More on Mary's manifestation and Stewy's streetart

Just over a month ago,  Mary manifested!  Overnight Wollstonecraft appeared outside Newington Green Unitarian Church, courtesy the street artist Stewy.

Mary on the Green, the group campaigning for a statue, and Andy Pakula, the minister of the church at the heart of the village that changed the world* (and expanded Wollstonecraft's life), both bask in the reflected glory of the rather lovely life-sized image.

In the weeks since International Women's Day, the stencil on the wall has attracted a lot of publicity, as well as pilgrims and visitors. Here's a round-up (including interviews with yours truly):


There’s something about Mary, Hackney Post, Rachel Bayne

On a Stoke Newington corner, astride the New Unity Church railings, a banner proclaims ‘The Birthplace of Feminism’. In this small, Unitarian congregation beats a radical heart. Here, amongst the pews more than 250 years ago, sat Mary Wollstonecraft.

Last weekend, a mysterious portrait of the radical feminist appeared on the wall of the Church. The stencil, designed by graffiti artist Stewy was put there on International Women’s Day to celebrate the palpable influence Wollstonecraft made on the Newington Green community and far, far beyond.
Stewy’s painting also acts as a ghost-like trace, spearheading the path for a more lasting tribute in Stoke Newington. Roberta Wedge, local activist and member of the ‘Mary on the Green’ campaign, represents that hope with plans to build a statue of the feminist on Newington Green.
“I always say to people, if you were raised by a woman who could read and vote and work, then you owe something to Mary Wollstonecraft,” says Wedge.


Mysterious Banksy-style graffiti welcomed by Newington Green statue campaigners, Islington Gazette

The mural, which is the work of street artist Stewy – whose identity is unknown – emerged as events were staged in Newington Green to raise money for the statue and to celebrate International Women’s Day, which was last Friday.

Andy Pakula, minister of the New Unity congregation based at the chapel, said: “I hope we can leave it here because we think it’s fabulous. There’s different issues about street art, but she’s our guiding spirit. You’ve seen in the US where images of Jesus appear on toasted cheese sandwiches, well for us this is about the best that could happen to have Mary show up. She’s inspired us to work for justice in the world and we absolutely support the campaign for a statue. We would like to see a Mary Wollstonecraft centre for feminist studies in Newington Green one day.”

Writer Bee Rowlatt, 41, who is backing the campaign and recently published a chapter about Wollstonecraft in a new book titled 50 Shades Of Feminism, said: “It’s just unbelievable that there’s no permanent memorial to this incredible woman. The mural is really inspiring. She’s right there life-size on a building where she used to go. We feel like she’s appeared among us and we hope this is a small step towards getting the memorial.”


‘Apparition’ of 18th-century women’s rights campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft appears on church, Islington Tribune, Amy Smith

A MYSTERIOUS apparition on the side of the New Unity church in Newington Green caught the eye of passers-by when it appeared overnight. But it is not the “Mary” that some might expect. Instead, it’s a graffiti stencil of Mary Wollstonecraft, the influential 18th-century author and staunch advocate of women’s rights who was inspired by sermons at the church.

As a young school­mistress Wollstonecraft used to attend the New Unity church and its radical sermons were integral in shaping her political stance. Street artist Stewy was inspired by her message to create the piece. “I’ve been aware of Mary Wollstonecraft’s connection with the Unitarian Church for many years,” he said. “The placing of the image, where she may have walked, was important to me and I decided to make a small edition of 25 screen prints taken from the stencil to help raise money for ‘Mary on the Green’.” 

Mary Wollstonecraft "appears" in street art on her 18th C spiritual home! N16 magazine

New Unity Minister Andy Pakula said ‘This is a mysterious apparition of the mother of feminism - a daring figure who continues to inspire us in the fight for freedom and justice for all people. Without her spirit, it is unlikely that we would have stood forward so boldly for equal marriage, as we have in recent years. Mary's spirit has been with us always. Now her image is as well!’


Newington Green graffiti celebrates Wollstonecraft, Islington Now, Sarah Graham

Fans of famous feminist Mary Wollstonecraft are celebrating her surprise appearance in the form of graffiti on the side of a church in Newington Green. The stencilled image of the 18th century “mother of feminism”, by street artist Stewy, is a bonus for a local campaign to get a statue of Ms Wollstonecraft erected in the borough.

Islington-based movement Mary on the Green tweeted a photo of Stewy’s artwork, saying: “What a boost to the campaign! Mary manifests on NG church @newunity.” Newington Green Action Group set up the initiative in 2011 to make her life and work more accessible to local people.

Campaigner Bee Rowlatt said: “[Ms Wollstonecraft] is an internationally renowned champion of women’s rights and there’s no statue to her anywhere." Ms Wollstonecraft, author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, lived locally and attended the “radically-inclusive” New Unity church during her lifetime.


and even in the the newsletter of the National Museum Directors' Council: 

Street art evens up London’s representation of famous women: The image is clearly based on the John Opie picture of Wollstonecraft, which is on display in the National Portrait Gallery.  Mildmay’s Labour councillor Kate Groucutt says “I absolutely want it to stay. We’ve had confirmation from Hackney Council and they can’t remove it without checking with the owner, and that’s the church.  It’s not going to be painted over, we have secured that.” There are only a handful of statues to women among the hundreds in London. 


And the image is to be found as far afield as the United States UU World magazine: 
British Unitarians rally to save faith from extinction  by Donald E. Skinner

Unitarians in London gathered next to an image of 18th century Unitarian writer Mary Wollstonecraft. The image was created recently on the side of the Unitarian Chapel in Newington Green in north London, where efforts are underway to raise money for a statue of Wollstonecraft.

