Women Of The Millennium

Antigone looking-bookish...

About the millenium...A modest proposal...

The XWL subcommitte on Y2K observance (that would be me) held an impromptu meeting yesterday morning when they couldn't fall back asleep at 4:30. We determined that in honor of the millenium it would be clever, wise, informative and in all other ways useful to remember the women who have lived during the last thousand years.

We will therefore be posting writing (s) by women from the last ten centuries. Beginning on December 21st with the 11th century and progressing to December 31st with the 20th century.

All persons are encouraged:

1: to participate (links included to facilitate this process)

2: to read enthusiastically (and to share with others)

3: to kindly ignore the posts if they hold no interest what so ever...

I know there are fine scholars among us, women who are very well read, women with taste and refinement, men with a sense of history and perspective, and individuals with more than their fair share of common sense.

We could create together a truly remarkable way to say goodbye to the millenium...

Here are some links to get you started:

The countdown begins...

Antigone

...or Hrotswitha ca.935-975], a Saxon name meaning "strong voice", is described as a "German Religious and Virgin of the Saxon Race". A nun who wrote poetry, and plays that dealt with the conflict between infant Christianity and Paganism.

The following is from Roswitha's Preface to Her Poetical works, translated from Latin by Christopher St. John.

"Unknown to all around me, I have toiled in secret, often destroying what seemed to me to be ill written, and rewriting it..."

"I owed much to the kind favour and encouragement of a royal personage, Gerberga, under whose abbatial rule I am now living. She, though younger in years than I, was, as might be expected of the niece of an Emperor, far older in learning..."

"I was eager that the talent given me by Heaven should not grow rusty from neglect, and remain silent in my heart from apathy, but under the hammer of assiduous devotion should sound a chord of divine praise. If I have achieved nothing else, this alone should make my work of some value."

And from a letter to her young mentor, Gerberga:

"Illustrious Abbess...Roswitha of Gandersheim, the last of the least of those fighting under your ladyship's rule, desires to give you all that a servant owes her mistress."

"O my Lady, bright with the varied jewels of spiritual wisdom, your maternal kindness will not let you hesitate to read what, as you know, was written at your command!"

Okay, she's not a musician, we have to wait until the 1500's for that….

But how about a Woman Warrior.

Kogo Jingo, Empress of Japan was skilled with sword, bow and naginata. She conquered Korea in 201 AD, personally leading her navy whom she prohibited from raping or plundering when they took cities. It was rumored that although pregnant with the future Emperor, the formidable Kogo Jingo put a rock in her sash to delay his birth when she set about the conquest of Korea.

She governed for 70 years and was succeeded by her son Emperor Ojin. She died at the age of 100.

Among the tributes she brought back from her conquests was Japan's first written language.

I think it is hard even to find this information. In the times they are focusing on now, especially in Europe, where it was a very binding rigid minded society, and for women especially....that place and time was full of crazy mumbo jumbo and harsh beliefs and strange practices....there really wasn't much choice for women who wanted to escape but to turn to God, the convent or something.

Now African women or other cultures may have flourished then, I don't know, but medieval Europe was about as superstitious, backwards, and barbaric as they come. And these unfortunately, are the most recorded or talked about anyway events, at least what is taught to most of the masses.

Simply said, I just guess that was basically all that was offered to women as an alternative route at that time and place.As history progresses, this will change :)

Princess Olga:Princess Olga (of Kievan Rus) was regent of Kiev during her son's minority from 945 to 964. She was Ryurik's son Igor's wife, and Vladimir's grandmother. Olga was widowed as a result of her husband's murder by the Drevlian's, who had resented his main source of income, the tribute. Olga took revenge on the Drevlians by having their envoys killed and their towns burned. She then abolished the annual tribute-collecting journeys made by the Kievan prince and replaced it with a uniform system of taxation and special government tax-collectors.

Around 957, Olga traveled to Constantinople and was baptized in the Christian faith, under the sponsorship of the Byzantine emperor. Her baptism did not lead to the conversion of her people, but established the Eastern Orthodox Church in Rus. She insisted that the Russian Church be granted autonomy; she did not want Rus to become a Byzantine vassal state.

Olga was the first Russian female ruler, and she was called "wise". The Russian Orthodox Church later had Olga and her grandson, Vladimir, canonized. This is short version. Reality was more complicated but for purpose of this board I think it is fine...

How could anyone forget her!

Very cool woman!------Lady Godiva was a noblewoman who lived in Coventry, England in the eleventh century. Together with herhusband, Leofric III, Earl of Mercia, Lady Godiva founded the monastery at Coventry in 1043.

Leofric quickly became active in public affairs, handling financial matters that arose as the town of Coventrygrew around the monastery. The tax burden on the peasant populace also grew, as mandated by Leofric, and soon,Lady Godiva began her campaigning for a tax reduction.

As the story goes, Leofric agreed to the reduction on one condition. He would reduce the local taxes when hiswife would ride naked through the market square of Coventry. Once Lady Godiva ensured that she truly had hispermission to ride naked through the town, she announced she would do it.

