Diane Atkinson’s “Rise Up Women!” by Janie Hampton

 Only this month I realised that although I was not born until 1952, I am among the first generation of women born in Britain to have the right to vote: my mother was born before 1918. A few months after my 18th birthday, in 1970, I was also among the first Britons under 21 years to vote. I knew it was a big deal, but until I read Diane Atkinson’s excellent new book Rise Up women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes, I didn’t realise what extraordinary sacrifices so many women had made for British women. Apparently, my paternal grandmother chained herself to the railings of Buckingham Palace. Sadly, she died before I was born, so I can’t ask her about it. But this energetic and detailed history brings the fight to life, from the Chartists of the 1830s, to the start of women’s suffrage in 1918.

Suffragette chained to a railing, later copied by activists chaining
themselves to trees to demonstrate against road-building. 

A question often asked is ‘What is the difference between a suffragist and a suffragette?’ Suffragists hoped to achieve votes for women by gentle persuasion. Although there were fewer suffragettes, they were noisier, more militant, often violent, and so got noticed. They showed, as many activists have done since, that being polite and asking nicely may not get you as far as attacking property and blowing up  post boxes. 

`Deeds Not Words!' was the suffragette's slogan on bombed post-boxes, acts of arson and works of art.

From the start of Edward VII’s reign in 1901, the suffragettes’ actions were public and militant and as a result, they endured public derision, assault and imprisonment. In the Great Pilgrimage of 1913, courageous suffragettes marched from Newcastle, Cromer, Bangor and Land’s End, meeting in a rally of 50,000 people in Hyde Park. Women of all classes walked together, camped together and stayed in each other’s homes. They also endured being stoned, beaten up, having dead rats thrown at them and their speeches interrupted. But it gave them even more strength, solidarity and purpose; and they refused to be crushed.

Suffragette rally in Trafalgar Square.

Atkinson relates the tales of women from all classes who fought with flair, energy and imagination: mill workers and actors; teachers and doctors; seamstresses and scientists; clerks and boot-makers. The stars of the suffragette movement are well known: the Pankhurst family, Emmeline and her daughters Christabel and Sylvia; and Emily Wilding Davidson who became a martyr after running under the King’s race horse at Epson. There were also female students at Oxford University (a rare breed) who opened a hat- repair shop to raise funds; the Honorable Evelina Haverfield whose talent was to stand beside police horses during demonstrations and get them to lie down; and Mary Richardson who after slashing Velasquez’s Rokeby Venus in the National Gallery was sentenced to six months imprisonment with hard labour. 

Suffragette Dora Thewlis is arrested in 1907.

Phyllis Keller broke the windows of anti-suffragist Lord Curzon and in her Holloway prison cell longed for Camp coffee and potted meat. The government refused to treat suffragettes as political prisoners, so they stopped eating and went on hunger strike. And the stronger the women, the crueler became their punishments. Kitty Marion, a comedian by profession, was force-fed lumpy soup through a tube 232 times during her three months sentence in Holloway Prison in 1914. It made little difference to her nutrition: she vomited for hours after each ‘meal’ and lost 36 lb. “I found blessed relief to my feelings in screaming, exercising my lungs and throat after the frightful sensation of being held in a vice, choking and suffocating,” she wrote later.

This poster of a suffragette being force-fed in prison haunted me as a child.
I could not understand how women and doctors could do this.

The infamous ‘Cat and Mouse Act’ (officially the “Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-health) Act, 1913”) allowed suffragettes early release if they had been on hunger strike, but once their health was restored, they were re-arrested, and the starvation and force-feeding began again. Atkinson relates the stories of many who endured horrific prison sentences, when they could easily have led comfortable lives as dutiful wives or daughters. While recovering from a hunger strike at home, Annie Kenney donned black clothes and escaped from the police by climbing down a rope ladder at night. After secretary Hilda Burkitt and bookkeeper Florence Tunks were arrested for a campaign of arson in Suffolk, Burkitt told the judge to put on his black cap “and pass sentence of death or not waste his breath”. You have to admire these gutsy women, and what they did for us, the next generations. 

'How women will answer Mr Asquith'
the new British Prime Minister in 1908.

