activism, rippling through the academy as well. The developments occurring in the 1990s in relation to LGBTQIA+ studies and activism are largely inseparable, as many academics were also activists and vice versa. As people started identifying as ‘queer’, academics were increasingly interested in understanding identities. This was accompanied in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s with the burgeoning growth of identity knowledges like Women Studies, Black Studies, and Latino Studies. By the 1990s, academics began to shift the focus of identity studies away from the confines of predefined societal groups. There was a growing understanding that by studying identities separately, those holding multiple identities or not fitting into pre-defined identity groups at all were overlooked. By the 1990s debates around these topics came to a head with the crisis of the AIDS epidemic.    So, while activists were trying to upset ideas of identity, scholars were following a similar pattern of deconstructing preset identities. A body of work quickly developed  challenging predetermined identity categories, aiming to trace the mechanisms of power that constructed and enshrined normative identity while tracking methods to upset these mechanisms. This work soon came to be known as “queer theory” – largely defined by its focus on upsetting settled ideas of identity, though there are those who may still debate this definition. To understand this multiplicity, it is important to tell at least some of the genealogies of queer theory in the academy.  Traditionally, the genealogy of queer theory is traced largely to the work of three theorists: Foucault, Butler, and Sedgewick. All three scholars prompted in some way the interrogation of preset, presupposed identities, focussing on homosexuality as their case study. Paradoxically, this early focus on homosexual identities soon came to define the discipline. Indeed, queer theory in many academic circles replaced older Lesbian and Gay studies entirely, becoming a shorthand for a new identity study. To this day, this tension causes rifts amongst queer theorists who  debate what exactly the focus of queer theory and queer studies should be. Is queer theory another identity-study or is it the exact opposite, a study looking to dismantle identity?.  Importantly, this is not the only genealogy of queer theory. As scholars like Amin have noted, this popular genealogy of queer theory is incredibly Euro-American centric. All three authors named are white, and their early subjects were often equally white with limited discussions around race. But another tradition of queer theory exists which does account for a myriad of social identities, often referred to today as queer of colour theory. This theory’s use of queer differs slightly from and even pre-dates the popular reclamation of the word by activists and the academy at large. People of colour in their scholarship and activism had long challenged the limits of identity, a history which has only recently been understood and claimed by the academy as an alternative origin and influence to queer theory.  Queer of colour theory was heavily influenced by the work of women of colour theorising in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, something leading scholars in the discipline like Munoz are quick to acknowledge. Many of these academics and activists were lesbians or bisexual women whose non-normative sexual identity, race, class, and gender influenced their writing. This discipline traces its genealogy back to theorists like Audre Lorde and the Combahee River Collective, among many others. It is within this tradition of Black, Chicana/o, Latina/o, and decolonial organising that we see the first printed use of the term queer as a theoretical provocation. In a 1981 piece the brilliant Chicana feminist, writer, artist, poet, and powerhouse Gloria Anzaldúa used the term queer to denote racialised identities on the ‘borderlands’ of abjection. From this genealogy a body of queer of colour theory developed, populated by scholars like José Esteban Muñoz, Sara Ahmed, Juana María Rodríguez, among many others, investigating and challenging the complex matrices of power that normalises settled identity categories.  Clearly then, understanding queer theory and the operations of queer in scholarship is no less difficult than understanding the term’s use in popular parlance. It seems no matter where you look in the English-speaking world, queer carries with it a multiplicity of meanings. So, where does that leave us?  A Queer Tomorrow? Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers. Queer means many things to many people. So, perhaps all we can do is be mindful of how we use the word – to make sure we define, to the best of our abilities, the way we are using it. For me, as for many others whose history is intertwined in one way or another with the word, its meaning will likely always be personal.  Queer is a reminder of just how slippery language can be, how it can attach itself to many things, even those that are paradoxical. To many, such multiplicity of meaning can be overwhelming, confusing, and exhausting. Indeed, many activists and academics are keen to abandon the word altogether. But I see a promise in queer’s multiplicity. The very fact that the word has become so loaded with rapidly changing meaning and connotations creates a sense of hope. If a word can come to be so multi-faceted, then can we not let our identities be the same? In some ways, the history of the word queer is a metaphor for many of the things the word itself has tried to accomplish. Queer exists in fluidity, existing differently moment to moment, without ever losing its importance of continuity. In that way it is stable, it holds value and meaning even as those meanings change. I hope for a world in which we can all one day do the same. “The future is queerness’s domain… Queerness is a longing that propels us onward, beyond romances of the negative and toiling in the present. Queerness is that thing that lets us feel that this world is not enough, that indeed something is missing.” - José Esteban Muñoz (2009)  Further Reading  Amin, Kadji. 2020. “Chapter 1: Genealogies of Queer Theory.” In The Cambridge Companion to Queer Studies , by Siobhan B. Somerville, 17-29. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 2015. “La Prieta.” In This Bridge Called My Back, by Cherríe Moraga, 198-209. Albany: State University of New York Press. Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter.  New York City: Routledge. —. 1990. Gender Trouble; Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.  London and New York City: Routledge. Center for Disease Control (CDC). 1991. Current Trends Mortality Attributable to HIV Infection/AIDS -- United States, 1981-1990 .  25 Jan. Accessed April 16, 2024. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001880.htm#:~:text=From%201981%20through%201990%2C%20100%2C777,deaths%20were%20reported%20during%201990 . Clarke, Mollie. 2021. 'Queer' History: A History of Queer.  9 Feb. Accessed April 15, 2024. https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/queer-history-a-history-of-queer/ . Cohen, Cathy J. 1997. “Punks, Bulldaggers, and Welfare Queens: The Radical Potential of Queer Politics?” A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies  3 (4): 437-465. Fitzsimons, Tim. 2018. LGBTQ History Month: The Early Days on America's AIDS Crisis.  15 Oct. Accessed April 16, 2024. https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/lgbtq-history-month-early-days-america-s-aids-crisis-n919701 . Foucault, Michel. 1990. The History of Sexuality an Introduction.  Edited by Robert Hurley. Vol. 1. New York City: Vintage Books. Hanhardt, Christina B. 2024. “Queer History Article.” Organization of American Historians.  Accessed April 20, 2024. https://www.oah.org/tah/queer-history/queer-history-1/ . HIVInfo. 2023. HIV and AIDS: The Basics.  25 July. Accessed April 16, 2024. https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-and-aids-basics#:~:text=AIDS%20stands%20for%20acquired%20immunodeficiency,%2C%20illnesses%2C%20and%20certain%20cancers . Lemmey, Huw, and Ben Miller. 2022. Bad Gays: A Homosexual History.  London and New York: Verso. Lopez, German. 2016. The Reagan Administration's Unbelievable Response to the HIV/AIDS Epidemic.  1 Dec. Accessed April 15, 2024. https://www.vox.com/2015/12/1/9828348/ronald-reagan-hiv-aids . Lugones, María. 2007. “Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System.” Hypatia  22 (1): 186-209.---. 2010. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia  25 (4): 742-759. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. n.d. Queer.  Accessed April 15, 2024. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/queer#h1 . Muñoz, José Esteban. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity.  New York City: New York University Press. —. 1999. Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics.  Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota. Rodríguez, Juana María. 2014. Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings.  New York City: New York University Press. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies.  Durham: Duke University Press. —. 2003. Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity.  Durham and London: Duke University Press. Sullivan, Nikki. 2003. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory.  New York City: New York University Press.