Legend has it that Godiva sent advance word to the townspeople of Coventry, asking them to avert their eyes asshe rode naked through the market. Out of respect for Godiva, all complied with her wishes. All except one tailornamed Tom, who could not help but sneak a peek as she rode by. Immediately after viewing her, Tom was struckblind. From this story comes the phrase "Peeping Tom". Historians generally agree that this portion of the storywas added on as an embellishment much later in the history than the actual event. There is historical evidence fordetails of the Lady Godiva story, including land and tax records of the time. Women have used the symbol of LadyGodiva to inspire their own demonstrations in modern times.

Another telling:

In the year 1040, according to legend, the people of Coventry were suffering with extremely heavy taxes imposed by their lord,Leofric the Dane, in order to finance his battles. Leofric's sympathetic wife, a lovely Saxon named Lady Godiva, determined toconvince him to reduce the taxes. Leofric declared that Lady Godiva was shameless to plead for "the whining serfs"; sheresponded by saying he would discover how honorable the serfs were. A deal was struck: Lady Godiva would ride unclothedthrough the streets of the city, "clad in nought but my long tresses", and if the population remained inside shuttered buildings anddid not peek at her, their tax burden would be lifted. The following morning she made her famous ride and the citizens ofCoventry graciously stayed inside, to spare their benefactor any feeling of shame. Leofric kept his word and reduced thegrateful people's taxes. Today, in Europe, Lady Godiva is celebrated in countless works of art - tapestry, paintings, sculptureand literature.

Murasaki Shikibu (a fictional name chosen by a real woman) was born in 978 and was credited with writing what is thought to be the world's FIRST novel. This was the "Genji Monogatari" (or the Tale of the Genji). Much of this tale is concerned with the loves of Prince Genji and the different women of his life. Shikibu was extraordinary in her attention to detail, especially in describing beautiful women...You can make of that what you will, but I have my own theory about this fact...

In addition to publishing the Monogatari, she is known for her richly recorded diary which she kept between 1007 and 1010 during her life at the court of empress Joto Mon'in, whom she served. It is an excerpt from this diary that I am posting. Notice the care she takes to describe the sleeping woman's loveliness, and the longing in her words:

"On my way from Her Majesty's chamber I peeped into Ben Saisho's room. She was sleeping. She wore garments of hagi and shion over which she had put a strongly perfumed lustrous robe. Her face was hidden behind the cloth, her head rested on a writing-case of gold lacquer. Her forehead was beautiful and fascinating. She seemed like a princess in a picture.

I took off the cloth which hid her mouth and said, "You are just like the heroine of a romance!" She blushed, half rising, she was beauty itself. She is always beautiful, but on this occasion her charm was wonderfully heightened."

For more of Shikibu's writings try these sites:

(By the way, Michi was wondering how invisible her peoples would be in our millenium review...well heck! How's that for coverage!!! The first novel ever written and it's by a Japanese woman! I'm sure my ancestors were all too busy burning meat on sticks to do anything that important in 1007.)

"I have no complaint. Prosperity that the golden Muses gave me was no delusion: dead, I won't be forgotten" -Sappho

Mistress, it appears that "Shikibu" will also not be forgotten :)

Murasaki Shikibu (978?-1026?), Japanese novelist, one of her country's greatest writers, and the author of what is generally considered the world's FIRST novel, "The Tale of Genji." Little is known about the author (including her real name), except that she was married to Fujiwara Nobutaka and that she kept a diary of court life, which she transformed into a novel after her husband's death. The Tale of Genji concerns the amorous adventures of the fictional Prince Genji and the more staid lives of his descendants. The novel paints a charming and apparently accurate picture of Japanese court life in the Heian period, during the reign of Empress Akiko, whom Murasaki Shikibu attended. Among the novel's chief delights are the portraits of the women in Prince Genji's life. These women are individually described, with their aristocratic refinements, talents in the arts of music, drawing, and poetry, and love for the beauties of nature. As the work nears its conclusion, the tone becomes more mature and somber, shaded by Buddhist judgments on the fleeting joys of earthly existence.

THE DIARY OF MURASAKI SHIKIBU 1 AD. 1007-1010

"As the autumn season approaches the Tsuchimikado becomes inexpressibly smile giving. The treetops near the pond, the bushes near the stream, are dyed in varying tints whose colors grow deeper in the mellow light of evening. The murmuring sound of waters mingles all the night through with the never-ceasing recitation of sutras, which appeal more to one's heart, as the breezes grow cooler. The ladies waiting upon her honored presence are talking idly. The Queen hears them; she must find them annoying, but she conceals it calmly. Her beauty needs no words of mine to praise it, but I cannot help feeling that to be near so beautiful a queen will be the only relief from my sorrow. So in spite of my better desires

for a religious life] I am here. Nothing else dispels my grief ­ it is wonderful!"

From "The Tales of Genji"

A woman writer replies to Prince Genji's mean comments about novels and the women who write them:

"I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist of the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because one's own experience of people and things has moved one to an emotion so passionate that it can no longer be shut up in one's own heart. Again and again something in one's own life or in the lives of those around one will seem so important that the thought of letting it pass into oblivion is unbearable. There must never come a time, one feels, when people do not know about it. That is my view of how this art arose."

____The Lady Murasaki Shikibu

Memorial 11 August (formerly 12 August)

Profile Her parents were a count and countess. Her father died young. After hearing Saint Francis of Assisi preach in the streets, she confided to him her desire to live for God, the two became close friends. On Palm Sunday 1212 the bishop presented her with a palm, which she apparently took as a sign. Clare and her cousin Pacifica ran away from her mother's palace during the night. She eventually took the veil of religious profession from Francis at the Church of Our Lady of the Angels in Assisi.