At the outbreak of the war in August 1914, an amnesty was announced and all suffragette prisoners were released. They threw themselves into the war effort and in February 1918 were rewarded with the Representation of the People Act, which gave the vote to women over the age of 30 years, albeit only if they were married or owned property. It wasn’t everything but it was a start. 

History is about remembering the people who got us where we are, and Rise up Women! certainly does that. At over 600 pages,this is a definitive history of the suffragettes’ determination during the decade-long militant campaign they fought on our behalf. This book would make an apt present for anyone, female or male, on their 18th birthday. Then they will appreciate what was done to win half our population the right to a vote.
Rise Up Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson is published by Bloomsbury.

Amelia Bloomer, by Y S Lee

Last weekend, I travelled to the village of Homer, NY, to do an author visit at the Phillips Free Library. While strolling down Main Street, I was delighted to come across this plaque:

"Childhood home - Amelia Jenks Bloomer - Writer, Speaker & Activist - Temperance, Abolition and Women's Rights - 1818-1894

Amelia Bloomer’s childhood home is still privately occupied (the four Victorian-era mailboxes, two on either side of the door, suggest that the house was converted into flats some time ago) and there wasn’t any further information to be had that day, but it got me wondering.

North Main St, Homer, NY

I’d never given much thought to the American suffragists as individuals. I knew the names of the most famous (Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Jane Addams, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass and Victoria Claflin Woodhull, to start with). And I’ve mentioned Bloomer before, most recently in my post about women on bicycles.

Illustration of a woman wearing the Bloomer costume. Image via National Park Service

But looking at her childhood home, I realized I didn’t know much about Amelia Jenks Bloomer (1818-1894). Here are some things I’ve learned in the past few days:

- Bloomer had only a few years of formal education, and as a young woman worked as a schoolteacher and a governess.

- She turned to journalism when her husband, Dexter Bloomer, encouraged her to write for his newspaper, the Seneca Falls County Courier.

- She began her public career as a temperance campaigner. Because temperance was a female-driven movement, she was thus exposed to other feminist ideas including women’s suffrage and abolition.

- The American women’s suffrage movement grew quite directly from the abolitionist movement: in 1840, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott attended the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, they were denied seats on the floor because they were women. In response, they held the first Women’s Rights Convention in 1848 in Seneca Falls, NY. As a consequence, Black abolitionist activists like Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are also closely linked with women’s suffrage. The 1840s and 1850s must have been a heady time for progressive thinkers in America!

THE LILY - A monthly journal, devoted to Temperance and Literature - Published by a Committee of Ladies.

 - In 1849, Bloomer founded The Lily, the first newspaper published by women for women. (To my knowledge, the first feminist newspaper in England published by a woman was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon’s English Women’s Journal, founded nearly a decade later in 1858. Please do correct if me I’m misinformed.) The Lily began as a mouthpiece for the temperance movement but soon grew to encompass the matter of women’s rights. Many of its articles about women’s rights and the necessity of legal reform were written by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Amelia Bloomer in rational dress, ca. 1852-58. Image via NPS

- Amelia Bloomer didn’t invent the Bloomer costume. The radical “reform dress” came into Bloomer’s life in 1851 when a visiting friend, Elizabeth Smith Miller, wore loose, Turkish-style trousers with a short overskirt to Bloomer’s home in Seneca Falls, NY. Bloomer adored the idea and popularized it – and even published sewing instructions – in The Lily. Circulation swelled from about 500 copies a month to 4000. A few months later, the costume was widely known as the “Bloomer dress”. (No word on whether Elizabeth Smith Miller was relieved or resentful about the mis-naming of her design. Bloomers were so widely ridiculed – its wearers were frequently heckled on the street - that even Amelia Bloomer gave up wearing them in 1859.)

Ted Aub's life-sized bronze sculpture, "When Anthony Met Stanton". Bloomer, at centre, is introducing Susan B. Anthony (left) to Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Both Bloomer and Stanton are wearing rational dress. Image via National Park Service.

Bloomer's home in Seneca Falls, NY (where she lived after marriage, now known as Amelia Bloomer House) may have been a stop on the Underground Railroad!