  • The Mother Behind one of Georgian England's Most Prominent Prime Ministers

    The institution of British government has almost always been dominated by men. Until the 20th century, women simply weren’t allowed to hold active positions or vote. Constance Markievicz was the first woman elected to the House of Commons in 1918 but didn’t serve for political reasons, so the first woman to actually take her seat as an MP and serve was Nancy Witcher Langhorne Astor in 1919.   150 years before this, the government of early modern Britain was exclusively run by men. However, just because women didn’t hold official titles or positions, didn’t mean that their influence on politics was negligible; quite the opposite in fact. Women were vital contributors to the goings-on of political society and were often integral in parliamentary elections and issues. Described by Elaine Chalus as “social politics” , 18th century women’s influential involvement was an important cog in the mechanics of men’s political careers.   Mary Mee was born between 1752 and 1754 to Benjamin and Elizabeth Mee. She was brought up in a modest household, as her father was a successful banker, but they were not part of the nobility; a situation that would quickly change in her adulthood. Mary had a thorough education growing up, bringing her love of learning as well as an acknowledgement of its importance to her household and children. Mary married Henry Temple, Second Viscount Palmerston on 7 January 1783. Her husband was an exuberant politician; a Member of Parliament for 40 years, he was a passionate Whig and subsequently a follower of Charles James Fox, Britain’s first Foreign Secretary and avid Whig statesman.   Mary placed great importance on education regardless of gender and was adamant all of her children receive a quality education in a variety of subjects. Mary shared an enlightened, liberal mindset and interests with her husband. This made its way into their household through political discussions, education, an awareness of the need to reform, and the cultured and erudite friends they kept. This was no doubt a strong, intellectual foundation for their four children including their eldest Henry John Temple, known as Harry.   Born in 1784, Harry would, in time, succeed his father and become the third Viscount Palmerston, and eventually Prime Minister of Britain in 1855. The key factor these two early modern political celebrities had in common was Mary. Henry Sr was already in the midst of British politics when he wed Mary Mee but with Mary by his side they continued to grow as an elite family with enviable political and social clout, as well as raise one of the most well-known Whig Prime Ministers of the 19th century. During his university studies Harry’s father passed away and he inherited all of the Palmerston land and titles becoming the third viscount Palmerston. Due to this rise in status, Harry no longer had to actually sit his examinations to pass but nevertheless, requested that he still did. This illustrates the importance he put on education and learning, just like his mother.   A large aspect of elite women’s lives was social, especially if their family was politically inclined. They would hold dinners and outings, attend gatherings, plays, weekends to country houses, balls; many with the hope of taking part in some political discussion or outreach, whether subtle or not. Women were the behind-the-scenes players when it came to politics. They would network, converse, and find the latest news, eventually relaying all of it back to their husbands. Mary was no exception, as her daily diary from 1791 shows a multitude of events attended and people met. On Thursday 10th February Mary writes “visited all ye morning”  on the 18th she “dined at Lord Malmsbury only Ly M Sir Gilbert . .”  and on the 20th  “went first to Lord Guildfords, then to ye first Sunday concert at Lord [Chestlys]” .   This is just a small selection of the types of entries in Mary’s pocket-book and they depict a very busy social calendar with members of elite society. She entertained many politically inclined friends, was familiar with the political events occurring at the time and took part in a multitude of occasions that were liberally motivated (as their household was). This would have provided the opportunity for her to interact with similarly minded friends and acquaintances, and likely discuss some form of political gossip or news. She frequently references dozens of Lords and Ladies of the nobility, either meeting them somewhere or hosting them in her home, exhibiting her social prowess and popularity.   Importantly, it wasn’t only ladies she entertained but men too. Many of these men and women were wrapped up in the politics of the day and Mary had constant access to their bended ears. She rarely mentions Lord Palmerston, begging the question if he was present for these engagements or not. If not, then it would have been up to her alone to socialise and, if needed, carefully politicise the conversation to either supply or gather information. This environment would have provided Harry with a strong foundation, understanding and comfortability with the political world.   The author David Steele for his ODNB  article on Temple, Henry John, third Viscount Palmerston  writes of Mary: “…Viscountess Palmerston, is a rather colourless figure beside her much older husband – equally well-meaning, but never quite at ease among the aristocracy.”  Based on her diaries and journals one could disagree about her colourlessness. Her manuscripts are filled with her many daily meetings, societal exploits, and local and international news, illustrating no lack of involvement among the aristocracy. Although one may have found her thoughtful disposition occasionally lacking the liveliness of her exuberant husband, it does not mean she was a bland, withdrawn, aristocratic housewife. In opposing instances, Mary has also been described as a lively, charming and elegant society hostess, who was witty and affectionate.   The Palmerstons were known for their enlightened life which included lots of travel, education, a love of the arts and social events. This worldly upbringing helped to shape the future PM, especially when it came to his foreign duties and policies. During his busy career, Harry spent a lot of time working for the Foreign Office and was widely acknowledged and celebrated for his role as foreign secretary, an important position during the peak of the British Empire. He was known for being opinionated, bold, open to new ideas and cautious. He possessed a strong nationalist attitude, prioritising Britain and its needs above all else and he worked with various countries and continents all around the world including Russia, Brazil and Africa. His work received both notoriety and nervousness; He was revered by a large portion of the British population, likely due to his nationalist tendencies, but left many members of government lukewarm about his actions and beliefs.   Mary and Henry took their four children on a four-year European tour in 1792. This tour alone would have enriched the minds of every member of the Temple family as they visited a multitude of countries and cities around Europe, absorbing and enjoying their landscapes, societies and cultures including significant events occurring at the time like the French Revolution. With such a diverse and fortunate childhood, it is no wonder Harry was so drawn to and successful with foreign politics. During his career he navigated Britain through years of tumultuous international conflicts. One such instance was the Opium Wars with China during the mid 19th century. As Prime Minister, Harry was partially responsible for the Treaty of Nanjing which ended the Opium Wars in 1842 and benefitted Britain wholly in respect to trade and put the territory of Hong Kong under British rule.   One of Mary’s journals clearly illustrates an interest she had in other countries and cultures. She used her journal almost like a commonplace book and copied out a selection of paragraphs from Bryan Edwards’ natural history book, The History, Civil and Commercial of the British Colonies in the West Indies, Vol I  from 1793. She clearly read the entire book as the selections she made are widely dispersed throughout, and she is undoubtedly very interested in the topics of natural history, geography and world history. These interests likely bled into her children’s education and possibly even to her husband’s enlightened learning. Harry’s choices throughout his political career point towards a passion for travel and global politics. In his early career as an MP, he was offered the prestigious position of Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1809 but refused, and instead took a job as the Secretary at War which was more focused on international dealings.   Another prominent influence in Mary’s life was her correspondent and friend Benjamin Thompson, Reichsgraf von Rumford. Rumford was a scientist, reformer, inventor and nobleman whom Mary and her family met in Milan in 1793 during their European tour. Meeting Rumford provided more opportunities for learning and exploration, especially for Mary. They became fast friends and began a correspondence that lasted 11 years until Mary’s death. They discussed all aspects of their lives, with Rumford sharing his array of ideas with Mary. These included: reforms for the poor, a new and more efficient fireplace for the home, and most notably his contributions to the founding of the Royal Institution in 1799, to which Mary was a devoted patron. This institution, still active today, desired to bring new science and technologies to the public.   Rumford had his new fireplaces installed into all three of the Palmerston’s homes and introduced Mary to some of his societal reforms regarding the poorer population as well as his famous soup recipe, which both no doubt inspired and possibly guided Mary’s philanthropic work. Rumford also gifted one of his diaries to Mary which depicted his travels and activities throughout Europe. This would have provided incredible insight into European events, politics and history, widening Mary’s already learned mind, along with anyone she shared it with. Mary, Henry and their children, would have benefitted greatly from having close ties to a friend like Rumford as well as friends and societies so integrated into the liberal and enlightened ideas of the day like the Royal Institution. Importantly, Mary is specifically noted to have shared many of the new, exciting ideas from the Royal Institution with her son Harry.   Unlike Mary’s journal, her pocket book did not have paragraphs copied from natural history books. It does, however, provide more insight into Mary and her family’s daily life and the ways she influenced them, through education, interests about the world, and otherwise.   The Palmerstons were likely aware of what was happening around London and England, being one of the elite families of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. This does not mean that it was expected for Mary to take a close enough interest that she would copy various news stories and events down in her daily pocket book. However, unsurprisingly, she did. She makes frequent reference to the war happening between Russia and Turkey, discusses a member of the elite who was recently arrested, and the arrival in England of an East India Company ship called the Indiaman which subsequently brought with it items she had ordered from abroad. This awareness of local and international events would add to a person’s knowledge base and equip them with the tools of fluent and impressive conversation when attending the social events of the season. This would have been a valuable skill Harry picked up from his parents.               Finally, one of the most important characteristics any parent can impart to their child is kindness. As a politician, kindness is not always a sought-after trait but injecting it into your actions can have an influential effect on the people you are serving. Harry has been described as having courage and humanity throughout his career and it is arguable that he learned these qualities from his mother, who was dedicated to her philanthropic work. Mary opened up more than one school, including a “school of industry”  just for girls, recognising the need for female education. She also opened up a “soup house”  (like a soup kitchen) and later, a sort of low-cost inn that provided meals for the poorer population. In her journal, she lists a recipe that uses potatoes to make more economical bread for those who couldn’t afford wheat. This might have been a recipe she kept for her soup houses to share with the poor she encountered.    Mary’s philanthropic endeavours came at a crucial time when there were severe food shortages throughout the country. Mary was very competent when it came to keeping account books and running businesses, which shows the proficiency that early modern women possessed, but above all else, was kind. A clear expression of Harry’s humanity came in 1818 when a frustrated man named Lieutenant Davies shot him in an attempt on his life. Despite this malicious-looking act, it was determined that Davies was mentally unwell and subsequently, Harry paid for the man’s legal defence. If Harry exhibited half of the generosity, humility and kindness that Mary demonstrated, there’s no doubt it would have helped him in social situations and his political career. It is possible it gave him more of an appreciation of all social classes and an understanding of what needed to be done to create healthier societies and a prosperous country. This doesn’t mean however, that Harry always made his political decisions with kindness in mind. He was known to be blunt and not afraid to risk conflict if it was in Britain’s best interest, as the Opium Wars with China illustrate. When it came to his home country though, he was passionate and had many goals to help the population including improving worker’s rights and pay.   Mary’s prioritisation and enjoyment of learning, travels, the enlightened friends she kept, her social clout , her ability to entertain and converse both politically and otherwise, and   her awareness, compassion and action towards the world she was living in, provided her with a greater understanding, appreciation and depth of character. These traits would benefit anyone in a position of power, especially where their decisions affected an entire nation.   There is no doubt that Harry, third viscount Palmerston and Prime Minister of Britain’s upbringing, rise to political power and popularity, were influenced greatly by Mary’s admirable intelligence, keen curiosity, educational encouragement, social awareness and prowess. Bibliography Brain, Jessica, ‘Lord Palmerston’, Historic UK , 2024 [accessed 19 November 2024] < https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Lord Palmerston/#:~:text =He%20was %20a%20remarkable%20figure,and%20respect%20amongst%20the% 20voters.>   Chalus, Elaine, ‘Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World of Late Eighteenth- Century England’, The Historical Journal , 43, no. 3 (2000) pp. 669-697   Chlaus, Elaine and M.O. Grenby, ‘Elections in 18th-Century England: Polling, Politics and Participation’, Parliamentary History , Vol. 43, pt. 1 (2024), pp. 5–19   Connell, Brian, Portrait of a Whig Peer  (London: Andre Deutsch, 1957)   James, Frank A. J. L, “When Ben Met Mary: The Letters of Benjamin Thompson, Reichsgraf von Rumford, to Mary Temple, Viscountess Palmerston, 1793–1804.”  Ambix  (2023), 70 (3) pp. 207–328 < https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2023.2234717 >   Krspecialcollections, “Travels in Europe”, University of Southampton Special Collections , 4 September 2019 [accessed 8 July 2024] < https://specialcollectionsuniversityofso uthampton.wordpress.com/tag/mary-mee/ >   Palmerston Papers. Vol. I. Commonplace book of Mary, Lady Palmerston; after Nov. 1789. ff.ii+20. 155 x 105mm. Contemporary limp brown calf binding , BL, Add MS 59851   Palmerston Papers. Vol. II. Pocket-book journal of Lady Palmerston; 1 Jan.-31 May 1791. ff. 72. 180 x 115mm , BL, Add MS 59852   Sjmaspero, ““On myself I have spent but little, I have perhaps unwisely yielded too much to distress & to relieve others I have involved myself”: the philanthropic works of Mary Mee”, University of Southampton Special Collections , 20 March 2020 [accessed 7 July 2024] < https://specialcollectionsuniversityofsouthampton.wordpress.com/202 0/03/12/on-myself-i-have-spent-but-little-i-have-perhaps-unwisely-yielded-too-much-to-distress-to-relieve-others-i-have-involved-myself-the-philanthropic-works-of-mary-mee/>   Sjmaspero, “The stories they tell: Lady’s Palmerston’s rewards of industry”, University of Southampton Special Collections , 17 September 2020 [accessed 7 July 2024] < https://specialcollectionsuniversityofsouthampton.wordpress.com/tag/mary-mee/ >   Smith, E. A, "Temple, Henry, second Viscount Palmerston (1739–1802), politician and traveller"  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,  23 Sep. 2004 [accessed 2 Aug. 2024] < https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-27111 >   Steele, David, "Temple, Henry John, third Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865), prime minister"  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,  23 Sep. 2004 [accessed 2 Aug. 2024] < https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-27112 >