Founded the Order of Poor Ladies (Poor Clares) @ San Damiano, and led it for 40 years. Everywhere the Franciscans established themselves throughout Europe, there also went the Poor Clares, depending solely on alms, forced to have complete faith on God to provide through people; a lack of land-based revenues was a new idea at the time.

Clare's mother and sisters later joined the order, and there are still thousands of members living lives of prayer in silence.

Clare loved music and well-composed sermons. She was humble, merciful, charming, optimistic, and chivalrous. She would get up late at night to tuck in her sisters who'd kicked off their covers. She daily meditated on the Passion. When she learned of the Franciscan martyrs in Morrocco in 1221, she tried to go there to give her own life for God, but was restrained. Once when her convent was about to be attacked, she displayed the Sacrament in a monstrace at the convent gates, and prayed before it; the attackers left.

Toward the end of her life, when she was too ill to attend Mass, an image of the service would display on the wall of her cell; thus her patronage of television. She was ever the close friend and spiritual student of Francis, who apparently led her soul into the light.

Born 16 July 1194 @ Assisi, Italy Died 11 August 1253 Canonized 26 September 1255 by Pope Alexander IV Name Meaning bright; brilliant Nationality 13th century Italian

Patronage Embroiderers, eye disease, eyes, gilders, goldsmiths, gold workers, good weather, laundry workers, needle workers, Santa Clara Indian Pueblo, telegraphs, telephones, television, television writers

Representation monstrance; woman with a monstrance in her hand

Reading "Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for he who created you has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be you, my God, for having created me."

Heloise was born in Paris in the year 1101. She was educated at the convent of Argenteuil. She was a bright, literate and attractive young woman and her guardian thought it very important that she have the best education possible. Abelard, a young philosopher-student at the time became enamored of her and arranged with her uncle to become her tutor. They then proceeded to do the usual things young people do when they say they are studying, as you can note from this writing by Heloise:

"These pleasures of love which we tasted together were so sweet to me that the memory cannot displease me nor can they be erased from my mind. Whichever way I turn, they present themselves, they thrust themselves upon my gaze with the desires they awaken; their deceiving images do not spare even my sleep. In the solemnity of mass when prayer should be purer than any other time, the licentious pictures of these pleasures so take this miserable heart that I am more occupied by their baseness than by prayer. I ought to groan for the faults I have committed, and I sigh only after those which I can no more commit."

Heloise became pregnant and her guardian enraged. They eventually married in the hopes of pacifying him (and Abelard wrote about how Heloise spoke nobly and clearly of why they shouldn't marry) However, even this extreme act did not appease the uncle, and he had Abelard captured and removed all the "offending organs" which you can imagine was pretty nasty. Heloise went on to become a nun, and Abelard went on to write and teach within the church.

For more information about this ill-fated couple try

Mutulation is just sick...sorta like a lobotomy was in this century I suppose.....but we women are not out of the woods yet.

1260:The Orleans Legal School orders women found guilty of lesbian acts have their clitoris removed for their first offense. Second offenders further mutilated and third offenders burned at the stake.

I stumbled upon this description of Melisende, and while not nearly as in-depth as other articles, I just couldn't pass up the Martha Stewart reference! Like, you know, just thwarting the invading Christians wasn't enough. LOL

She ran the Frankish kingdom of Jerusalem from 1131-1152 -­ the last nine of those years as a widowed queen. But this patron of the arts really came into her own welcoming crusaders, who couldn't get over her elegant home, silksheets, lavish parties and ambitious building projects. Emerging as the Martha Stewart of her day, Melisende was just as controversial. After feuding with her son Baldwin for years, she finally retreated to the grand abbey she'd constructed, but she still emerged to advise him from time to time.

I apologize for such a long post. In fact some of you may not even want to go here….I just kept thinking - 850 years ago and this woman has stepped out of time into our lives…a renaissance woman who lived in the Middle Ages.

Hildegard von Bingen was a 12th Century mystic and scholar (1099 - 1179). A remarkable woman, a "first" in many fields. At a time when few women wrote, Hildegard, known as "Sybil of the Rhine", produced major works of theology and visionary writings. When few women were accorded respect, she was consulted by and advised bishops, popes, and kings. She was a prolific writer, perhaps the most prolific of the Middle Ages. Four of her books are "Know They Ways", Book of Life's Merits", Book of Divine Works", and Medicine". Her ideas on universal gravitation were correct and pre-date Newton's by several centuries. She wrote music as well. She developed the plain chant into the Gregorian chant. She used the curative powers of natural objects for healing, and wrote treatises about natural history and medicinal uses of plants, animals, trees and stones. She is the first composer whose biography is known. She founded a vibrant convent, where her musical plays were performed. Although not yet canonized, Hildegard has been beatified, and is frequently referred to as St. Hildegard. Her visions and music has been compared to the ethereal sounds of New Age music. Her story is an inspirational account of an irresistible spirit and vibrant intellect overcoming social, physical, cultural, and gender barriers to achieve timeless transcendence.