I've a lot more reading ahead of me but I can't help picturing a scene in which Harriet Tubman (a childhood hero of mine) and Amelia Bloomer meet...

Review: Paul Scott's The Chinese Love Pavilion, by Y S Lee

Hello, friends. This month, I’d like to talk about a novel by Paul Scott called The Chinese Love Pavilion. I know, I know: SKETCHY TITLE ALERT! Don't worry: I understand that this is a PG-rated blog.

I picked up the novel as part of the research for my work-in-progress (which is set in Malaya during the Second World War). Since The Chinese Love Pavilion takes place largely in Malaya just after the war, I was eager to experience another writer's vision of the place. Also, while I’ve never read Scott's best-known work, the Raj Quartet, his reputation goes before him. However, I’m going to warn you now: if you’re a rabid fan of The Jewel in the Crown, brace yourself. This will get ugly.

Cover of the 2013 edition, published by the University of Chicago Press. The building pictured looks slightly like the pavilion described in the novel.

The Chinese Love Pavilion, published in 1960, is about a friendship between two Englishmen in the colonies. The narrator, Tom Brent, is young and in search of a shape for his life. He meets the unconventional, charismatic Brian Saxby in 1930s Bombay and, over the course of a whiskey-soaked evening, falls under his spell. This sets up the men for long conversations about the soul, fate, and the meaning of life. I have a limited tolerance for cod philosophy at the best of times, and that limit plummets when the "exotic" East is used as a picturesque backdrop for these kinds of musings. However, I stuck with it.

The story then skips over the Second World War and picks up in 1946 or so, when a war-injured Brent is brought to Malaya and instructed to find Saxby. Apparently, Saxby is hiding out the Malayan jungle and might be responsible for the revenge-slayings of some Chinese civilians. The metaphysical novel morphs into a kind of homage to Heart of Darkness, with Brent travelling deeper into jungle-dark territory to find his legendary but tortured friend. Promising, right?

An early edition

Actually, I can't remember the last time I was this appalled by a well-reviewed novel. The self-indulgent metaphysical musings drove me berserk, but I understand that this is a question of taste and personal bias. I am happy to report that the pacing of the novel's second half is excellent. Also, Scott is gifted with an extraordinary sense of place. His descriptions of the Malayan landscape are vivid and entirely convincing, and his eye for natural detail is impeccable.

However, there's one massive problem with the novel that taints everything else it attempts: the way it uses prostitution. Women - specifically, the sexual services of young Indian and Chinese girls - are the common currency of this novel. I'm not exaggerating in the least. Here are three conversations from the novel, in the order they occur:

At a restaurant in Bombay, where Brent and Saxby have just dined:

"[The girls are] clean. Clean now, you understand, not later. Later the bloom goes. Disease enters."

"Does he sell them too?"

"To us first. Honoured guests. Then to others.

When Brent visits Saxby after a three-year gap:

"The little one holding the curtain so patiently, is for you. She is an untouchable, and, I am told, a virgin."

I looked from Saxby to the girl and back to Saxby. "That was very thoughtful of you."

He smiled. He said, "I have always been accommodating to my friends."

In small-town Malaya, where the officer-in-charge offers Brent the use of "his" designated prostitute:

"Did you like her?"

"Yes, I liked her."

..."Well while you're here she's yours. It all comes under the contract but you'll probably like to give her the occasional present."

"It's very hospitable of you. What about you?"

"I'll manage, I expect."

Do you see the progression here? Prostitution is first an economic fact, and then a gesture of welcome between friends, and finally a common courtesy, like a cigarette or a cup of tea. I wondered, at first, if Scott’s obsessive attention to prostitution could be read as a kind of critique of colonialism, or a comment on the moral effects of the British imperial project. I also considered the possibility that Scott’s irony was so subtle as to be undetected by this reader. Sadly, no.