  • …and they were roommates!

    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 ” 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.) 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. 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. 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. 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 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/ >

  • Madame de Pompadour and The Doctor

    Is historical fiction good or bad for women’s history? (Disclaimer: This article will include several spoilers for Doctor Who series 2 episode 4, and for the series generally, the episode came out seventeen years ago so I take no blame for spoiling it but I’d suggest watching this episode before you read on so you know what I’m going on about.) Historical episodes of Doctor Who tend to have a decent grounding in fact, screenwriters typically justify decisions of the Doctor to not kill Hitler for example, by stating that the history he was a part of, and therefore his death is a fixed point in time, changing it would create a paradox. So, typically when they tell us about history, they are overall correct, albeit with a sci-fi take. A resounding opinion among most Doctor Who fans is that the series two episode ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ is one of the best. It has some of the best lines, who can forget Rose berating a drunk Doctor with “Oh look what the cat dragged in. The oncoming storm.” The plot is ridiculous: David Tennant slightly falls in love with the future Madame de Pompadour whilst Rose and Mickey discover that the ship is being fixed with human parts and that unbeknown to them, the clockwork mechanics want the brain of Madame de Pompadour because the ship is named after her. I remember watching this episode when it first came out, I was six, and this was before the history bug had fully grasped my attention (The Four Georges at the end of the first episode of Horrible Histories is to thank for that), but the fact that this was a historical episode that mostly focussed on a woman stuck with me, what I knew about history at that point was male centric and largely concerned war. As I got older and understood more about my place in the world, my identity as a woman and a historian, I questioned the popular (and lazy) idea that only people with obvious authority had power, meaning men. Throughout my undergraduate studies I became fascinated by the idea of the Royal Mistress, her political and social importance. Even now, we effectively have a Royal Mistress as our Queen Consort, so this isn’t a position that should be forgotten. In recent years and months, I’ve conducted a lot of my own research into the concept of the Maitresse en Titre, the chief of official mistress of the king of France, and the evolution of this role in the English court under Charles II too. I always come back to this episode, and the explanation of Madame de Pompadour’s life that the Doctor helpfully gives for an audience who might not have a comprehensive understanding of eighteenth-century France. On a side note, I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get any real reference to her in the BBC series Marie Antoinette that recently came out, she was dead and replaced by du Barry by then but some acknowledgement that the Petit Trianon was built for her, or that she helped create the alliance with Austria that saw Marie Antoinette become queen would have been nice. Despite my fascination with Madame de Pompadour, and this episode, I hadn’t researched her in much depth until now. Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, or ‘Reinette’, lived from the 29th December 1721 to the 15th April 1764, she encapsulated what it was to be a mistress of the king of France, and the success of her personal influence is arguably unlike any before, and certainly after her. Interestingly, she wasn’t nobility of her own right, and her parentage was debated, making her a slightly controversial choice for Louis XV. It is partially this non-aristocratic background which garnered her criticism from her contemporaries and celebration from historians. Let’s start with her name, surely that can’t be too wrong, right? Well, the Doctor first meets Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, the future Madame de Pompadour through her fireplace in 1727, she’s meant to be six years old. She tells him that her name is Reinette, and it’s not until we meet her again as she leaves Paris, presumably to her marriage at nineteen that the Doctor works out exactly who she is. He helpfully exclaims “Reinette Poisson? Later Madame d’Etoiles! Later still Mistress of Louis XV! Uncrowned Queen of France! Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan, fantastic gardener!” This is all factually correct, except for when we meet Reinette in 1727, she did not yet have this nickname, nor would she have been in Paris. At 5, in 1726, her legal guardian, Charles Le Normant de Tournehem (her mother’s lover and possibly her real father) sent her to be educated at the Ursuline Convent in Poissy, she didn’t return home until 1730, aged 9 with poor health. It was whilst she was ill that her mother took her to a fortune teller who told them that Jeanne-Antoinette would one day rule over the heart of the king. ‘Reinette’ literally means ‘little queen’ in French, and it became her nickname from then on, a good three years after she introduces herself by this name. It really wouldn’t have been hard to make the year 1730. Still, for narrative sense, maintaining one name is easier, we’ll give them a pass on that. In her teenage years she received an extensive private education, instilling in her many of the qualities that the Doctor points out: she was an accomplished actress, musician, dancer, and crucially a courtesan (basically a high-class prostitute) and a politician. There’s a significant part of her history missed; at nineteen, Reinette married the nephew of her guardian, (her cousin if Tournehem was her father), Charles Guillaume Le Normant d’Etoiles. On their marriage Tournehem disinherited the rest of his nieces and nephews, naming d’Etoiles (and consequently his guard/daughter) his entire estate. Within her marriage Reinette was seemingly content, they had two children, one who died in infancy and a second who died at 9-years-old. She is said to have stipulated that she would leave her husband only for the king, which she did in 1745. Doctor Who effectively summarises the influence of the Royal Mistress at the French Court better than a lot of other examples, in a simple scene where Reinette discusses the illness of the current mistress of the king, and her aspirations. Her friend, Katherine, says “Madame de Chatearoux is ill and close to death… The king will therefore be requiring a new mistress.” Reinette replies “He is the king and I love him with all of my heart, and I look forward to meeting with him.” “Every Woman in Paris knows your ambitions.” “Every woman in Paris shares them.” Now it might be slightly hyperbolic that ‘every woman in Paris’ had ambitions on being the mistress of the king, certainly not every woman would have had the position, education or ability, nor likely the self-belief to pursue this, but the sentiment is true. Maitresse-en-titre ‘chief’ mistress was a particularly sought after position for French upper-class women. The queen of France was always foreign, the Royal marriage typically a diplomatic relations matter; Mary Tudor had smoothed over English relations, Marie Antoinette would secure allyship with Austria, Catherine and Marie de Medici brought money, Marie Leszczyńska had been chosen because the country needed a quick heir. The mistress on the other hand, was always French, and was typically better at having the ear of the king than his wife. In many ways, the position of mistress was a domestic matter, and therefore, who she was, was also important to the court. Louis XV’s initial adultery had been encouraged on the basis that the mistresses he took were apolitical, as his councillors wanted to avoid Marie Leszczyńska having any sort of political standing. However, by the time he got to Reinette in 1745, this apolitical proponent appears to have gone out the window. Reinette met the king, officially, at the so-called Yew Tree Ball to celebrate the marriage of the Dauphin in February 1745 as the episode shows, but this was unlikely to have been their real first meeting. Since her marriage, Reinette would have had free reign to visit Parisian Salons, making a name for herself among the societal elite and likely being spoken about at Court, in 1744 she intentionally drove in front of the king’s path as he led a hunt near her estate in Senart, twice! Even if they didn’t speak, the moment made enough of an impression that the Madame de Chatareaux explicitly warned Reinette away from the king. Louis XV, for his own part, gifted her venison and invited her to the aforementioned ball several months later. At the ball, Reinette dressed as Diana the Huntress, to remind the king of their meeting, a bold choice which the episode doesn’t show particularly clearly. The Doctor explains, to the typically clueless Rose, that she is Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson, and she is “ one of the most accomplished women who ever lived… she’s got plans on being his [the king’s] mistress” and that actually, she and the queen of France “got on very well.” So, is this accurate? Well, yes and no; she certainly was accomplished, if she was one of the most accomplished is probably a matter of opinion, but her patronage and participation in art, and crucially her activity in French politics was unlike the actions of even the