Tag: feminism

18th century, 19th century, Arts

Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft: A Sublime Lineage

BluestockingOxford

In challenging at once the prevailing political attitudes of the time, and the literary ones, Wollstonecraft lays a foundation for her daughter, Mary Shelley, to continue these efforts. Wollstonecraft was arguing for a sense of radical inclusion, that by ironing out the divisions between men and women mankind might become, in her words, ‘more wise and virtuous’, with a greater sense of equality. Wollstonecraft died giving birth to her daughter, Mary, a fact which haunted Shelley throughout her life.

19th century, Arts, Humanities

“O, Portia! take my heart”: Ellen Terry and the Aesthetics of Costume

BluestockingOxford

“In the 1820s and 1830s […] theatre productions in London were becoming more elaborate in their setting, dressing and ‘getting up’” (Taylor 1993, 3).  Shakespeare productions in the Victorian era were marked by a sumptuous and decadent attention to visual artistry.

Arts

Sketches of a Gaze: Céline Sciamma’s Watchful Cinema

BluestockingOxford

In writer-director Céline Sciamma’s landmark lesbian film Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), set in eighteenth-century France, the young noblewoman Heloïse (Adèle Haenel, who is Sciamma’s former partner) refuses to sit for a portrait. Soon to marry an unknown Milanese man, for whom the portrait is destined, this is the only rebellion she can wage.

20th century, Arts, Contemporary, Humanities, Science

100 Years On

BluestockingOxford

A collection of important feminist dates to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the 1918 Act which gave British women (over 30 with property qualifications) the ability to vote.