In a still-later scene, Brent describes a British soldier cuddling a prostitute named Suki "who by European standards was no more than a child and looked absurdly fragile in his beefy arms". This is an isolated moment of light-hearted physical contrast in a novel that otherwise takes itself extremely seriously. Significantly, it features a young woman who, if she was "European" - that is, worthy of civilized treatment - would be "no more than a child". I don't think the word "beefy" is an accident, here. It's an evocation of what's familiarly, essentially English. And the "beefy" Englishman who holds Suki - a loud-mouthed but fundamentally loyal and reliable soldier - has the approval of all characters. Could the subtext be any clearer? Child prostitution is a harmless joke, so long as the women are brown and the men are white.

Could it get any worse? Why, yes, it can!

The second, thriller-esque half of the novel turns on the fate of Teena, an enigmatic prostitute of Eurasian descent with whom Brent falls in love. Of course, a “woman of the world” (Scott’s euphemism) cannot be rewarded with a fairy-tale ending. She was always going to be punished for her sins. Teena’s clumsily foreshadowed death is never fully resolved: she might have been murdered, or she might have committed suicide. Brent can’t decide, and nobody else cares. And ultimately, in the schema of The Chinese Love Pavilion, the question matters not. Brent concludes, “Sometimes, I think she was doomed in that few seconds it took me to unbolt and open the door of the hostel in Bombay to which Saxby had come to find shelter…” That is, Teena’s fate was decided by the initial meeting between Brent and Saxby some ten years earlier, in a different country, when Teena herself was a small child. This is perhaps more illogical to a person who’s read the novel even than to somebody who’s never heard of Paul Scott.

The primary relationship of the novel isn’t that between Brent and Teena, or Brent and the Far East, or spirituality and war; it’s the bond holding together Brent and Saxby, and their fumbling attempts to understand their own importance in the world. India and Malaya are only picturesque backdrops, Teena merely a useful symbol, the Second World War but a minor interruption.

When I mentioned these criticisms to a friend (who is a huge fan of the Raj Quartet), she half-heartedly defended the novel as “an accurate representation of how white men viewed native women at that time, as much as it repulsive to us now”. I believe that it’s certainly an accurate representation of how Paul Scott viewed women of colour, both in 1946 when the story takes place, and in 1960 when it was published. But is that sufficient to excuse the novel? I think not.

A metaphysical novel about homosocial friendship and spiritual destiny could happen at any time, in any setting. Using the “exotic” East to lend sexual intrigue and distract credulous readers is a lazy narrative trick. Those who love Scott’s other work deserve better. We all do.

---
Y S Lee is the author of the award-winning Mary Quinn mysteries (Walker Books). She blogs every Wednesday at www.yslee.com. 

Bikes, Bars, and Bloomers, by Y S Lee

Living in southeastern Ontario, I count on having white Christmases. To everyone’s surprise and disappointment, this year’s was warm and browny-green, so my family and I made the best of it by riding our bikes often along a waterfront path that follows the curve of Lake Ontario. I seldom spare much thought for my riding gear (apart from wearing a helmet) but in the past week, I’ve been consumed with appreciation for the women of the Rational Dress Society.

In her Bicycle Book, Bella Bathurst quotes early American feminist Susan B. Anthony as saying, in 1896, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more for the emancipation of women than anything else in the world”. As Bathurst notes, “It was a surprising claim.”

The earliest bicycles were called velocipedes. They were mass-produced from 1857, but it took a hardy and determined cyclist to appreciate the ride they offered: velocipedes were built of wood, with the later addition of metal tires. When pedalled over patchily paved roads, it’s no wonder they became known as “boneshakers”. The velocipede evolved into the penny-farthing bicycle of the 1870s, with its enormous front wheel. Gears had yet to be invented, so the big wheel enabled the cyclist to ride quickly while pedalling at a reasonable rate. It also improved the ride quality. 

Two men on pennyfarthings, California, 1866. Image via wikipedia

 However, women of the 1870s were still trapped in highly structured skirts with bustles – possibly an improvement over the huge crinoline of the 1860s, but still terribly cumbersome and constricting.

Detail from "Too Early", by Tissot. Image via wikipedia.

It’s impossible to think of athletic activity in such clothing, or even what we now consider a normal range of motion. Contrast the lines of Tissot's gowns (above) with this recent instructional video, which shows how tricky it is to mount and dismount a pennyfarthing.