queen at this time. She did become the king’s mistress, quickly being elevated to Maitresse-en-titre , by March 1745, Reinette had rooms directly above the king’s in Versailles, in May her and her husband officially separated, in June she was gifted the title and estates of the marquisate de Pompadour, and in September she was presented at court by the Princess of Conti. She cleverly pledged loyalty to the queen, allowing a friendly relationship to develop. I hasten to add that their relationship wasn’t rosy, the queen had simply resigned herself to her husband’s infidelity. Reinette benefitted because she wasn’t the most abrasive of his mistresses, and paid due reverence to the queen, it’s really understandable that Marie tried to protest her becoming a lady-in-waiting although unsuccessfully, would you want your partner’s partner among your closest companions? Reinette is a fascinating mistress because she only appears to have fulfilled the sexual role of her position for a few years, all sexual relationships with the king ended in 1750 due to poor health partially caused by 3 miscarriages in five years. Despite this, she remained court favourite until her death, she is regarded to have made herself invaluable for her patronage and political guidance. She was also open about her love for the king, disregarding any concern about the king’s sexual relationships with women at the Parc-aux-Cerfs that "It is his heart I want! All these little girls with no education will not take it from me. I would not be so calm if I saw some pretty woman of the court or the capital trying to conquer it." Pompadour’s comment seems a fitting sequel to the queen’s alleged comment about her that “if there must be a mistress, better her than any other.” Her artistic patronage is typically the easiest element to consider, she is the figure typically credited with popularising Paris as the arbiter of taste and culture in Europe, encouraged the development of the Rococo and as shown in the plans for Le Petit Trianon, its development into neo-classicism. (She unfortunately died 4 years before it was finished). Throughout her life she patronised Jean-Marc Nattier, Francois Boucher, Francois-Hubert Drouais, Jacques Guay; she also learnt engraving, becoming an amateur print-maker, and championed porcelain and the decorative arts. Her personal portfolio, including several of her engraving prints was rediscovered in 2016 and shows a woman who was not only an admirer of art but was personally accomplished in the field. “Uncrowned Queen of France” is again perhaps an overstatement, and it doesn’t appear to have been used much at the time, in stark contrast to descriptions of Barbara Palmer, Duchess of Cleveland and mistress of Charles II a century earlier. But the Doctor doesn’t use it here to disparage as Samuel Pepys did regarding Cleveland, so what accuracy does it have? Elise Goodman, a historian of Pompadour, has stated that by the mid-1750s, Reinette was effectively fulfilling a role of Prime Minister to the king, she was responsible for a host of political activities, including appointing advancements, favours and dismissals and was an active contributor to domestic and foreign policies. For example, it was her influence in 1755 which saw the development of the Diplomatic Revolution, which would ally France with Austria and eventually lead to the marriage of the future Louis XVI to archduchess Marie Antoinette. She was also the subject of criticism for actions and political steps which arguably led to Britain overtaking France as the leading colonial power. Many libels came in the form of ‘poissonades’, pamphlets which criticised and shared rumours. But they appear to have had little effect on her predominance at court, she was not replaced as Maitresse-en-titre until four years after her death, there were mistresses, but not someone to begin to fill Pompadour’s place until Madame du Barry made her entrance, but she’s a discussion for another day. The episode does well to reflect her seniority at court and the importance she held on Louis XV, the last time the Doctor tries to visit her she is taken away from Versailles in her coffin, it is pouring with rain as it was in real life (knowing this was filmed in Wales I wonder if they planned this scene or if it was a happy coincidence). The downpour was something that her critics described as befitting her ending, as if a sort of pathetic fallacy. In this final scene in eighteenth-century France, the king hands over a letter, and when the Doctor refuses to share its contents, he says “ Of course. Quite right ” demonstrating simply and quietly his accurately displayed reverence Louis XV had for his penultimate Maitresse-en-titre . The episode doesn’t exactly intend to go into depth about Madame de Pompadour’s successes, but it does gloss over the intricacies of a lot of her achievements, the main characteristic of Doctor Who’s Madame de Pompadour is that she is brave, empowered, and single-minded. This appears fair, if one-dimensional. With any depiction of women’s history, I always question how well it has been written, excusing accuracy or inaccuracy, does it deal with the themes well? Perhaps because the concept of this episode is to provide sneak peeks at her life, there are a lot of details ultimately left out of the narrative, her children, and her miscarriages, for example, fail to be mentioned. These deaths, and health problems would have had a profound effect on her life, and likely her mental well-being, that there is no mention of them, even when she is visited by Rose in what would have been a year after her daughter’s death at the age of nine, she is instead entirely practical, and it does come across as uncaring, which feels like an oversight. Moffat’s inspiration, among other facets like ‘The Turk’ (an eighteenth-century invention which was apparently a machine able to play a real-life human opponent at chess), appears to have been The Moberly-Jourdain incident. I won’t go into detail about this here but it’s worth having a read about when you can. The episode obviously caters towards entertainment before it does education, and in terms of time-travel and science fiction, it does a decent job of creating a not believable but surprisingly empathetic heroine. Even more remarkably, somehow making Louis XV out to be a somewhat decent person and not a serial philanderer who created a political climate so tempestuous it ended up with his grandson getting his head chopped off. If we consider the entertainment on the side of the Hist-Fic, it is generally good, the use of Welsh country-houses to recreate Versailles does an alright job of setting the scene, although unconvincing at demonstrating the extent of her artistic prevalence in this period. In my opinion, the clockwork monsters are an impressive way of calling to both the historical period and the entertainment intended, specifically their slightly terrifying masks are even if not intentional, a nice reference to the fact that Reinette first officially met Louis XV at a masked ball. I’m always wary in historical fiction of exactly how ‘feminist’ writers have made their historical women, as a feminist and a woman’s historian, that might be a slightly strange thing to read. But I’m of the opinion that women in history do not necessarily need post-humous empowerment, often, the most feminist thing to do with a woman’s history is to tell it exactly how it happened, with full transparency for her actions and flaws and struggles. Often that is not particularly empowering. Reinette is, as most Moffat-written women are, slightly intimidating to the men around her, in a way that if we were discussing another woman in eighteenth-century France, I might say is incorrect, but for Reinette, intimidating is right, she was a self-constrained woman, she knew her place in her world and she clearly knew how to engage with the constrictions of the society she lived in. Moffat’s Reinette is undoubtably a bit anachronistic, you’d be hard-pressed to find any woman in hist-fic who isn’t, but she is a fair representation of this woman for the twenty-first century. This series asks “Is historical fiction good for women’s history?”, for this case, I’m going to say yes. She isn’t entirely accurate, and the sensitivity of her story falters in oversight of her life not pertaining to a fictional relationship with the titular Time Lord, but in a 45-minute Doctor Who episode it’s understandable that a mother grieving would be cut for clockwork monsters. It’s fantastical and ridiculous, but crucially, it doesn’t pretend not to be. The Girl in the Fireplace has stuck with viewers, and so I am inclined to argue that yes, she deserves a lot more attention and care, but how many people know Madame de Pompadour’s name because David Tennant shouted that he snogged her in 2006? Me, for certain. To watch the episode or read more about Madame de Pompadour, see here: Doctor Who, Series 2, Episode 4: ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074fmn/doctor-who-series-2-4-the-girl-in-the-fireplace?seriesId=b007vvcq ‘The real Madame de Pompadour’, The National Gallery, < https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/learn-about-art/paintings-in-depth/the-real-madame-de-pompadour > Stamberg, Susan, ‘More than a Mistress: Madame De Pompadour was a minister of the arts’, National Portrait Gallery, (10/05/2016), < https://www.npr.org/2016/05/10/477369874/more-than-a-mistress-madame-de-pompadour-was-a-minister-of-the-arts > A recent episode of the History Hit Podcast Not just the Tudors with Suzannah Lipscomb discussed Louis XIV and his mistresses, it gives a really good insight into the phenomenon of the French Royal mistress, go and have a listen!