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*The Village that Changed the World is the title of the beautifully illustrated little history produced by the Newington Green Action Group. It's available directly from the charity and no doubt from the online mega-retailer of your choice.

The photo above is, for a change, by me, of a pair of warm churchgoers on a cold day.

Hidden re-appears

With the kind permission of the artist himself, Red Saunders.

Red Saunders created Mary Wollstonecraft and the Dissenters of Newington Green 1781 as part of his Hidden from History series. Thanks to the Socialist Worker, I am pleased to report that it is visible once more, this time in the People's History Museum, until the end of September. I wrote about the creation of this elaborate photomontage here.

[This is my 200th post, over two and half years. Not bad going.]

Mary manifests!

Mary Wollstonecraft has appeared on the side of Newington Green Unitarian Church, on Mothers' Day and on the extended weekend of International Women's Day.

No sign of her on Saturday, when the walking tour got to hear her story at the beginning of "Feminist Hackney - Or Is It?". But when the congregation arrived on Sunday morning, she had (to their delight) manifested quite serenely and beautifully on the exterior west wall. This is the church that radicalised Mary Wollstonecraft, that helped this unpublished 25 year old schoolteacher, with no family or money or even a proper education herself, realise that she could make a mark on society. This is the community that introduced her to a wider intellectual sphere, and to the publisher who nurtured her for her ten brief years of productivity. This is, as the local history says, The Village that Changed the World.

Church Walk is now an alley, but in her day would have been a lane through a mile of farmland to Stoke Newington and the resolutely non-Dissenting St Mary's Church. All these fields were swallowed up by the relentless Victorian sprawl of London, but those with eyes to see can spot the history under our feet.

The image is clearly based on the last John Opie painting, when she was pregnant with her second daughter, known to history as Mary Shelley.  You can see the head and shoulders in the National Portrait Gallery, thanks to Bob Lamm liberating her from basement interment, or indeed in the nearest pub to the church, larger than life in the Dissenting Academy, but if you want to see the full-length version in the fresh air, I'd advise you to hurry. Who knows how long Hackney Council will allow her to stay? I've heard they take a dim view of street art, unlike neighbouring Islington. We shall see.

The wall stencil is signed STEWY. I hoped it might be a culinary reference; I was cycling into an unseasonably bitter wind and snow flurries this morning, so my thoughts naturally turned to well-seasoned eighteenth century winter stews. Apparently Stewy is a man, albeit a shadowy one. He has given a few interviews over the years, from which I glean that he trained as an illustrator, was influenced by Banksy and Blek Le Rat and their rodents, and decided to do 26 indigenous animals: F for fox, P for pigeon, etc. His politics are of the Billy Bragg variety* (with an extra dose of charmingly naive idealism) and his imagery is simple, full of character rather than narrative. His bare-bones tumblr is here.

From animals Stewy graduated to people, putting Quentin Crisp near Canal Street in Birmingham, Tracy Emin in Margate, and John Cooper Clarke in Salford. (For those not familiar with them: England's stateliest homo, no-longer-YBA enfant-terrible EMINence grise, and punk performance poet.)

I wanted to do something different so I had this idea like the [English Heritage] blue plaques.... I would only spray my people where they had an association, where they lived or were born or worked or died. And most of them that I have put up have remained which is great because they are obviously relevant to the people who live in the area, there is a sort of respect.

That was from the interview by Ken McGregor of the Australian Metro Gallery. (Mary Wollstonecraft has several plaques in London, including one on Newington Green.) Stewy went to a Manchester pub with Tom Balderstone and expounded some more:

I deliberately do underdogs or the people hidden or just behind the scenes. The people who haven’t really become famous....[With one of his images] loads of people come up asking who he is, not their fault, so it’s kind of educational; almost historical/geographical. In school I had an interest in both but I couldn’t do history, got a B in geography and I liked art, so it all came full circle and now I’m pulling that all together. I might do a map one day, and try to plot it all. But by then the pictures might have gone.

He also spoke to Joe Bill of Kent News about the future of street art, it becoming a positive force in society. "It’s not about me. The work highlights people or eccentrics who made a difference - changed how we approach art, music or writing - pushing the boundaries in Britain and shaking things up a little."

Stewy calls his combination of people in their context "psychogeography". So now we have a psychogeographic Mary Wollstonecraft, back in her old neighbourhood, looking straight at us. "Like a ghost across the street", a line from Blek. There she is. Thanks, Stewy.

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*Note to self: the Bard of Barking might be interested in Mary Wollstonecraft: 

that ancient port was where she formed her first memories. 

A round-up for International Women's Day

Time for a round-up of International Women's Day events that feature Mary Wollstonecraft.

There's "The Two Marys: A Conversation Piece", created by American writer Judith Chernaik, founder of Poems on the Underground. This one-off performance is sponsored by Camden Council, representing the place that embraced the end of the mother's life and the beginning of the daughter's. In a neighbouring borough there is a multifaceted celebration with a lot of music and an hour on Mary Wollstonecraft, by historian Clare Midgley, performance academic Anna Birch, and myself, reprising my IGNITE story-telling. That's organised by the Islington Unitarians in their post-Blitz hidden edifice on Upper Street. Their sister congregation in Newington Green, the church that nurtured Mary as a young schoolteacher, will be opened for the beginning of the Feminist (Or Is It?) walk by Hackney Tours. Simon Coles has chosen to offer the event as a fundraiser for Mary on the Green, the campaign for a statue, as has Hilary King, who is running an Alexander Technique taster session that afternoon. Stand tall, Mary Wollstonecraft fans!