 

Some women of means briefly considered the tricycle. According to Bathurst, “While out in her carriage one day at Osborne, Queen Victoria spotted a lady on a trike at a distance. Intrigued, she ordered her driver to speed up. The trike rider looked round, realised who her pursuer was, panicked and took off. Sadly, the Queen did not succumb to the temptation to give chase. Instead, she asked to meet the trike’s inventor, James Starley… [and] was pleased enough with the trike to order two. Even so, trike fever never really caught on. Not because there was anything inherently wrong with them, but because the bicycle was better.” It was only with the invention of the safety bicycle in the late 1880s that women began to embrace the machine.

A tandem tricycle, 1882. Image via the Women's History Network.

With the safety bicycle came an immediate and predictable public uproar at the spectre of ladies sitting astride a bike, revealing the existence of legs and possibly damaging the “feminine organs of matrimonial necessity” (quoted in Bathurst)! And there was the very real problem of riding whilst wearing a corset and some 20 pounds’ worth of clothing. It was at this moment that cyclists and clothing reformers found common cause.

"Ladies safety bicycle" from 1889. Image via wikipedia.

Bloomers had been worn – and ridiculed – since their invention in 1851, by the American activist Elizabeth Smith Miller. It required huge confidence to wear bloomers in public: even Amelia Bloomer, who lent her name to the garments, had given up on bloomers by 1859 in favour of undergarment reform. Despite the founding of the Rational Dress Society in 1881, the wearing of bloomers or rational dress (ample trousers overlaid with a shorter skirt) was still considered eccentric and even morally suspect. 

Woman in bloomer costume. Image via National Park Service.

For example, dress reformer and bicycle enthusiast Lady Harberton was refused service in the ladies’ lounge of the Hautboy Hotel in Surrey on the grounds that she was wearing bloomers. She was directed to the bar, where the only other women were prostitutes. When Lady Harberton sued the hotel, the jury found in favour of the landlady.

Despite such setbacks, the bicycle offered just the necessary incentive for the rational dress movement to stick. Bathurst quotes Rose Macaulay's description of the sensation of bicycling as “glorious; the nearest approach to wings permitted to man and woman here below”. Speed, independence, and the sensation of flying? In the long run, the bustle didn’t stand a chance.

Women of the World - interview with Helen McCarthy by Eve Edwards

Eve Edwards

Helen McCarthy

In conversation...two women of the world.  Helen McCarthy, Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London, has just published the first account of the role of women in the diplomatic service.  As I served five years in the Foreign Office myself before turning into a historical novelist, I was the designated History Girl sent to get my telegram of information in time for close of play.

From: Edwards, History Girls Central

To: All 

Security: Unclassified

Priority: Immediate

Summary: Forgotten story of pioneering diplomats revealed in McCarthy's engaging narrative history.

Text:
Have you ever asked yourself when women were allowed to join one of the most prestigious of professions, that of the diplomatic service?  My guess would have been in the interwar period, at the same time as women got the vote, but I would have been way out.  Though the Home Civil service was opened up in that period, women were not allowed to join the Foreign Office until 1946, and even then they had to leave on marriage.  That rule was not lifted until 1973.  In the 1990s I worked with women who had had their careers cut short due the the unfortunate fact they were female and had fallen in love.  Their male spouses were, of course, not expected to make the same sacrifice.  My first question to Helen was therefore if she had a personal connection to writing the book?

Helen: No but I have a very keen interest in women's history, especially how they broke into the professions.  I was working on women’s activism around the League of Nations and the idea of international government in the 1920s and 30s, which is when I discovered this fact about women’s ongoing exclusion from the diplomatic profession.  What looked like a small subject grew to be a much larger story and I realized that no one had written the narrative history going back into the 19th century and on into the post-1946 period so I decided to do it.

What surprises came up during the research?

Helen: I conducted many interviews with the pioneers who joined in the late 40s and 50s.  I was surprised how accepting they were of the marriage bar, most saying they didn't let it bother them, either because they weren't planning on marriage just then or thought it would be fun to try diplomacy for a while.  Of course, the bar might have acted as a deterrent to those to whom it was an immediate problem - married women or those in a relationship - so the protesting voices were silenced that way. The generation who joined in the late 60s and 70s were much more vocal in their opposition to the bar.