  • Isabella, The She-Wolf of France

    Isabella of France 1295-1358 The Hundred-Year War started because of a woman. In 1295 or 1296 Queen Joan I of Navarre (a medieval Basque kingdom in Northern Spain) gave birth to a child called Isabel. The daughter of an autonomous queen and the king of France, Phillip IV, Isabella was by all accounts, destined to be a queen, but typically she would be refrained from being so in her own right. Her father arranged marriages between Isabel’s aunt, Marguerite, and the current king of England, Edward I, and his infant daughter and child prince Edward, ensuring French influence in England for at least two kings’ reigns. The marriage between Isabel (then anglicised to Isabella) and Edward II took place in 1308, the king was 24, and his queen 12, perhaps understandably, he showed little interest in his child-bride, but plenty in formerly exiled favourite Piers Gaveston. Several historians have debated the exact nature of the relationship between Piers and the king, if it was homosexual, there is little to disprove it, but also, there is little to prove it. Homosexuality was not exactly unheard of, but it wasn’t shouted about either, crucially, when Piers was brought out of exile, a chronicler wrote that ‘He [Edward II] had home his greatest love.’ We may not know the exact nature of their relationship, but much like Anne of Denmark in the seventeenth century, Isabella found herself often ousted in favour of the male favourite: Piers had received a portion of Isabella’s dowry, he was put in charge of the new queen’s coronation, at the event itself he was seated next to the king, rather than her, his coat of arms, rather than Isabella’s was also displayed. If it wasn’t a homosexual relationship, it certainly was a queer one. Piers Gaveston was exiled, then returned within eighteen months, with him and the king fleeing north from the barons who had enforced the exile with a pregnant seventeen-year-old Isabella in tow. She was safe when they left her to escape on a ship, and by the summer, Piers was murdered. In the months that Piers had not been at court, Isabella had fallen pregnant, so you’d hope, for the teenage queen’s sake, that without him, things would settle down. Alas, not. In came a man named Hugh le Despenser, described as hating the queen even more than his predecessor, by 1321 she was practically imprisoned, and by 1324, all of her lands had been given to the new royal favourite. Until now, Isabella looks pretty weak, and abused, so you may be wondering, how on earth could she have started a war, and why on earth is this article titled ‘The She-Wolf of France’? Well, let's firstly give Isabella some grace for being a child in her marriage, sent to a country she did not know, living in practical poverty despite being the queen of England and having a child at 16 or 17, followed by four more children. There is somewhat of a turning point in Isabella’s life when she is allowed marginal freedom and autonomy in 1325. Her husband pushed Isabella to return to France on his behalf, to negotiate with her brother, now king of France, for Gascony, a duchy which had been brought to the English crown by Eleanor of Aquitaine (a duchy which the king of England continued to hold). The French king had declared Gascony forfeit for Edward’s failing to pay homage, and to put it simply, Edward wanted it back. Isabella convinced her husband to allow their son, prince Edward to travel with her, a move which rendered the negotiations successful as he was able to pay homage in place of his father. However, her intention in taking her son may have had a more rebellious intent, as once in France, Edward II demanded the prince be returned to England as if suddenly realising that this prince was his heir. In France Isabella and the soon-to-be Edward III was joined by Roger Mortimer, an English exile, the king’s half-brother, Edmund of Woodstock, and several Englishmen who were disheartened with the king and his favourite. Isabella found financial support in Hainaut, began a romantic and sexual relationship with Mortimer, and arranged a marriage between her son and Phillipa of Hainaut. Here she also (and this is crucial for later) gave up any claim she had to the French throne. Isabella’s rebel army returned to England in 1326, landing in Suffolk. Her husband was quickly captured and Edward III, then fourteen was crowned, with his mother as regent. Isabella ruled on behalf of from 1327 to 1330 and remained an advisor to her son. As for the now previous king, he wound up dead in 1327, legends say at Isabella’s own hand by a red hot poker, or strangulation, his lover(s), were hacked apart and/or dragged, hanged, drawn, and quartered. ‘She-Wolf’ is making sense now. In 1328, Isabella’s brother died, and the French throne faltered, he had produced no heir, and after a decision to keep the line distinctly French, the crown to the Valois line for the first time. Now you might be thinking, okay well that is fine, remember Isabella gave up any right to the throne in 1326? Well, Edward III and his mother disagreed, they thought that the French throne should stay Capetian, and as Isabella couldn’t rule anyway (Salic Law prevented her even if her actions in 1326 are disregarded), her son was already a king, and was a grandson and nephew of kings of France, he was also Capetian through his mother and a descendant of several French nobility who had far greater exposure to the French throne than the new Valois king. The French consistently rejected Edward’s efforts, for one, whilst the English loved her, the French hated Isabella, considering her ‘depraved’ and not wanting her near the throne. These tensions were heightened because in 1331 Edward III had arrested his mother and her lover Mortimer, trying, and executing him. Isabella was placed under house arrest, and then became a nun, so claiming the throne through his mother was perhaps not the greatest standpoint for Edward’s efforts when he declared himself king of France in 1337. Sources: ‘The Wild Life of English Queen Isabella, She-Wolf of France aka the Rebel Queen Who Killed the King of England’, Ancient Origins, (30/12/2018), < https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/isabella-france-0011247 >, [30/03/2023] Weir, Alison, Isabella, (London: Vintage Publishing, 2012)