Most of these are listed on Internationalwomensday.com, the corporate-sponsored "global hub for sharing International Women's Day news, events and resources". (Banner ad: "Discover BP's feminine side".) They provided the logo above, and straplines such as "The advancement of women is of prime importance to the economy, business and society. The support of corporate organisations supporting women is critical." I would argue that the support of copy editors is also critical, but I digress....

There are well over 1000 events on the IWD database, with more still being added; hundreds are happening in Britain. The search facility seems to be broken, so I can't see if any others list Mary Wollstonecraft as an inspiration, but one that intrigues me is a walking tour of "sculptures of remarkable women ... from Louisa Blake to Emmeline Pankhurst", led by the UNWomen UK London Committee:

We are the local representative, voice and champion for UN Women (formed in January 2011 from the amalgamation of UNIFEM and three other UN gender bodies) and support the work of UN Women in its mission for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

If only the tour could end up at a commemoration of England's first feminist!

Perhaps the most significant event will be the launch of Fifty Shades of Feminism, a compilation brought together by Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Holmes and Susie Orbach. It features a chapter entitled "There's Something About Mary" by none other than Bee Rowlatt, no stranger to this blog. The launch is part of the three-day extravaganza on the Southbank, WOW, the Women of the World festival. Sometimes there are good reasons to love London.

Last year for International Women's Day I wrote on the importance of education and on maternal mortality, in the eighteenth century and now, here in the Wealthy West but also in the Wider World. The year before that, on the 100th anniversary of IWD, Mary Wollstonecraft got yet another non-blue plaque, situated most fittingly on a school. Islington Council was behind that nod of appreciation.

If you need more inspiration, have a look at these wonderful posters for IWD 2013.

Namechecked on Newsnight

Mary Wollstonecraft (but not, alas, Frances Blood) was mentioned yesterday on Newsnight, one of the BBC's leading current affairs programmes. Last night the House of Commons voted in favour of same-sex marriage. A lot of MPs were all, "Oh, teh churchez", and in fact the Church of England is specifically excluded in legislation, with a kinky sounding quadruple lock. BUT! Some religions want in: the Quakers, the liberal Jews, and the Unitarians. So a crew was sent to the little church that radicalised Mary. Here's Allegra Stratton's report:

Many Conservative rebels feared that religious organisations, due to have to opt in if they want to hold gay weddings, would actually feel coerced. One Unitarian church up in North London is already gung-ho.

Up here in Newington Green, historically outside the City of London, they have always made up their own rules. Mary Wollstonecraft worshipped here; so too did Tom Paine and people like Benjamin Franklin. And now, 300 years on, they'd like to be able to let gay couples marry.

David Cameron may think he's more in the mould of somebody like Wollstonecraft's rival, Edmund Burke, but in this he is a radical. David Cameron wants gay couples to be able to marry precisely because he's a Conservative, not despite being one.

As I've often said, marriage is the least queer option. I wonder if the two young schoolteachers in this special village would have chosen marriage, had it been available to them in 1785. They had more or less run away to set up a new life, living and working together, offering education to girls and a refuge to an abused wife, Mary's sister. To anyone who says marriage is an eternal institution that the state shouldn't interfere with, I have two words: marital rape. Remember how recently that was outlawed; prior to 1991, it was just part of the legal bargain, sexual access for financial support. Or for a point roughly equidistant between Mary's time and ours, the Married Woman's Property Acts (1870 and 1882), before which every penny a woman owned and every article of clothing on her back belonged to her husband. No wonder that other Famous Dead Bisexual near Mary's first grave decided to spend her life with a woman by her side and not a man. Much safer. Times change.

Who'll be the first same-sex couple to marry in Mary's church? Will they be conservatives or radicals, or both?
...

In her footsteps

There's another walk featuring Mary Wollstonecraft, this time around the area where she spent her last few years, when she took little Frances and set up home with William Godwin in the parish of St Pancras, in an area of Camden now known as Somers Town. This walk is called All Change at Kings Cross* and is led by Rob Smith of Footprints of London. It takes place on Sunday 25 March from 11am to 1pm and costs £10, or £7.50 concessions; Rob has promised to make a donation to Mary on the Green. It covers:

the history of the area, looking at the existing buildings and what is planned for the future. You'll hear how Kings Cross kept London supplied with food and the areas links with the Beatles, the Olympics, Frankenstein and the French Revolution as well as many other stories.

I've catalogued my previous walks, starting in St Pancras and progressing to Somers Town, via St Paul's and Southwark, with many more waiting in the wings: Bloomsbury, Barking, Spitalfields, and of course Newington Green.

The little church at the head of the village green was the final point for last Sunday's walk with Simon Cole of Hackney Tours. (I love the page on its ethos - how many tour companies have one of those?). This walk is called "Feminism, fame & infamy: How Hackney women have shaped our world" and makes very specific reference to Mary Wollstonecraft. He led this tour on the Sunday before International Women's Day, donating half the fee to the sculpture campaign.

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*Pedants' note: the great apostrophe dilemma

Formal Fawcetts fall for first feminist

The Fawcett Society wishes to find out more about Mary Wollstonecraft, and you are all invited: a week today, Tuesday 8 November, 7pm at Newington Green Unitarian Church, where Mary was radicalised. Dress warmly. The official announcement of this free, open, public meeting is here.