The second surprise, which seems to run counter to the bar, is how socially progressive the FO was in other ways.  In the 50s it was one of the first workplaces where it was acceptable to address colleagues by their first name.  Other civil service departments were still more formal.

Why do you think the theme of women in diplomacy is important?

Helen: Firstly, it's a fascinating story that does not fit the standard chronology of feminist advances in other walks of professional and public life.  Ideas about women's unfitness for diplomatic roles and the conflict with the role of diplomatic spouse lingered far longer here, even when women had proved themselves in field either in wartime or in other diplomatic services.  For example, the FO barred women from postings to the Middle East even after they were allowed into the service, despite the fact that Nancy Lambton had worked in Iran and Freya Stark in Iraq during the Second World war with diplomatic status and been praised for her work.  They were dismissed as exceptions that proved the rule – in Lambton’s case even by her own ambassador.  It was the 1980s before the first female diplomat of the new intake was sent to the Middle East.

The debate in the 30s and 40s about allowing women into the FO revolved around perceived gifts of their gender.  Was that the result of contemporary gender conditioning or do you think there is any truth in the view that women do diplomacy differently?

Helen: I'm going to duck the straight answer here as that delves into the thorny question of whether men and women are different ‘by nature’!  However, I think the language over gifts has now become embraced by the diversity agenda.  What were seen as feminine gifts, such as ‘intuition’ or ‘empathy’, are now welcomed as part of the drive to recruit from a wider gender, regional, ethnic pool to reflect the diversity of the country.  Out of fashion is the 'right sort' recruitment where it was believed that only chaps who had gone to the same schools and universities would represent the country effectively.

Who is your diplomatic heroine?

Helen: There are lots of wonderful characters in my book but if pushed I would pick Mary Moore (nee Galbraith) who joined in 1951.  She was a fascinating interview subject who conjured up brilliantly the masculine atmosphere of the Third Room where diplomats of her grade worked.  Suddenly after being kept out for decades the doors were open to women and Mary found herself in the UN Security Council sitting behind the British Ambassador during the Suez crisis as his aide.

If you turned to writing fiction, which person or place from your book would you choose for your novel?

Helen: New York and Washington during the Second World war.  Women were dispatched by London to win the hearts and minds of ordinary American people as part of the campaign to get the US to enter the war.  Winifred Cullis, to name but one, evoked the atmosphere vividly with her account of her trip in a fast lift at the Rockefeller Center and her lecture tour of the country.  She was rubbing shoulders with an eccentric diplomatic community in Washington, the embassy including such figures as Isaiah Berlin and John Wheeler-Bennett.

Would you have made a good diplomat?

Helen: No, my language skills are not up to the job and I would have been homesick.  I might have managed well on the making contacts and political analysis but I'm not sure about my schmoozing skills.

Here is a quick test of your diplomatic etiquette.  Do you know what the diplomatic honours are known as in the service?

Helen: Oh dear...

Former Second Secretary Political Section Edwards: CMG (Call me god), KCMG (Kings call me god), GCMG (God calls me god).  I've forgotten what they really stand for!  Who is more senior: a duke or a marquis.

Helen: marquis?

Edwards: No.  A duke.  But never mind I never had to know that either - it was all in a book somewhere.

Recommendation:
Helen McCarthy was sent a probing set of questions prior to interview and performed well under cross-examination.  I recommend you read her book and consider her inclusion on invitation for all future QBPs (Queen's Birthday Parties) held at History Girls Central.

Edwards

Hats On for St Catherine - Joan Lennon

Today is the Day of St Catherine - patron saint of unmarried women.  (Well, one of them.  There's also St Andrew, St Agatha, and a disconcertingly large number of others.)  I've always envied Roman Catholics all their saints for odd things.*  And I love the way something as ghastly as martyrdom can morph over the years into, for example, a day of wearing outrageous hats and celebrating the notion that a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.  