  • Marsha, instigator? activist

    ‘My life has been built around sex and liberation’. Marsha P. Johnson is undoubtedly one of the most recognisable figures of LGBTQ+ history. Synonymous with the gay liberation movement of 1960s New York City. Assigned male at birth, Johnson is perhaps best known for being the black transgender woman who threw the first rock at the Stonewall Riots. Although Johnson herself has corrected that, she was not the person who started the fight, that doesn’t stop her from being at the centre of the liberation movement, and perhaps she remains significant simply as a figurehead of a pivotal movement in LGBTQ history. This article will discuss Johnson’s own history, and whether it is problematic to assume she was trans. Johnson was born on August 24, 1945, in Elizabeth, New Jersey to African-American, Methodist working-class parents, as one of seven children. She attended the Mount Teman African Methodist Episcopal Church throughout her childhood, she would remain a practising Christian throughout the rest of her life, later describing herself as ‘married’ to Jesus at sixteen. She had dressed in dresses throughout her childhood, adopting something of an androgynous identity, as we might call it today. This ended when she, after years of bullying, was sexually assaulted by a 13-year-old boy. Her mother, rather confusingly, told her that being gay was to be ‘lower than a dog’, whilst also telling her to go and find a rich boyfriend. Her life altered when she moved to Greenwich Village, New York at 17, returning to wearing women’s clothing and choosing the name Marsha P. Johnson (the P meant Pay it no mind and is an interesting call back to Susan B. Anthony and her sister’s decision to include initials in their names). New York was still heavily against gay people, often criminalising otherwise innocent activities in efforts of persecution, yet, within ‘The Village’, and the now infamous Stonewall Inn, this period may have been a point of liberation for Johnson. She immediately began working as a drag queen, saying in 1992 that she was ‘no one, nobody… until I became a drag queen.’ Day to day she favoured colourful outfits, thrift stores and flower crowns, an exaltation of feminine identity. She also, as many young people do, found her people in her move, becoming ‘like a mother’ to a transgender girl named Sylvia Rivera, and making friends kind enough to let the homeless Johnson sleep on their sofas. Poor and gay, she was forced to turn to sex work to supplement her income, where she was often abused by clients. She would later describe her life as ‘built around sex and liberation’. The most famous moment of her life, shortly before her 24th birthday, on the 28th of June 1969, saw the Stonewall Inn raided by police. It is often perpetuated that Johnson began the riots as police began arresting the gay men in the bar, but she herself has corrected this, clarifying that when she and Rivera arrived it was already 2 am, the place was on fire, ‘The riots had already started.’ Whether Johnson was being completely honest or not, in the weeks and months following, she was one of the leading figures of the following explosive gay rights movement. A year later, the first Gay Pride Parade took place, as a protest led by a group of gay rights groups: the Gay Liberation Front, (radical) and the Gay Activist Alliance (moderate). Johnson and Rivera instigated STAR, Street Action Transvestite Action Revolutionaries frustrated by the general exclusion of transgender and people of colour. Johnson and Rivera’s organisation is clearly keenly inspired by their own histories, exemplified by the opening of STAR House, STAR was “an organization dedicated to sheltering young transgender individuals who were shunned by their families.” Throughout the 70s, Johnson began to receive more visibility; notably, she performed with the drag group ‘Hot Peaches’, and modelled for Andy Warhol. Her motivation in all was clear, that gay people across America would have their rights, and she would not rest until every gay person did: “as long as gay people don’t have their rights all across America…there is no reason for celebration.” Throughout the 70s and 80s Johnson’s activism was interspersed with mental health breakdowns and subsequent stays in psychiatric facilities, arrests and sex work. In 1990 she was diagnosed with H.I.V., characteristically speaking publicly about this in June 1992. Tragically, less than a fortnight after this interview, she was found in the Hudson River. 1992 was at that point, the worst year on record for anti-LGBTQ+ violence, and rulings of suicide were abhorrent to her friends. Police would reclassify the case as undetermined, but refused to investigate further, nor did the media both covering her death. Despite this, hundreds turned up to her funeral. It took twenty years for the New York Police Department to reopen the case. Johnson and Rivera’s legacies were not forgotten, in 2019 they became the subject of a monument titled ‘She Built NYC’, and in 2020, New York State named a park in Brooklyn after her, she remains synonymous with the LGBTQ+ movement, regardless of whether she threw the first brick or not. To turn to the question of her identity, Johnson described herself as gay, and a transvestite, she used she/he pronouns. The word ‘transgender’ was not as widespread as it is now, she is never known to have used the word herself, but it wasn’t unheard of. There is an argument that applying modern terminologies, in this case, a transgender identity, onto someone who would not have understood it, or in this case, perhaps knew that this was not her identity is damaging to that person’s historical memory. Furthermore, we do know that she identified as a drag queen, a transvestite, and gay, and attaching those experiences to one of a transgender person is trivialising all of the above identities. Perhaps given more time, Johnson may have recognised this in herself, or perhaps with her she/he pronouns a gender-fluid identity would have suited her. Unfortunately, we’ll never quite know, but that doesn’t reduce her impact on LGBTQ+ history, and I for one think that regardless of her exact gender identification, she deserves recognition during Women’s History Month. Binion, Billy, ‘ Marsha P. Johnson Probably Didn't Start Stonewall, and Might Not Have Been Trans. Does It Matter?’, reason, (30/06/2020), < https://reason.com/2020/06/30/marsha-p-johnson-didnt-start-stonewall-pride-might-not-have-been-trans/ >, [29/03/2023] Rothberg, Emma, ‘Marsha P. Johnson’ National Women’s History Museum . (2022), < www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/marsha-p-johnson >, [29/03/2023] ‘Life Story: Marsha P. Johnson’, NY Historical Society, < https://wams.nyhistory.org/growth-and-turmoil/growing-tensions/marsha-p-johnson/ >, [29/03/2023]

  • "Unbossed and Unbought": Shirley Chisholm

    ‘Unbought and Unbossed’ are the two words Chisholm described herself within the publication of her autobiography, the title her life’s motto. This sums Chisholm up entirely, demonstrating unique outspokenness for women and for minorities throughout a period of U.S. and global history which in every moment rejected Chisholm’s place in the world. The difficulties of her race and her gender (something she stated was a ‘double handicap’) do not appear to have shaken Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm too much however; she was the first African American woman in Congress in 1968 and the first African American to seek nomination for U.S president from either of the two major political parties in 1972. This profile gives an account of Chisholm’s life, looking into what brought “Fighting Shirley” into the Congress floor, and also what kept her there. Born in November 1924 to immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York, Chisholm and her younger sisters were sent into the care of their maternal grandmother in Barbados at the age of five, her parents too busy working full time to care for their young children. She returned to New York in 1934 at the age of fifteen. Her time in Barbados gave her a pronounced accent which she retained throughout her life and as for the influence of her grandmother, Chisholm would say in adulthood that her grandmother gave her ‘strength, dignity, and love. I learned from an early age that I was somebody. I didn’t need the black revolution to tell me that.’ Chisholm also credited much of her success and intelligence to this upbringing, citing it as ‘strict, traditional’. Whilst in Barbados, Chisholm was exposed to a number of anti-colonial independence movements, whilst her father supported political activist Marcus Garvey in New York. On her return to New York, she attended an integrated school in Brooklyn from 1939, doing well enough academically to be named vice-president of the Junior Arista honour society. She was then offered scholarships at Vassar and Oberin Colleges, though she eventually chose to stay in Brooklyn, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts with a major in sociology and a minor in Spanish. During her time at the college Chisholm directed her energy into the Harriet Tubman Society, where she promoted the inclusion of black soldiers in the U.S. military, African-American history modules at the college and more women in the student body Government. Following graduation, Chisholm worked as a teacher’s aide a th e Mt. Calvary Child Care Center in Harlem from 1946-1953. At the same time, she was attending classes at night to earn an MA in childhood education from Teachers College of Columbia University in 1951. After leaving her job in Harlem, Chisholm became the director of the Friend in Need Nursery in Brooklyn, and from 1954 to 1959 the director of the Hamilton-Madison Child Care Center, in lower Manhattan. Most notable is of course, her career in politics, starting from 1953 Chisholm engaged primarily in black focussed politics, starting with the BSPL which had originally sought to elect the first black judge in Brooklyn and later to support civil rights, protest racial discrimination and improve financial services in Brooklyn. She would eventually clash with the group’s founder Wesley Holder over her effort to give female members more input. In the next few years, she would work for the Brooklyn Democratic Clubs and the League of Women Voters, the Political League, and the Brooklyn branch of the National Association of College Women, then, in 1960, the Unity Democracy Club, a racially and gender-integrated organisation, here working with Thomas R. Jones who she would later replace as the Democratic Primary in the New York State Assembly in 1964 despite initial opposition according to her race and her gender. Thus, Chisholm was a member of the NY State Assembly from 1965-1968, using her time to extend domestic workers, sponsoring the introduction of a SEEK programme in New York (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge), and arguing against the state’s English literacy test as if someone “functions better in his native language … [it does not mean they are] illiterate”. In 1968 Chisholm moved from state politics to national, running for the U.S. House of Representatives from New York’s 12th congressional district which thanks to some redrawing of congressional districts was dominated by black voters. Winning with her slogan “Unbought and unbossed”. Chisholm became the first black woman elected to congress, sitting as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives for seven terms, during which time she consistently promoted racial and gender equality, support for the working classes and poor population, lobbied against the Vietnam War and introduced 50 acts/legislation. Furthermore, she was unwilling to let her success in politics be anomalous, in 1971 Chishom co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus which continues to recruit, train and elect progressive, pro-choice women in American politics. Chisholm for president Chisholm announced her candidacy for president in January 1972, calling for a ‘bloodless revolution’ a the upcoming Democratic nomination convention. She became the first African American to run for a major party’s nomination for the presidency and the first woman to run for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination, although crucially she refused to run as a ‘black candidate’ or a ‘female candidate’. “I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate for the women’s movement of this country, although I am a woman and equally proud of that. I am the candidate of the people and my presence before you symbolises a new era in American political history.” Chisholm’s effort was, perhaps unsurprisingly, unsuccessful, hugely underfunded and mostly considered to be a symbolic rather than genuine candidate, she stated later that in her political career, she encountered more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Unlike some other women we’ve discussed so far this month, she did however have the full support of her husband, who at the start of her candidacy served as her bodyguard. Her support was based upon those who were ethnically diverse and were largely women, and whilst generally popular politically, she struggled to gain the popular vote. Throughout the campaign, Chisholm had struck up an unusual friendship with her political rival George Wallace. This friendship would later serve her political work well, helping her to push through legislation to give domestic workers the minimum wage. Post presidential campaign From 1977 to 1981 Chisholm served as Secretary of the Democratic Caucus, then worked to help inner-city residents, invest in education, health care and other social services, worked to reduce discrimination against women and Native American land rights and for the better. She would oppose the Vietnam War, the U.S. draft and weapon developments, and support the Equal Rights Amendment, although specified that women should not receive specific health and safety laws as this would simply ‘continue’ traditional discrimination of women. She would focus on the “double discrimination” faced by black women, which some historians have argued had an impact on the development of the feminist movement in the 1970s. However, many others considered her too ineffectual in cases of liberal, black and feminism issues, for example, Chisholm would not support Bella Apzug’s campaigns for U.S. senator and New York mayor in 1976 and 1977 respectively; nor Elizabeth Holtzman’s congressional challenge; nor did she support Percy Sutton’s mayoral effort, also in 1977. The press began to call her apparent ignorance of black and women's issues the ‘Chisholm problem’, and critics focussed on the ‘unbossed’ part of her slogan, arguing in disparaging articles that bossed was exactly what she was. There are several reasons Chisholm may have decided to leave congress in 1979, her second husband had been in an accident, and the “Reagan Revolution” pushed liberal politics into a fairly unlikeable place. She retired officially in 1982, leaving congress entirely in 1983 and settling back into a career in education. She didn’t exactly leave politics behind though, establishing the National Black Women’s Political Caucus in 1984 with C. Delores Tucker (The organisation would later become the National Congress of Black Women), she would continue to campaign for politicians and also helped set up the group: African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom in 1990. Bill Clinton would go on to name her Ambassador for Jamaica, in 1993, though she was ultimately too unwell to undertake her role. Chisholm died on the 1st of January 2005, the inscription on her legend reads “Unbossed and Unbought ”. Sources Hill, Debra, ‘Shirley Chisholm (1924-2005)’, National Women’s History Museum, (2015), < https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/shirley-chisholm >, [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm (November 30, 1924-January 1, 2005)’, African American Heritage , < https://www.archives.gov/research/african-americans/individuals/shirley-chisholm >, [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm for President’, Smithsonian, < https://nmaahc.si.edu/shirley-chisholm-president >, [26/02/2023] ‘Shirley Chisholm’, History.com, (18/12/2009/13/04/2022), < https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/shirley-chisholm >, [26/02/2023]