Technically, it is not Fawcett itself that will be soaking up the Wollstonecraft atmosphere that evening, but the East London branch, possibly with their North London sisters. (No doubt they will all take turns, sitting in Mary's pew.) Why do I call the Fawcetts "formal", aside from my woeful weakness for alliteration and allied alphabetical amusements? (And MW wasn't strictly speaking the first feminist.) Because they are the respectable face of British feminism, so much so that they don't even use the f-word. "Fawcett is the UK’s leading campaign for equality between women and men. Where there's an inequality gap between women and men we're working to close it." They lobby Parliament -- effectively. They wear suits and ballgowns, metaphorically and for all I know literally, and they Get Things Done. All power to them. 

As consummate campaigner and secular saint (enough already! - Ed.) Peter Tatchell pointed out, street activists recognise the value of committed negotiators who can get inside the establishment and talk to the power brokers in language they understand. What those who risk arrest don't like is when the besuited intermediaries ignore or belittle their contribution. Without OutRage! noisily and creatively demonstrating, Stonewall wouldn't have had its phone calls to MPs returned, or so went his argument. OutRage! acknowledged this interdependence but Stonewall didn't, or so he said, way back when. See Animal Liberation Front and RSPCA; see Black Power and the civil rights movement; see toffee-hammer-wielding suffragettes and patriotic patient persistent (I said stop! -Ed.) suffragists. I don't know the precise parallel to gender issues -- Riot Grrrls got co-opted into commercial music*, Guerrilla Girls never made it to the National Gallery -- but at any rate, Fawcett is the Stonewall of feminism, and they do what they do very well. "We make real differences in women’s lives by creating awareness, leading debate and driving change. Our lobbying power means we have real influence right at the top of UK politics and among those who make decisions."

The Fawcett ethos is one of liberal reform: "Our vision is of a society where women and our rights and freedoms are equally valued and respected and where we have equal power and influence in shaping our own lives and our wider world." I like to think its members would sit well with the Rational Dissenters of Newington Green, the ones who opened a young schoolteacher's eyes not to the injustices of the world -- she was well acquainted with them already - but with the political dimensions to these injustices. "We campaign on women’s representation in politics and public life; on equal pay, on pensions and poverty; valuing caring work; and the treatment of women in the justice system."

I'll do my show and tell (as I did a year ago at Ignite -- so sad to be missing this autumn's version! -- but if you haven't got tickets by now, you have no chance anyway, so might as well come along to Newington Green). We'll certainly cover the latest developments with Mary on the Green, and perhaps trade campaigning tips. The quiz on Mary (and democracy, and wonderful women worldwide) which I devised for my visit to the neighbouring Stoke Newington WI will not, after all, be reprised -- or not on this night. There is another event coming up, however...stay tuned.

The final reason for my fondness for the Fawcett Society is historical: "We trace our roots back to 1866, when Millicent Garrett Fawcett began her lifetime’s work leading the peaceful campaign for women’s votes."  This was the woman who wrote the introduction to the centenary edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, cleansing Mary's memory and claiming her as a forerunner of the suffrage movement:

The remarkable degree in which she was ahead of her time is shown on almost every page of "The Vindication." She claims for women the right to share in the advantages of representation in Parliament, nearly seventy years before women's suffrage was heard of in the House of Commons. She knows that few, if any, at that time would be found to sympathise with her, but that does not prevent her from claiming for women what she felt was simple justice. She also perceives the enormous importance of the economic independence of women, and its bearing on social health and disease.

I claim MGF as a Lost Daughter.


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*Oh. Oh no. Riot Grrrls has had its domain squatted by a lifestyle brand, with stockists. Don't look. Oh if you really have to look. Whereas the Guerrilla Girls were media savvy from 1985, and keep a firm hold of their brand name.

The 1891 intro is here. This version (held by Keele) seems to start mid-essay, 

and I can't find anything better at the moment.  Images from the Fawcett Society , 

One War Art for the Riot Grrrl Manifesto, John Gray's blog for the stamp, 

and Guerrilla Girls for the satirical movie poster.

Hidden photomontage in Bradford

If you missed "Mary Wollstonecraft and the Newington Green Dissenters, 1784" when it was at the Museum of London, fear not! Hidden, the magnificent series of photo-montages by Red Saunders, is up once again. This time it is at the Impressions Gallery in Bradford, the other side of Yorkshire from Beverley, where Mary spent happy childhood days (and fell in love with Ardent Jane and her library).


Here is our previous post about Hidden, and the artist's thoughts on the history not taught at school.


PS And there's an article by Paul Furness in the Socialist Worker: Hidden: Illustrating the secret history of workers’ resistance, describing Mary wearing her rosette for the French Revolution.  He also lists three new photomontages: Captain Swing, the agricultural riots in the 1830s; Hilda of Whitby,  a 7th century nun "who insisted that girls had as much right to education as boys", and:

Then we meet the Grindletonians. These were mainly women from the Yorkshire Pennine village of Grindleton who challenged the accepted world view in the run up to the English Civil War. They argued that a new way of living was possible in this old world if only the people living in it would seize it back from those who run it. 

The picture shows a gathering of radical soldiers and villagers seated together in a clearing at dusk. They listen intently to a woman who tells them that a new world is not just possible but is within their reach if only they would stand up as one and take it.It was little gatherings like this that mushroomed into the Civil War—in fact a revolution where the king’s head came off.

Image kindly provided by Red Saunders.