They sang this song about holy Mary:

O most brilliant gem and serene glory of the sun, you who the leaping fountain has been poured into from the heart of God, the fountain is God. O only Word through which God created the first material of the world which Eve threw into confusion; God formed the Word--a person--from you, and because of this you are that bright material through which this very Word breathed out all the virtues, just as God brought forth all the creatures from the first material. O thou, the sweetest virgin sprouting from the root of Jesse, O how great is the virtue which the divinity beheld in this most beautiful daughter, as a water drop put into the divine eye--the sun, when God directed the divine attention to the brightness of the Virgin where God wishes the Word to be made flesh in her. For by the mystical mystery of God, the bright flower went forth from this very Virgin, with the mind of the Virgin made wondrously light.

They sang this song about the Nine Orders of the Heavenly Spirits:

O most glorious light--a living angel, you who below the divinity--behold with burning desires the divine eyes with the mystical obscurity of every creature, whence you will never be satisfied with power: O how the glorious joy--your garment--has a formwhich is untouched in you by every depraved work, the depraved work which first sprang up in your companion the destroyed angel, who wanted to fly upward inside the concealed pinnacle of God, whereby this angel, a tortuous one, was plunged down into ruin, but by means of this fall the devil was able to take counsel of the thing which the finger of God was about to do.

For O you angel, who protects the people, whose form shines in your face, and O you archangel who receives the souls of the just ones, and you virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, and thrones, who are counted in the fifth hidden number, and o you cherubin and seraphim of the hidden images of God, praise be to you who behold the little places of the ancient heart in the fountain. For you see the inner strength of God which breathes out from the heart of God as if it were a face.

Now didn't you always just wonder...well, maybe this topic is more important to the str8 women on the board, but I'll take a risk and assume that most of us have wanted to conceive or NOT to conceive at one time or another...

Please enjoy these methods: but DO NOT TRY THEM AT HOME!!!

Medieval Contraceptive Potions and Other Strange Methods

by Kerri Carper

Although the Medieval Church stood firmly rooted against any kind of contraception, whether it was a certain position, a mechanical device, or a medical concoction , women and their families continued to find means of preventing conception. Often, they turned first to history, searching the manuscripts of famous intellects such as Aristotle of the fourth century B.C., Lucretius of the eighth century B.C., Pliny and his contemporary Dioscorides, and the second century gynecologist, Soranus of Ephesus . Women, and men in accordance, employed such seemingly modern methods as coitus interruptus, the act of interrupting intercourse before the man has ejaculated; in fact, this method was especially popular for men who liked to feel they were in control of the sexual encounter. In addition, the most obvious and fool-proof form of contraception was, of course, abstinence, which was quite common.

Surprisingly, a form of the contraceptive sponge appeared in use sometime before and continued into the Middle Ages. Invented, or rather suggested by Soranus of Ephesus, "wool plugs" were saturated with a gummy substance or with astringent solutions to contract the uterine opening around the plug. Lastly, the Romans, apparently by the Middle Ages, had already invented a kind of condom by utilizing the bladders of goats.

Though these methods all seem ordinary and obvious, women of the Middle Ages also sought the help and suggestions of witches or local "wise women," who concocted strange brews, potions, and post-intercourse ritual. In an attempt to find the perfect method of contraception, one that would work without fail, these "wise women" consulted theirbooks, ancient manuscripts, and their colleagues, contemplated, and of course, experimented. Their efforts resulted in manystrange mixtures, potions, dances, positions, and superstitions. Sensible women, of course, relied on Aristotle's suggestion of olive oil as a versitile form of birth control, or on Lucretius' recommendation that women undulate their hips during intercourse in order to direct the semen away from the uterine opening, the danger zone! Soranus of Ephesus added that women should, at the moment of the man's ejaculation, draw her body back so the semen cannot penetrate, then sit with her knees bent and make herself sneeze; this bizarre ritual was meant to expel the seminal fluid from the woman's body. Likewise, prostitutes and other women were advised to jump up and down after intercourse, again to expel the semen from their bodies.

Nevertheless, when these ancient methods proved out-dated, the "wise woman" devised, rather experimented with materials such as herbs, flowers, blood, oils, and animal excrement. One such brew, called a "cup of roots," consisted of Alexandrian gum, liquid alum, and garden crocus. A woman mixed these ingredients together with two cups of beer and consumed the mixture for supposed sterilization. In other instances, the "wise woman" devised potions thought to diminish sexual desire, if not curtail it altogether. These witches suggested that a woman try one the following at a time:

- mouse dung in the form of a lotion to be rubbed into the skin,- snail excrement or pigeon droppings mixed with oil and wine to be swallowed,- or blood taken from ticks on a wild black bull and rubbed on a woman's loins.

Moreover, the testicles and the blood of a dunghill cock was to be hidden under the marital bed before a sexual encounter to prevent conception. Finally, after intercourse had taken place, women inserted pepper into the mouth of the uterus, as if to "sneeze" closer to the source. Though this list in not all-inclusive or exhaustive, it demonstrates the ignorance and uncertainity with which Medieval society viewed sexual intercourse, contraception, and the surrounding medical field.

Here is a partial list of the forbidden days for sexual activity:

Forbidden Sex

Rules of sex

By Bevin Wilkin

Sex is forbidden:-when a woman is menstrating, pregnant, or nursing-during lent, advent, Whitsum week, and Easter week-on feast days, fast days, Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays-during the daylight-if you are naked-if you are in a church-unless you are trying to produce a child*no fondling, no lewd kisses, no oral sex, no strange positions, only once, try not to enjoy it, and wash afterwards.