  • Mary Frith, Transgressor

    Mary Frith, AKA “Moll Cut-Purse” 1584-1659 Mary Frith, better known as “Moll Cutpurse” is one of those historical figures that often feels too elusive to properly pin down. Her crimes are fairly well-documented thanks in part to the Newgate Calendar chapbooks which appeared at the close of the eighteenth century, and a likely hyperbolic biography published in 1662, three years after her death, as well as, most usefully, a string of arrest records. Yet the woman herself is still somewhat of a mysterious figure. Perhaps the most important part about the legacy of Mary Frith in the history of women and women’s equality, isn’t where she got her nickname “Cut-purse”, but the fact that she turned her transgression of femininity into a performance. Was she transgender, a lesbian, a cross-dresser or just a woman trying to survive within a dangerous patriarchal society? Called a “roaring girl” by pamphleteers (early modern press), Mary Frith was a well-known thief on the streets of London, known for her years on the streets but also for her characteristic cross-dressing. Frith was born sometime in 1584, into a respectable working-class family, her father was a shoemaker. Several parts of her life remain unclear, enlightened only by a sensational biography published in 1662, three years after her death. Although some scholars have suggested that Frith herself may have participated in the authoring or research of this book, its legitimacy as an accurate narrative is mostly disbelieved. One thing we do know is that she had been troublesome ever since her youth and that efforts to reform her behaviour, for example, her uncle attempted to send her to New England, proved unsuccessful, she actually jumped overboard off the ship and swam back to shore. Understanding Frith from her childhood is perhaps too hopeful, we can gather from legitimate primary sources (legal and arresting reports) that Frith was on the streets from a young age, not because she explicitly needed to be, as with many other lower-class people in Elizabethan England, because she wanted to. This, and descriptions of her general attitude and demeanour indicate why Frith was long thought to be transgressive in her nature. She was not interested in the complexities of learning how to be a woman, she was ‘loud and boisterous’, had an inherent ‘abhorrence’ to children and crucially, is often described as ‘masculine’. In her criminal career, she often took to cross-dressing, the source of much of the controversy concerning her, this choice might have simply made her life easier, yet by the point of her early twenties she had turned her daily life into a performative event, itself a lucrative venture, and it is for cross-dressing, or rather, ‘public immorality” that she is arrested for on Christmas Day in 1611 and publicly humiliated for in January 1612 in front of a crowd of keen fans of “Moll Cutpurse”. But are these descriptions fair, do they accurately display a woman who might have actually been a transgender man or do they present a woman who was simply unhappy with the lot she was given? That’s a complex question that in reality, we can’t ever hope to answer. Yet, she almost exclusively dressed as a man throughout her adulthood, she engaged in masculine activities, and several arrest reports write with disgust about her swearing, drinking and smoking. But, there is no proof of anything which would further a transgender or even lesbian conclusion, bar perhaps an aversion to prostitution. So, what exactly makes this woman, firstly so popular, and secondly commit an act which arguably puts her life and her freedom at risk more than her actions of petty theft? Let’s consider the why first, as stated above, Frith would have had no real reason to sink into this life of crime in Southwark throughout her childhood. She and her family were lower class, yes, but that didn’t lower her chances of respectable employment. Many daughters throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were actually trained in their father’s profession, Frith would have likely had this opportunity herself, especially as there is no mention of brothers. Furthermore, lower-class women did in fact have a clear route for the development of careers in service. Teenage girls would regularly begin service as kitchen maids, or housemaids in the service of nobility, many others would be married by their early twenties, their husbands making enough in their own professions to allow the women to be housewives, as frith’s mother appears to be. Yet whilst still a teenager, Frith was arrested at least twice for petty theft, in 1600 and in 1602, indicating that she had no interest in traditional life. This simple fact makes her transgressive of seventeenth-century gender roles, but does it make her transgressive today? Not really, right? The options for women might have been secure but they weren’t exactly freedom, perhaps that freedom of choice was what Frith was searching for. But that doesn’t really explain the cross-dressing. If we think about crimes that women committed on the streets, I bet the first thing that comes to your mind is something like Nancy in Oliver Twist, she might be a thief but she is primarily a prostitute, inarguably a dangerous position, even if you weren’t in actuality soliciting you might still be attacked, assaulted or raped, or on the other hand, arrested for soliciting. So, the choice to parade in men’s clothing might have initially been a sort of protective and practical measure. Similarly, it would have initially given her a sense of anonymity, allowing her to thieve without recognition. This anonymity was a common thread among other women, who would dress as men to move through society with more ease, for some, this choice was unquestionably gendered, see those who dressed as or even lived as men to work, marry, or even serve in the military, Frith’s actions don’t appear to be driven by a rejection of gender, rather of gender roles, which were not singularly tied. Being a woman in early modern England was often a case of ornamentalism rather than practicality, Frith’s rejection of marriage, of children and of her prescribed gender role does not appear to be anything but a rejection of an arbitrary performance. This is argued based on a number of facts, firstly, her character remained female in her performance, secondly, she did live entirely as a woman in the later years of her life, thirdly, her home was inextricably feminine (although this doesn’t necessitate gender it does support an argument that her rejection of gender norms was performative only), finally, Mary Beard has described it most succinctly, there was “no template for what a powerful woman looks like, except for that she looks rather like a man”. Even Queen Elizabeth I avoided several restrictions and expectations of her gender throughout her reign. So, it is reasonable to assume that whilst Mary Frith actively transgressed her prescribed gender role, she was not necessarily driven by a sexual or gendered disparity. Finally, let's consider the impact of Mary Frith’s transvestitism. We know that Frith rejected the arbitrary and stifling restraints of her gender from her childhood on and her efforts to turn this cross-dressing into performance throughout her adult life was not only lucrative but also, unsurprisingly, divisive, we also know that her fans, for want of a better term were rather disappointed with the woman herself, most leaving out of boredom when she was stood in repentance at St Paul’s Cross in 1612, but did she impact other women in transgression or crime? Arguably yes, so much so that the authorities were specifically looking out for women dressed as men whilst ‘important’ men (read those who are institutionally misogynist) published transcripts and denouncements of these women. Frith wasn’t the first, and she wasn’t the last but she was certainly extremely influential. The true extent of Mary Frith’s transgressions of her prescribed gender will never be fully clear to us, but what we can conclude is that she was stifled within a patriarchal society, unhappy with the life she was supposed to have and decided, through criminality and drama, to create her own. A transgressor if ever that was one. Sources Kyte, Holly, Roaring Girls, (London: Harper Collins, 2019) 'Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse, the Roaring Girl', East End Women's Museum, (20/11/2016), < https://eastendwomensmuseum.org/blog/mary-frith >, [03/03/2023] 'DANGEROUS WOMEN: THE CROSS-DRESSING CAVALIER MARY FRITH', Historic Royal Palaces Blog, (28/02/2020), < https://blog.hrp.org.uk/curators/dangerous-women-the-cross-dressing-cavalier-mary-frith/>, [03/03/2023]