London Open House

This weekend is the wonderful architectural festival known as London Open House. One of the many treasures open free of charge to the public is Newington Green Unitarian Church, where, as last year, I was delighted to show visitors around, and tell them about Mary Wollstonecraft's life-changing time here. This is the church that radicalised England's first feminist! Dozens of people made the pilgrimage today, to sit in her pew and soak up the atmosphere of the chapel that changed the world. (A riff on the little history produced by Newington Green Action Group, The Village that Changed the World.)

Mary had a couple of crucial years in early adulthood with the Rational Dissenters of Newington Green. (Red Saunders has conjured up a photo-montage of Mary and the Dissenters, and James Hobbs has drawn charming sketches of the church and the house of Mary's mentor Richard Price.)  Was Mary a Unitarian? In affiliation, she and her contemporaries would have said not; but in her writing, it is easy to see her as one. She expresses views about the Divine and Nature that could fit into many a modern Unitarian sermon -- not to mention her revolutionary social perspective.

Tomorrow, the chapel is again open to all comers, 1:30 to 5pm. In addition, services are held on most Sundays at 11am (though not on Sept 18 - check here first), and if you get there early, you too can sit in Mary's pew.

[Addendum: one of the visitors was Cherry Potts, Writer, who came not only to admire the pews' rare ball hinges, but to pay her respects to pew 19, confessing to "a soft spot" for Our Mary.]

[PS2: I am told the total number of weekend visitors was 212.]

Lyndall Gordon with the Oxford Unitarians

On Sunday I had the great pleasure of hearing Lyndall Gordon, Mary Wollstonecraft's most recent biographer, at an event hosted by the Oxford Unitarians . I had not been to the city of soaring spires and bicycle tyres since Shelley's Ghost closed in March, and had never been to Harris Manchester College. Its precursor was founded in 1756 as a Dissenting Academy, to educate those who were excluded from the only universities in England (Anna Laetitia Barbauld grew up within it); and its current incarnation continues the mission by being the only college in Oxford to admit none but mature students, i.e.those over 21, and therefore with an irregular educational path. It also continues the tradition of educating Unitarian ministers, though the number now is tiny; the first female candidate was admitted over a century ago. I think Mary would be pleased by all of this.

A lot of what Lyndall Gordon had to say was biographical material straight from her 2005 Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, and there is no need to repeat it here. (Read it for yourself: fantastic research, and yet paced like a novel. Gripping.) She spoke for an hour and it seemed like ten minutes, after which she took questions, and signed and sold books. She and the organisers kindly allowed me to speak very briefly with three hats on: to explain my connection to Newington Green Unitarian Church, to pitch the Mary on the Green project, and to mention this blog. Much of what follows, then, is from my notes during the lecture.

The subject of the talk, given the location and the hosts, was no surprise: Mary and the Unitarians. The focus was the three remarkable Unitarian men who helped and guided her life: Richard Price, Joseph Johnson, and William Godwin. It is an obvious point that they were substitutes for her violent father and tyrannical elder brother, but more broadly they represent the good phases of her life. And they were truly remarkable. Did you know that Price received his honorary doctorate from Yale in 1781, as did George Washington? Did you know that Johnson was one of the first publishers not to pigeonhole himself into a specialism (he printed everyone from the poet Cooper to Erasmus Darwin)? Did you know that Godwin was born into a family of ministers, and stood on the kitchen chair to preach before he could write?

Lyndall describes Mary as "one of the great letter-writers of our language" and how spontaneous phrases in casual letters to her sisters had hooked her, and drawn her in to this biographical project. She explained how she plotted the book: instead of ending each chapter with a disaster or a cliff-hanger, she wanted to give it an upswing, to show how Mary surmounted each predicament. "What I found remarkable was her resilience." And, crucially, she had the capacity to impress people even before she had done anything. She agreed with the Unitarian values, as she too was powerless and disenfranchised. She was not averse to talented and gifted men; she had the discernment to pick as her mentors men of admirable values. (Well... with at least one exception.)

And here is a brief video of the author, via the massive marketing machine of today's publishers.

Unitarian: Was she or wasn't she?

A fortnight ago we looked at the ancestry of Mary Wollstonecraft, particularly the pesky and confusing repetition of Edwards, and I congratulated Daphne Johnson on giving amateurs, in the true sense of the word, a good name.  Today we feature the work of another thoughtful amateur, Joan Wilkinson, a.k.a. Yorkshiregirl. Now of course Mary was a Yorkshire girl too -- at least, she spent the longest settled period of her girlhood (of her life, offhand, I think -- counting on my fingers) in Beverley, where she met Ardent Jane and her family library. In later life, down in smoky London, Mary referred to herself as a Yorkshirewoman -- but everyone in London is from somewhere else, or claims their parents were.

Joan has written a tidy essay on Mary and Unitarianism, describing the development of our lady's theological views on the oneness of God. (Joan has also written of a dozen mainly C18 and C19 women, particularly from the British Unitarian tradition, including two who crossed pens with Mary, namely Anna Laetitia Barbauld, who has a big memorial tablet in Newington Green Unitarian Church, and Mary Hays, who supported MW in Godwin's house during the deathbed days.)  We've already looked at Mary's views of the Divine (A Good Thing) and her views on Dissenters (Not Wholly A Good Thing).

Joan starts by asking, quite reasonably:

by what criteria do we judge someone to be a Unitarian? Is it by their contribution to a Unitarian group or movement or by a particular way of thinking?