There now don't you feel all liberated and enlightened

Marguerite Porete was a Beguine - a lay woman who promised to make her life in a self-governing, all female community maintaining poverty, chastity, skilled and manual labor, communal worship, Bible reading in the vernacular languages rather than Latin, and writing in the vernacular.

Her book, "The Mirror of Simple Souls", written sometime between 1296 - 1306, forms a dialogue between Love, Reason, and the Soul. She sings joyfully:

"Virtues, I take leave of you forevermoreI'll have a freer heart for that - more joyful tooYour service is too unremitting - indeed I knowI have quit your tyrannies; now I am at peace."

The book was condemned and burned in 1306. She was burned at the stake for heresy, in Paris on June 1, 1310.Witnesses were moved to tears at the power and goodness of this spirit lost to the world. The church could not, or chose not to, understand that for Porete "free souls" meant an invisible community of free souls united in the love of God. Porete's concept of a "greater church" undermined the authority of the established "little church", making it, at best, beside the point. In her book she wrote:

"Theologians and other clerks,You won't understand this book- however bright your wits -if you do not meet it humbly,and in this way Love and Faithmake you surmount Reason:they are the mistresses of Reason's house."...

"I do not make Reason safe for them, who makes them say thisto me.Desire, Will, and Fear surely take from them the understanding,The out-flowing, and the union of the highest LightOf the ardor of divine love."

See more above, under 14^th Century

Many of Raziya Iltutmish countrywomen were still confined to harems when she ruled Northern India (1236-1239) - the first woman to head a Muslim state. Her father, Iltutmish, chose Raziya as sultana of Delhi over her two wayward brothers, but the populace was not pleased by this elephant-riding upstart who wore turbans and trousers. Despite regular rioting, Raziya built schools and libraries, pursued foreign trade and minted her own coins, dubbing herself "Pillar of Women, Queen of the Times." Imprisoned by dissidents, she wed her captor. They joined forces to fight for her reinstatement, but she died in battle.

In 1996 Deepa Mehta wrote and directed the critically acclaimed film "Fire." Set in present day India, it revolves around the clash of a culture trying to break free of deeply held traditions and values. Within the film is the story of two women that fall in love in a country that does not even have a word for what they are. When "Fire" opened in India, riots broke out.

Hadewijch of Antwerp (? - 1260?) was "one of the most gifted and intellectually inclined mystical poets of the thirteenth century." Her three manuscripts consist of Letters, Visions and Poetry. Letter nine describes one's acceptance of God as rejoicing "...mouth in mouth, heart in heart, body in body, soul in soul, and one sweet divine nature flows through them both, and both are one through themselves, and will always remain so."

Her mysticism in these works centered on experiencing God's love. Minnie (this word literally means love) appears to personify love--Hadewijch refers to it as Love Itself or Herself in her work. Her ultimate belief is that true and perfect love is only found by worshiping Christ.

"Why was I born if love does not accept my love? If love repels me so, I shall be lost without revoke; I shall moan and cry and have no peace and lose all hope of happiness, for I shall always be in want of love. I showed my pain to love and begged her pity, but she remains without time or thought for me; nor does she heed what befalls me.If ever she favored me, I shall dismiss that now, for she behaves in such strange ways. And I must live by day as if by night."

Abbess Mugai Nyodai (1223-1298) was the first female Zen master in Japan. She was a disciple and spiritual heir of the Chinese monk Wu-hsueh Tsu-yuan, who had been invited to Japan to teach Rinzai Zen, then considered by the Japanese shogunal elite to be the most advanced form of Buddhism. She became founding Abbess of Keiaiji, the highest ranking Zen convent in Kyoto, and spiritual matriarch of many of the remaining Imperial Convents today.

The discovery of a life-size 13th century portrait statue of Abbess Mugai Nyodai, now designated an "important cultural treasure" by the Japanese government, was one of the initial revelatory events that drew scholarly attention to the female institutions of Buddhism and, more broadly, to the role of women in Japanese religious history.

Julian of Norwich: God and Christ as Mother

Julian of Norwich was born in late 1342, and may have lived well into the fifteenth century, dying around 1412. We do not know her real name. At some point in her life she became an anchoress -- a vowed solitary who lived a life devoted to prayer and meditation, confined to a cell adjoining a church. In her case, Julian's cell adjoined the church of St. Julian in Norwich, from which we get her pseudonym. Virtually nothing is known about her aside from what she writes -- and she reveals little about herself, preferring instead to talk about her "courteous" God.

We do know that when she was 30, in May 1373, she became deathly ill, and while on her supposed deathbed she received sixteen visions in which God's love was revealed to her. She recovered from her illness, and subsequently wrote two books about her experience: a short text presumably written not long after the experience, and a longer text, written twenty years later, which reveals the maturing of a deeply reflective mind.

Julian is best known for her optimism ("All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well"), and also for her repeated insistence of naming both God and Christ as "mother." Her theology of the motherhood of God is an anticipation of, and inspiration for, much creative theological and spiritual thought today.

Here is an exerpt from the Third Revelation, "That our Lord God, Allmighty Wisdom, All-Love, right as verily as He hath made everything that is, all-so verily He doeth and worketh all-thing that is done."

