James writes about what impact Melania Trump might have as First Lady by looking back at the remarkable women who have been her predecessors. Continue reading
Category Archives: 19th century
A Conversation with Jane Robinson on Bluestockings
Ellen Pasternack talks to Jane Robinson about her book, Bluestockings: A Remarkable History of the First Women to Fight for an Education. Jane Robinson’s Bluestockings paints a story of small victories, of a series of women who each managed to get her foot in the door and leave it open a little wider for those … Continue reading
Beatrice Webb: Progressive Politics and a Pragmatic Outlook on War
By Alice Theobald Beatrice Webb – co-founder of the London School of Economics – had a notoriously pragmatic approach to social affairs, coining the term ‘collective bargaining’ to describe the relationship between employers and employees negotiating working conditions. Cousin to social philanthropist Charles Booth, Webb immersed herself in aiding his research on Victorian urban slums … Continue reading
An Unwilling Empress: Sisi through the lens of her poetry and the portraits of Franz Xaver Winterhalter
By Alice Theobald Termed by Brigitte Hamann ‘a woman who refused to behave according to her rank’, Empress Sisi’s somewhat playful audacity was always at odds with the official role of Empress of Austria she assumed at the tender age of sixteen. Her childhood spent at Possenhofen Castle fostered an unrestrained environment with few rules … Continue reading
Madame de Staël – Literature, Society and “Woman”
By Helen Craske “Un homme doit savoir braver l’opinion; une femme s’y soumettre” [Delphine] (“A man must know how to defy opinion; a woman, how to obey it.”[1]) Madame de Staël has been called ‘one of the most important women in history’ (Bowman, in Dixon, 2009, p.9), and this is for her impact over politics, … Continue reading
Registering Desire: Spousal and Appetitive Imagery in the Religious and Devotional Poetry of Christina Rossetti
By Alice Theobald In a period noted for its ostensible conservatism and censorship of linguistic taboos, Christina Rossetti is often taken as paradigmatic of this aversion towards the open expression of sensuality and female sensation. However, her religious poetry in fact displays a marked tendency towards images of physical desire, appropriating the language of erotic … Continue reading
A Life in the Stars: Henrietta Swan Leavitt
by Estelle Cheuk The remarkable mind who pushed the limitations of her time to make outstanding contributions to the field of astronomy Although largely unknown outside the fields of astronomy and astro-physics, Henrietta Swan Leavitt, made one of the most important and pioneering discoveries of the disciplines to date. Her findings turned the contemporary view … Continue reading