It didn't start that way, of course.  According to good old Wikipedia:

The French say that before a girl reaches 25, she prays: "Donnez-moi, Seigneur, un mari de bon lieu! Qu'il soit doux, opulent, libéral et agréable!" (Lord, give me a well-situated husband. Let him be gentle, rich, generous, and pleasant!") After 25, she prays: "Seigneur, un qui soit supportable, ou qui, parmi le monde, au moins puisse passer!" (Lord, one who's bearable, or who can at least pass as bearable in the world!") And when she's pushing 30: "Un tel qu'il te plaira Seigneur, je m'en contente!" ("Send whatever you want, Lord; I'll take it!"). An English version goes, St Catherine, St Catherine, O lend me thine aid, And grant that I never may die an old maid. 

And there was certainly a side to the St Catherine's Day festivities that was aimed at humiliating unsuccessful (i.e. unmarried) women - just look at that mocking gargoyle face peeping round the corner below!  

(Two Catherinettes in Paris in 1909)

But then look into the faces of the Catherinettes themselves and see the confidence.  The strength.  The sisterhood. 

(A bevy more in 1932)

(Henri Matisse drew this sketch of a Catherinette in 1946.)

(And here are Issaac Israel's confident beauties)

I look at these images and I see subversion!

If I'd known about it, I would have loved being a Catherinette, tromping about the place in a crazy hat and enjoying being taken out to lunch and given flowers and drinks all day.  Sisterhood, solidarity, and silly hats.  St Catherine, I salute you!


*  To read more History Girl posts on saints look here.  My favourite so far is still St Neot, patron saint of fish.  With or without a bicycle. 


Joan's website.
Joan's blog.

(Thank you to On this day in fashion, Blackriders  and Wiki commons for these images.) 

A Forgotten Pioneer by Marie-Louise Jensen

One might think that the first woman in English literature to make her living as a professional writer would be an icon for us all. She blazed the trail for every one of us, after all. But does any one know her name?
Aphra Behn was the courageous and talented woman in question. I'm glad to say, her works ARE still in print - though she's not precisely a household name. Her plays, once so popular, are rarely performed now, though they did stay in the theatre repetoire for over a hundred years.


Aphra Behn

Aphra Behn, born Aphra Johnson in 1640, is a shady and fascinating character.  Little is known about her except that it's thought she lived for a spell in Surinam and was widowed after only a short marriage. In 1667 Behn served as a spy for King Charles II in Antwerp. This seems a daring and unusual thing for a woman to have done at that time. Unfortunately, it seems she discovered little of much use for the King. In the way of kings, he therefore considered it beneath him to actually pay her for her loyalty to the crown. This led to her being imprisoned in 1668 for the debts she'd incurred in his service.

In Aphra Behn's day, women had very few choices for earning money. Marriage or becoming some man's mistress were the two main choices for a woman of birth and education. Behn chose neither, opting instead to write her way out of debt. She wrote plays, stories and poems and became both highly regarded and successful. She was not the only woman playwright of the time, but she was the first and the most successful.

The era being the Restoration, the Comedy of Manners was the vogue. In the hands of Congreve, Wycherly and the like, these were bawdy, rather heartless romps of intrigues and betrayals. Aphra Behn turned the genre into something different. She was subversive and addressed the dire situation of women; both nobly born and courtesans.

In The Rover, arguably Behn's best known play, Hellena is a young girl ordered by her father and brother to marry an elderly man. She has plenty to say on the subject of young girls marrying old men; so much so that when the play was performed in the Georgian era, some of her best speeches were cut short, because they were considered too outspoken and shocking.

But Behn didn't restrict her concerns for women to the wealthy classes: the tragedy of the courtesan who gives her heart to a roving soldier only to be utterly betrayed is a moving part of the play. No wonder Behn is considered a feminist. Her life and her works shrug off the conventional, call for choice and openly criticize the restricted role of women.

I rediscovered Behn and her fabulous play whilst researching what kind of reading material my narrator might have had access to in 1715. Given that The Girl in the Mask contains both spies and girls who won't accept their place in society, it was simply too good to resist. Behn, her life and her play all have an important part to play in my own character's rebellion against social norms. She is quite simply an inspiration.