The Third Revelation:

"All thing that is done, it is well done: for our Lord God doeth all."

"Sin is no deed"

I beheld and considered, seeing and knowing in sight, with a soft dread, and thought: What is sin? For I saw truly that God doeth all-thing, be it never so little. And I saw truly that nothing is done by hap nor by adventure, but all things by the foreseeing wisdom of God: if it be hap or adventure in the sight of man, our blindness and our unforesight is the cause. For the things that are in the foreseeing wisdom of God from without beginning, (which rightfully and worshipfully and continually He leadeth to the best end,) as they come about fall to us suddenly, ourselves unwitting; and thus by our blindness and our unforesight we say: these be haps and adventures. But to our Lord God they be not so.

Wherefore me behoveth needs to grant that all-thing that is done, it is well-done: for our Lord God doeth all. For in this time the working of creatures was not shewed, but [the working] of our Lord God in the creature: for He is in the Mid-point of all thing, and all He doeth.

And I was certain He doeth no sin.

For more information try these sites:

Christine de Pizan (ca.1363 - 1431) wrote "The Treasure of the City of Ladies".

Christine asks Reason whether there was ever a woman who discovered hitherto unknown knowledge:

"My lady, I realize that you are able to cite numerous and frequent cases of women learned in the sciences and the arts. But I would then ask you whether you know of any women who, through the strength of emotion and of subtlety of mind and comprehension, have themselves discovered any new arts and sciences which are necessary, good, and profitable, and which had hitherto not been discovered or known. For it is not such a great feat of mastery to study and learn some field of knowledge already discovered by someone else as it is to discover by oneself some new and unknown thing."

"She replied, 'Rest assured, dear friend that many noteworthy and great sciences and arts have been discovered through the understanding and subtlety of women, both in cognitive speculation, demonstrated in writing, and in the arts, manifested in manual works of labor. I will give you plenty of examples.'"

There follows a detailed and lengthy description fo Nicostrata, daughter of a King of Arcadia named Pallas, and her impressive and numerous accomplishments. Christine's "voice of Reason" then concludes:

"What more do you want, fair daughter? Can one say anything more solemn about any man born of woman? And do not think for a minute that she was the only woman in the world by whom numerous and varied branches of learning have been discovered!"

Christine de Pisan was born in Venice ca. 1364. Her father, Tomasso de Pizzano, a famous physician and astrologer, was invited to the court of King Charles V of France when Christine was five years old. She remained in France all her life. She received an excellent education. She spoke French and Italian, and possibly Latin as well. In 1380, when she was about fifteen, Christine married Etienne du Castel, a court secretary. The marriage was exceptionally happy.

Unfortunately, King Charles V died that same year, and Tomasso's favorite status at the court, as well as much of his income,was reduced by the new king. Etienne's income was reduced at the same time, and the family found itself in more difficult circumstances. Soon Tomasso died after a prolonged illness and in 1390, Etienne, too, died suddenly. Christine was left a widow at the age of twenty-five with three small children, her mother and a niece to support. The small amount of money left to her by Etienne was the subject of dispute, and Christine was involved in a series of lawsuits in an attempt to recover it.

She decided to earn her income as a writer. Her poems, songs and ballads were well-received and soon she was able to support her family. Christine de Pisan became popular and her work was later supported by many lords and ladies of medieval Europe, including Berry, Brabant and Limburg,the Dukes of Burgundy, King Charles VI, and his wife Queen Isabella of Bavaria. Much of her work contains a great deal of autobiographical information, which was unusual for writers of that time.

Some of her works are: The Changes of Fortune, a long poem containing examples from her life and of other famous people, The Epistles of Othea, a collection of ninety-nine allegorical tales, and The Road of Long Study. In 1404, she was commissioned by the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, to write a biography of his deceased brother, King Charles V. She wrote a very flattering first-hand account of the king and his court in The Book of the Deeds and Good Manners of the Wise King Charles V.

An autobiographical Vision of Christine was written in 1405. This volume was written partly to silence her critics in a somewhat heated literary debate on the subject of women. She followed this up with The Book of the City of the Ladies in 1405, a collection of stories about heroines of the past, and The Treasure of the City of Ladies : Or the Book of the Three Virtues in 1406.

Christine de Pisan was very devoted to France and was horrified by the civil strife that erupted after the assassination of Louis.

***She is the only author to have composed a poem about Joan of Arc during her lifetime***.

For more writings by this REMARKABLE woman, try the following site:

In researching the 14th Century I found the following definition and thought the board might also find it interesting:

FAGGOT- Beginning in the 14th Century, the word "faggot" referred to a bundle of sticks used for fuel. By the late 16th century the term could be used to specifically apply to the fuel used to burn heretics, and heretics who recanted were required to wear an embroidered symbol of fagots on their sleeves. In 1591 a slang use of "faggot" as a term of abuse or contempt applied to a woman. The verb "to faggot" meant to bundle sticks but later also came to mean to recant. A 19th Century instance of the verb is given to describe a man in the wrestling ring "who sells his back".