  • Mavis Best, an unappreciated reformer

    Someone you may not have any awareness of in this list of women and equality throughout history is British councillor Mavis Best. Best led a group of black women activists from Lewisham who successfully petitioned for the recall of 'Sus' Law, the colloquial term for section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which allowed arrest based solely on suspicion of a crime. Police used this periodically to stop, search, arrest, detain and assault young black men. Whilst also a single mother Best’s leadership of the Scrap Sus campaign was singularly successful, and her personal involvement in protest unprecedented. She has received little awareness for her efforts however and remains largely in obscurity. Best moved from Jamaica to the UK in her early 20s in 1961, joining her brothers and sister in Peckham. Best was immediately aware of the restrictions placed against her, finding difficulties in employment opportunities, housing, policing and general hostility from the wider population. She would later tell an interviewer in a radio appearance that “We didn’t have the language to speak about racism in those days. That comes later. But we knew they didn’t like us. ” This awareness allowed for further enlightenment to ongoing Black Rights movements across the country, in the 1970s she studied community development at Goldsmiths College, where she met Basil Manning, who pushed for her involvement in the growing ‘Scrap Sus’ campaign, burgeoning in Lewisham. Best would go on to lead the fight for the repeal of this act whilst also raising her three children as a single mother. 'Sus' Law is a colloquial term for section 4 of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. This entitled the police to stop and search, and arrest anyone in a public space if there was suspicion that they intended to commit an offence. Although it was slightly more complex to bring such cases to trial, there was still a good chance that the arresting force could provide proof of suspicion. Within a fundamentally racist society, this law was typically and increasingly used against young black men in Metropolitan areas. Often young men and boys were simply looking into a shop window or walking down a street. The treatment they would then receive was something more reminiscent of 1930s Germany. They were detained for days, with no notice given to families, physically assaulted in police vans and stations, and later wrongly accused of criminal activities such as theft or conspiracy, only 10% of 'Sus' convictions had supplementary evidence to police testimony. It was the subject of protest among other causes in the 1980 and 1981 Race Riots around England before Best became involved and it is telling of the institutionalised racism in the British Police force that when questioned on the law in 1980, then Met commissioner Sir David McNee argued that there was such a high proportion of black people incarcerated thanks to the law because they were “over-represented in offences of robbery and other violent theft.” Best’s leadership of the “Scrap Sus” Campaign was arguably fundamental to its quick repeal once protests had begun, quickly enlisting co-campaigner Paul Boateng, Best is described to have been almost obsessive in the organisation of the campaign, immediately taking to leadership and organising protests in days and being so involved in them that she was often dragged away by the very police she was protesting; they produced leaflets, and flyers to hand out at public events, personally marshalled families and communities to attend hearings, drumming up support and witnesses for any and all cases she could, pushing the effort with her group that the only way to win was to directly challenge the authority, call them what they were, liars. Boateng described how she was singularly committed to the campaign, calling him “at all times of the day and night and on the weekends, and say: ‘X, Y or Z is happening. You need to get down here. And I did.” Perhaps the most notable action of Best and her ‘Scrap Sus’ Protestors was their direct challenge of arrests. Best herself would refuse to leave stations until arrested men were released into her care, explaining later that this step was necessary for her and the communities affected because “by then their parents were so debilitated by the whole thing that they couldn’t do anything.” 1981 is described as one of the worst years for British Race Relations: National Front Protests had closed and opened 1980 and 1981 on a sour note, this was followed in January with the New Cross House which Fire saw thirteen young black people die. Could the fire have been started thanks to an arson attack as part of the aforementioned fascist protests? The suspicion was ironically never addressed. Mass protests in the following months were met with indignant racism and violence and in April the violence arguably reached a climax with ‘Operation Swamp 81’ in Brixton. Operation Swamp, named for Thatcher’s statement that Britain was “swamped” with other cultures saw 1000 people stopped and 150 arrested, actions which saw an uprising in the following days and continual uneasiness and readiness to protest in the following months throughout all of London. Protesting lasted three years, with both Conservative and Labour Governments ignoring the community’s complaints and efforts until 1981 when a Home Affairs committee was eventually formed to address the issue. The law was repealed in August but most agreed it was too late to repair the damage that had already been done throughout the year. Mavis Best is not a single success story, she continued to fight for Black rights throughout her career over the following three decades, working for Camden Social Services, and working with several grassroots community projects in the 80s and 90s. Throughout it all, Best would lead the movements, speaking up when others couldn’t or were too afraid to. For example, Best pushed for support for young people from their local churches, worked with the Anti-Racist Alliance in the early 90s, and continued to campaign specifically for black individuals mistreated by the law, such as Stephen Lawrence and was part of a panel to review the implementation of the Macpherson Report, which had concluded that there was ‘institutionalised racism’ in the UK police forces. Additionally, she helped start and support two efforts to provide aid to African and African-Caribbean people: the Saturday Achievement Project and the Simba Family Project. Almost 20 years after her involvement with “Scrap Sus”, in 1998, Best was elected Labour Councillor in Greenwich, her long time colleague, Paul Boateng, this year had become a minister at the Home Office, and it was Boateng who appointed Best to the committee which oversaw community development trusts. In 2002 she established the Greenwich African Caribbean Organisation. Throughout the 00s her activism continued, setting up a commemoration for the black and enslaved people of Greenwich centred around a grace of an unknown Black Person, who saw that a ceremonial juneberry tree was planted at Charlton House to commemorate the black people of the borough, the house had been partially built on the proceeds of slavery. Furthermore, her activism wasn’t solely restricted to London; on a holiday to Jamaica, she became so enraptured with a local campaign concerning employment that she stayed to assist them for several months. Unfortunately, acknowledging the problem does not entirely solve it and institutionalised racism is arguably as prevalent in today’s society as it was in the 1970s, it’s just got to be more creative in its discrimination. Still, Best’s contribution, and that of the women she led and inspired throughout her activism and political career shouldn’t have faded into obscurity as it has, it was her leadership and fearlessness which helped bring about the end of a brutal and devastating technicality of the law, and it is with her continued legacy that we can work to address ongoing racism in our society. Source Rose, Steve, ‘“She was not a woman to back down@: the fearless Black campaigner who helped to scrap the UK’s ‘sus’ law’, The Guardian, (02/12/2022), < https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/nov/29/she-was-not-a-woman-to-back-down-the-fearless-black-campaigner-who-helped-to-scrap-the-sus-law >, [03/03/2023] ‘Best, Mavis’, Hackney Museum, < https://museum-collection.hackney.gov.uk/names/AUTH4748 >, [03/03/2023] Maggs, Joseph, ‘Fighting Sus: then and now’ Race Relations, (04/04/2019), < https://irr.org.uk/article/fighting-sus-then-and-now/ >, [03/03/2023]

bottom of page