She shows how Mary, who had previously worshipped only in the Church of England, changed her theological views when she moved to Newington Green, a village that had grown up just north of London, centred around its Dissenting chapel on the green. (Still there, still radical.) Richard Price, its much-loved minister, preached in an atmosphere of "ethical rigour":

Instead of a deity breathing hellfire, here was a benign supreme being. The vision of mankind as essentially good and inherently perfectible sat well with rational morality and reform politics. Price preached that no earthly power has authority over our private judgement and that liberty and reason constitute the capacity of virtue. We love God because He deserves our love, not because he demands it. Universal benevolence, public spirit, with love being God's agent of human liberation is beyond that of country and monarch.

She points out the theistic framework of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, acknowledging that this is often overlooked in our day.

Wollstonecraft continually strove to define an authentic religious subjectivity. She asked what shape a woman's inner life took when forged in right relationship to her Maker? She wrote '…it is not philosophical to speak of sex when the soul is mentioned.' [...] The emphasis was on the democracy of God's grace rather than a hierarchical context and rational criticism considered essential when reading the Bible. 

As Mary travelled through Scandinavia, her soul was touched by her surroundings. Awe and wonder were appropriate responses to nature's majesty -- soaring mountains, tumbling waterfalls, endless fjords. (This, I think, is Mary's nearest approach to poetry, one of the few genres of writing she never turned her hand to.) On her return to London, her writings show that:

Her individualism and religious imagination had taken her beyond Unitarianism of that time. She considered their chapels to be too homely, their sectarianism too narrow and their reason too cold. Imaginative inspiration and adoration was crucial in the devotion given to God.

After her death, she continued to influence:

the rising generation of radical Unitarians and others teaching freedom, reason and tolerance. She also left a legacy of an individualist theological subjectivity that embraced imagination and lyrical pantheism that was influential in the next generation of Romantic poets.

Whether or not Mary Wollstonecraft would ever have considered herself, or been considered by her friends, a Unitarian, is a question that must remain unanswered. However, as Joan points out:

we can say that her writing was an expression of her own moral and religious journey, with her religious understanding fitting comfortably the spectrum of what many today consider Unitarianism to be. 

I can't wait to hear what biographer Lyndall Gordon will have to say this Sunday in Oxford, when she speaks "concerning the life and times and Unitarian connections of the 18th-century feminist".

Mary and God

St Pancras Old Church

Mary Wollstonecraft took religion seriously. She was baptised into the established church, and when she decided to marry, made her vows at St Pancras, safe within the Church of England. Nonetheless, she hung out with Rational Dissenters at just the right time in her life, and was radicalised by the congregation of Newington Green, led by its minister Dr Richard Price. (And that Unitarian Church is still radical.) She criticised the Dissenters, as we have seen, but drew sympathetic parallels between their situation and that of women, denied full participation in civil society.

Newington Green Unitarian Church

Mary was something of an amateur theologian, using first her reason and later her sensibility to explore the divine. Feminists of our time skate merrily across the fact of her deeply theistic worldview. Much of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman deals with ethics, correct behaviour (in the Buddhist sense of right livelihood, rather than merely etiquette), and the nature of God.

Here's a chapter title you don't often hear cited: "Chap. XIII. Some Instances of the Folly Which the Ignorance of Women Generates; with Concluding Reflections on the Moral Improvement That a Revolution in Female Manners Might Naturally Be Expected to Produce." In other words, "Silly Things Ill-Educated Women Do, and How Much Better the World Would Be If Only They Behaved Themselves". It starts by entreating women to reflect on God, and telling them off at length for seeking out fortune-tellers and "fashionable deceptions, practised by the whole tribe of magnetisers" (sounds like the altmed crowd - note to self, another post another time). There is a list of rhetorical questions, to which she expects the answer "yes":

Do you believe that there is but one God, and that he is powerful, wise, and good?Do you believe that all things were created by him, and that all beings are dependent on him?Do you rely on his wisdom, so conspicuous in his works, and in your own frame, and are you convinced that he has ordered all things which do not come under the cognizance of your senses, in the same perfect harmony, to fulfil his designs?  

She also writes a long digression "considering the attributes of God":

Positive punishment appears so contrary to the nature of God, discoverable in all his works, and in our own reason, that I could sooner believe that the Deity paid no attention to the conduct of men, than that he punished without the benevolent design of reforming.  

To suppose only that an all-wise and powerful Being, as good as he is great, should create a being foreseeing, that after fifty or sixty years of feverish existence, it would be plunged into never ending woe—is blasphemy. I know that many devout people boast of submitting to the Will of God blindly, as to an arbitrary sceptre or rod, on the same principle as the Indians worship the devil. In other words, like people in the common concerns of life, they homage to power, and cringe under the foot that can crush them. Rational religion, on the contrary, is a submission to the will of a being so perfectly wise, that all he wills must be directed by the proper motive—must be reasonable.

This is one of the passages that makes it so unfair that the Victorians vilified her for being an atheist: she was a through-going deist all her life, as far as I can tell. It was dear William Godwin and his ill-considered memoir that inadvertently caused her to be seen as rejecting God on her deathbed. It's a bit like being "accused" of being gay. ( I put the verb in scare-quotes because it presumes that one or both parties perceive gayness to be a bad thing.) What if the answer is, yes I am - so what? Or what if the answer is, no I'm not actually, although there's nothing wrong with it? If that is the truth, further denials can become awkward, and anyway are impossible if one happens to be dead, and the distraught widower, as an avowed atheist, has no interest in protesting on one's behalf.
I can't wait to hear what Lyndall Gordon has to say about Mary Wollstonecraft and the Unitarians. 

Images via Wikicommons.