Marguerite Porete was a 14th century, French mystic who authored a book entitled "The mirror of simple annihilated souls and those who only remain in will and desire of love." Her book takes the form of verse and commentary forming a dialogue between Love, Reason, and the Soul. The book was condemned in 1306 by the French Inquisition as being heretical., and was burned in her presence. Marguerite Porete was asked to recant. When she refused to respond to her inquisitors, she was condemned to death. On 1 June 1310 she was burned at the stake in Place de Grève, the main square of Paris. A witness said that she possessed unusual dignity and courage at her execution, moving witnesses to tears at the power and goodness of this spirit lost to the world.

The following are excerpts from her writings:

"This Soul is so well established that if she possessed all the understanding of all the creatures who ever were and who are and who are to come, so it would seem to her as nothing, compared to what she loves, which never was understood, is not now, and never will be."

"(The liberated soul) no longer seeks God through penitence, nor through any sacrament of Holy Church; not through thoughts, nor through words, nor through works; not through creature here below, nor through creature above; not through justice, nor through mercy, nor through glory of glory; not through divine understanding, nor through divine love, nor through divine praise."

"... she has fallen into certainty of knowing nothing and into certainty of willing nothing. And this nothingness ... gives her All, and no one can possess it in any other way."

Reference:

While this is a legend, the source says it came down through many different languages, so there might be more than a grain of truth to it. Anyways, there's a beautiful picture on the link of the sheets of the manuscript. In fact, I'll include a second link to a closeup of the sheet....it's gorgeously illuminated. Oh if I were right-handed and patient enough to learn calligraphy....

The legend of the nun Beatrijs is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Middle Dutch literature. The story lies hidden in a collection of edifying-didactic texts, including De Dietsche Doctrinael and Jacob van Maerlant's Heimelicheit der Heimelicheden. The luxurious execution of the manuscript, the high quality of the vellum, the beautiful script, and the decoration - fairly unusual for Middle Dutch manuscripts - suggests that it was intended for a prominent lay person, or for a prospective nun as a present upon entering the convent.

The legend of Beatrijs, sacristan of her convent, tells the story of a nun who, overwhelmed by love, has herself abducted from the convent by a young man whom she had known from childhood. They live happily for seven years and have two children, but when money runs short, the young man deserts her. Beatrijs now has to provide for herself and her children as a ‘ghemeen wijf’, a woman of the streets. For seven years she manages to do so, faithfully praying to the Virgin Mary and reciting the Hours of the Virgin every day. Overcome by remorse she then sets out with her children, begging her way to the region of her former convent. On her arrival she is told that the sacristan is still at the convent, and in three successive visions she is urged to resume her former duties: for all those years the Virgin had been taking her place.

The legend of Beatrijs probably dates to the beginning of the thirteenth century, and has come down to us in many Western European languages. However, comparison with the other versions of the legend reveals the superiority of the Middle Dutch version and the genius of its creator. Due to its well-balanced structure, excellent choice of words, lively dialogue, and vivid descriptions of nature the legend has great literary value. In addition, the human element in the narrative and the considerablepsychological understanding of the poet make it stand out from the other versions. The Middle Dutch version dates probably to the end of the thirteenth century. The manuscript in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the only one in which this legend has come down to us, is a later copy from about 1374.

The illumination is from the 1374 copy, and why I labeled this 14th rather than 13th century.

These excerpts are from her trial which took place in 1431. She was largely unintimidated during the process and often spoke staunchly about her mission...such as in this quote:

"Asked if St. Margaret spoke in the English tongue, she answered: "Why should she speak English when she is not on the English side?"

The bio is from W.P. Barrett at

The Maid's followers believed that she came from God and adored her as a prophet, saint and military idol. The Burgundians and English were stricken with fear at her success and when she was captured condemned her as a witch and apostate. The Roman Catholic Church has canonized her as a saint. Mr. Shaw has hailed her as the first Nationalist and the first Protestant. Other interpretations of her personality are as completely far apart. Every book about her adds to the controversy.

Jeanne d'Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. It was not until some time later, almost certainly not before 1435 that the record of her trial was translated by Thomas de Courcelles, one of her judges, and Guillaume Manchon, trial notary, into Latin from the minutes taken daily during the process of the trial, together with all the forms of letters patent emanating from Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, Jean Le Maistre, Vice Inquisitor of the Faith, the doctors of the University of Paris and other dignitaries.

Here are some excerpts from her trial, the entire account of which is available at:

Asked whether when the first time she came before the king he asked her if it was by revelation that she had changed her dress, she answered: "I have answered this before: nevertheless I do not recall whether I was asked. It is written down at Poitiers."

Asked whether the clerks of her own party who examined her, some for the space of a month and others for three weeks, had not questioned her about the changing of her dress, she answered: "I do not recall. But they asked me where I took to a man's dress, and I told them it was at Vaucouleurs."

Asked if the aforesaid masters inquired whether it was through her voices that she had assumed this dress, she answered: "I do not recall."

Asked if the queen did not inquire, at her first visit, about her taking to a man's dress, she answered: "I do not remember."

Asked if her king or queen or other people of her party did not sometimes ask her to put off her man's dress, she answered: "That is not in your case."

Asked whether she was not asked to at the castle of Beaurevoir, she answered: "Yes, truly. And I answered I would not put it off without God's leave."

She said the Demoiselle of Luxembourg and the Lady of Beaurevoir offered her a woman's dress, or the cloth to make one, and told her to wear it; and she replied she had not God's permission, and it was not yet time.

Asked if Messire Jean de Pressy and others at Arras did not offer her a woman's dress, she answered that he and many others had often asked her to wear it.