Mary and the Dissenters

A Catalogue of the Severall Sects and Opinions
in England and other Nations (1647).
Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.

One metaphor often called upon in the early days of arguing for the rights of women was the parallel situation of slaves, who were, by that point, recognised as human beings with souls, but not thought to have full powers of intellect and reason. At best, slaves and women were treated legally as children, minors under the control of their masters or men, who could chastise them physically and restrict their existence in the world. This comparison is well known.

Another parallel is less so. Mary Wollstonecraft compared the situation of women in her day to that of a religious minority, those we now look back on under the name of Rational Dissenters. They had split from the Church of England, or, as they saw it, the established church had split from them. Protestant non-conformists then, Socinians or Arians later, Unitarians now. Mary spent a few years in their midst at Newington Green, befriended by the Dissenting minister, Dr Richard Price, and that fairy godmother, the widow Burgh. From her time there, she drew these impressions, which later found their way into A Vindication of the Rights of Woman:

Were not dissenters, for instance, a class of people, with strict truth characterized as cunning? And may I not lay some stress on this fact to prove, that when any power but reason curbs the free spirit of man, dissimulation is practised, and the various shifts of art are naturally called forth? Great attention to decorum, which was carried to a degree of scrupulosity, and all that puerile bustle about trifles and consequential solemnity, which Butler's caricature of a dissenter, brings before the imagination, shaped their persons as well as their minds in the mould of prim littleness.  

I speak collectively, for I know how many ornaments to human nature have been enrolled amongst sectaries [how many great people have been found among those who belong to religious sects]; yet, I assert, that the same narrow prejudice for their sect, which women have for their families, prevailed in the dissenting part of the community, however worthy in other respects; and also that the same timid prudence, or headstrong efforts, often disgraced the exertions of both. Oppression thus formed many of the features of their character perfectly to coincide with that of the oppressed half of mankind; for is it not notorious that dissenters were, like women, fond of deliberating together, and asking advice of each other, till by a complication of little contrivances, some little end was brought about? A similar attention to preserve their reputation was conspicuous in the dissenting and female world, and was produced by a similar cause.

Both Dissenters and women were denied political power or full education. The parallels are intriguing, and despite her many good reasons for gratitude, Mary Wollstonecraft is not blind to their faults. I'll be waiting to hear what Lyndall Gordon has to say about the matter in Oxford on 22 May.

Lyndall Gordon on Mary and the Unitarians

Harris Manchester College, via WikiCommons

O frabjous day! Both the day I learned of this, and the day I am now looking forward to!

Biographer Lyndall Gordon will be speaking next month on Mary Wollstonecraft's "life and times and Unitarian connections". I am particularly intrigued by this, because it ties into the couple of years Mary spent at Newington Green, hanging out with the Rational Dissenters, indeed, being life-transformingly influenced by that community, but never actually joining them. Richard Price was the minister there, fantastically well-connected, and he took a shine to her. The fairy godmother who helped her set up in the first place was Mrs Burgh, widow of the educationalist. Through that network she met Joseph Johnson, who was to publish her for the rest of her curtailed life. Between those three and their dinner tables, Mary had the opportunity to meet  many Unitarian thinkers, social reformers, writers, and activists.

Lyndall Gordon, in case you are having trouble keeping your biographers straight, is the author of Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft. That's the book that finally nails Imlay's missing treasure ship: what a researcher she is!

The place chosen for this talk is the chapel of Harris Manchester College, confusingly (because this is England, heavy with history) in Oxford. The college started life as a Dissenting Academy just about the same time as Mary was running her school on the green, and still trains people -- for the past century, women as well as men -- for ministry within the Unitarian Church.

Hope to see some of you there.

Sunday 22nd May After morning service at 11 am in the chapel of Harris Manchester College (Mansfield Road, Oxford, OX1 3TD), there will be a talk at 1 pm by Lyndall Gordon, the author of Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft, concerning the life and times and Unitarian connections of the 18th-century feminist (wife of William Godwin, mother of Mary Shelley, and “the foremother of much modern thinking about education and human rights, as well as about women's rights, female sexuality and the institution of marriage"). Please bring your own sandwich lunch; for directions to the college, consult the Chapel Society website at www.ukunitarians.org.uk/oxford; for advice on parking, ring the Pulpit Secretary on 07879 488785.

[Addendum: see later posts on Mary and God, Mary and the Dissenters, and Mary and Unitarianism (was she or wasn't she?).]

Hidden photomontage at Museum of London

With the kind permission of the artist himself, Red Saunders.



I wrote previously of the large photomontages of Red Saunders, at the Museum of London until 6 April. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Dissenters of Newington Green is the fourth in the series Hidden, and was added only a couple of weeks ago to the three that had been hanging in the foyer since November: Wat Tyler and the Peasants' Revolt, very bloody, like a full-stage production of Macbeth; Tom Paine, alone on horseback in the woods and looking quite the gentleman; and William Cuffay and the London Chartists 1848, a huge set piece like a Renaissance history painting, of an organising committee that led to the extension of the (male) suffrage. 



Saunders describes his work on his site, Red Dog:



Red calls HIDDEN a photographic 'chamber epic' (a description suggested by the playwright Trevor Griffiths) which recreates events in the long struggle for parliamentary representation and democracy in Britain. Not the history of Kings and Queens, but of the 'Hidden' neglected scenes of working class history. This was no smooth gradual transition; many actions in this long struggle were of life and death intensity, as working people fought for their rights while struggling to keep alive the history made by mass movements of dissenters, non conformists, radicals and revolutionaries.



Museum of London foyer. Thanks, Chihiro!



Mary Wollstonecraft and the Dissenters of Newington Green, or, for shorthand, Mary on the Green.....There's a snapshot of the day of the January shoot, a few of the models chatting while they wait outside the Geffrye Museum, on the winter-green lawn embraced by the arms of the almshouses. Roland Denning put together a Vimeo video -- actually a four-minute slideshow with a voiceover consisting of general explanation and interviews with several of the key players, most notably Red himself.

The photomontage is available on the Geffrye Museum site as well as the Museum of London one (but MoL has broken the link, let's hope temporarily, with their website redesign). Looking at the image, I see what Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum, means when he refers to the "painterly quality" of Red's work. 

Hidden has been reviewed, and Saunders interviewed, by the Camden New Journal (Picture perfect snapshots of English history) and the Socialist Worker (History you don't learn at school). Tony Benn is a patron of the project, which works primarily with volunteers. There's a Facebook group to sign up to, if you wish to keep informed, and possibly volunteer for a future shoot.

Many thanks to Red for coming through with the image file today, thanks to Chihiro for her on site inspection, and a hat tip to Sophie Woolley (@Mrs_Evil) for alerting me on Twitter to the arrival of the image in situ.

A life in #38days (and 140 characters)

Twitter, anyone?

I've been intrigued by Mary Wollstonecraft since I was a teenager. This phase of my enthusiasm really kicked off two years ago, when I discovered that Newington Green Unitarian Church (under its briefer C21 name of New Unity) was the only group in the whole world putting on a series of public events to celebrate Mary's 250th anniversary. More on that another time. Suffice it to say that I took this as a personal challenge, and decided to undertake some of the publicity for these events, which proved a useful excuse for getting to grips with Twitter. One of the first things I set up, under the handle of @1759MaryWol1797, was the telling of the last few years of her life, in thrice daily bites. I must see if that trail still exists. This year, I thought I'd re-invent the idea, and am doing her whole life in a line a day, each message representing one year. So far we have:

• 1759. Waaah! I’m cold. ‘Tis rational to be cold; they have not cloathed me yet. O brave new world, that has such people in't!
• 1760. Brother Ned cannot forgive me for ousting him from the breast. I assert my rights: he may be greediest, but I am neediest.
• 1761. And now I in turn am thrust from my place at the centre of Mother’s universe by the arrival of brother Henry.
• 1762. Under my grandfather’s loom, I see the cat toying with a mouse. How the tyrant abuses his power!
• 1763. We move to Epping Forest, as Father wishes to be a gentleman farmer. Unfortunately, he is neither gentleman nor farmer.
• 1764. Mother is teaching me to read. She says I am quite the little scholar! I love the stories she tells of growing up in Ireland.
• 1765. We move to Barking Creek. I dig for treasure in the briny mud, finding shards of Roman pottery. Nature, wide skies, divinity. 

And they will continue, one a day at 15:00 GMT, with -- if I have counted correctly -- the final one, 1797, going out on Wednesday 27 April, the 252nd anniversary of her birth. I'll leave you to guess the last line: the comments below are for you, dear reader.

It took ages to write the whole cycle, but it was rather fun. It is a lesson in economy, almost like haiku, and in inter-relationships. Some years have so much going on; others, especially childhood ones, have little. How then can themes be introduced, allusions placed, hints dropped, that may come back later on? At the age of zero, I have Mary preaching reason; at one, she extolls breastfeeding, using the language of rights; at three, she anticipates political philosophy.

I already have an idea for next year. For 2011, the hashtag is #38days. Join me on Twitter!

More visual delights

Mary Wollstonecraft did venture beyond (what is now) North London, and this coming week over the next several Wednesdays I'll be exploring some of those connections. However, to round off this past fortnight's focus on Newington Green, here are two sketches by the kind permission of James Hobbs (www.james-hobbs.co.uk). I've never met the man, but his style of gentle colour and clarity appeals to me, call them grown-up architectural cartoons, and the next time I am near the Oxo Tower on the South Bank, I intend to pop in to Skylark Gallery and see what he has hanging there.

I like how the image focuses on the church building, but those in the know can positively smell the Belle Epoque patisserie next door, under the awning. James has work hanging there too, but do beware if you enter the building -- you won't be able to leave without having eaten something too good to be good for you.

The pastry shop wasn't there in the 1780s, of course; I wonder what was? The church was the centre of its community then, but it looked rather different. On its front now it bears the inscription "Erected 1708. Enlarged 1860", a phraseology that's the source of many adolescent chuckles. Aside from the Victorian schoolhouse, which is attached to the back and thus invisible in the sketch, the front was altered, so Mary would have seen the same building in a simpler guise. And in her day it didn't have a banner proclaiming "Birthplace of feminism".


I suppose that label could equally well apply to the house of the minister, Dr Richard Price, one of the few Dissenters who could get away with preaching support for e.g. the American Revolution, and yet still have the ear of the king's men -- in his case, for his work on economics and statistics. His hospitality, and the warmth with which he supported Mary, are well known. He lived for decades on the west of the Green, in what was even in his day a 100 year old building, now the oldest brick terrace in London. Wouldn't it be wonderful if Dr Price's house could become the location for the Mary Wollstonecraft Museum, or Women's Leadership Centre, or Human Rights Academy? You heard it here first...


[Update: James writes about Mary and Newington Green on his blog here.] [Another update: I've never even met James, but I congratulate him on getting his works onto five uber-London notecards to be distributed worldwide. Thanks, IKEA.]