Asked whether she believed she would have done wrong or committed a mortal sin by taking a woman's dress, she answered she did better to obey and serve her sovereign Lord, namely God.

Asked whether, when God revealed to her that she should change to a man's dress, it was by the voice of St.Michael, or by the voice of St. Catherine or St. Margaret, she answered:

"You will learn no more for the present."

The only thing that I can say is that this speaks volumes on how important this woman is to our herstory. I was so moved by her writings, especially when placed within the framework of the times....when such ideas and thoughts could and often did result in the Church's condemnation and death.

Christine de Pizan (1364-1429)

"Most modern feminist scholars date the beginning of the modern feminist movement to the works of Christine de Pizan, who was born in Venice around 1364 and died in France around 1429. She moved to Paris at an early age with her family. She wrote in French and is considered the first French woman writer and publisher as well as one of the first feminists. After the early death of her husband, a French nobleman, she supported her children and herself by means of her prolific writing her subjects being love, politics, and the defense of women. She had patronage within the royal circle and she herself closely supervised the artists and scribes who worked on the production and illumination of her manuscripts. She acted as scribe on some of her manuscripts and at one time was also thought to be her own illustrator. Her most famous work is The City of Women. Its illuminations depicting women building their own city employ architecture as a metaphor for writing and self-validation. Her last poem, written in 1429, extols Joan of Arc, who had just achieved victory at Orleans [I searched long and hard for this poem…with no luck at all]. Chistine de Pizan's insistence that women could be artists, scholars, and heroes reflects her faith in art, literature, and religion as much as the birth of feminism."

[Here is a portion of her writings]

Lady Reason addresses Christine's doubts:

"Now it is time for their just cause to be taken from Pharaoh's hands, and for this reason, we three ladies who you see here, moved by pity, have come to you to announce a particular edifice built like a city wall, strongly constructed and well founded, which has been predestined and established by our aid and counsel for you to build, where no one will reside except all ladies of fame and women worthy of praise, for the walls of the city will be closed to those women who lack virtue."

[A city built by and for women, amazing]

15th Century France: Jeanne D'Arc

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

The following is an excerpt from "The Maid of Orleans" by Don O'Reilly .

"In the marketplace within the gray walls of Rouen, Normandy, on May 30, 1431, in the shadows of the cathedral and guild shops, a harsh spectacle held the attention of the populace. A 19-year-old peasant girl was to be burned at the stake. A sign declared her "Jehanne, called la Pucelle, liar, pernicious, seducer of the people, diviner, superstitious, blasphemer of God, presumptuous, misbelieving the faith of Jesus Christ, braggart, idolater, cruel, dissolute, invoker of devils, apostate, schismatic and heretic." To many in the crowd, however, she was the innocent would-be rescuer of France from a century of English invaders. Unwittingly, the English were bestowing upon her a martyrdom that would haunt them for the rest of their numbered days on French soil. However surprisingly successful her gallant but brief career in war had been, Joan would be far more dangerous to England after her death, transforming a century-long clash of avaricious and vacillating feuding lords into a holy war for national liberation.

At the age of 13, this illiterate shepherdess and "excellent seamstress" first heard the voices that would address her throughout her life. Usually they were preceded, she said, by a great light. She claimed they were the voices of Saints Margaret and Catherine, queens of France, and Archangel Michael, commander of the heavenly host. They convinced her to swear to remain a virgin "as long as it shall please God." When Joan was 17, the voices told her to leave Domrémy without her father's knowledge and rescue Orléans. They promised nothing more."

"Outfitted in a suit of white enameled armor specially made for her, and carrying a banner of white and blue with two angels and the single word "Jesus," she proceeded with a gathering army from Chinon to Tours, to Blois and then to Orléans." The following is a portion of the letter she wrote to the King of England, who was laying siege to the town of Orleans:

"King of England, if you do not do these things, I am the commander of the military; and in whatever place I shall find your men in France, I will make them flee the country, whether they wish to or not; and if they will not obey, the Maid will have them all killed. She comes sent by the King of Heaven, body for body, to take you out of France, and the Maid promises and certifies to you that if you do not leave France she and her troops will raise a mighty outcry as has not been heard in France in a thousand years. And believe that the King of Heaven has sent her so much power that you will not be able to harm her or her brave army."

The English disregarded her letter and in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English.

In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais.

"Tried as a heretic and witch in a procedure flagrantly violating the legal process of the era, she was offered women's clothes in prison and then raped. Thereafter, male attire was the only clothing allowed her. Her male attire was then taken as "proof" that she refused a church command that she dress as a woman, and in spite of the weakness of all other evidence against her, she was burned at the stake by the English at Rouen on May 30, 1431. Of the 42 lawyers at her trial, 39 had asked for leniency and an appeal to a higher church court not under the thumb of the English. Of scores of witnesses, who claimed to know her personally, not one maligned her…"

Joan was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. The only saint to be have been first condemned then executed by the Church.

She sure knew how to avoid questions and turn the tables back around on them....

I cannot help but wonder that, if in this day and age, someone would wonder if she was schizophrenic instead of whatever as in those times. I make no judgement of her myself, but cannot help but ask this question. to give her the benefit of doubt.... I suppose it is parallell to Jesus, either he is the son of God or a raving lunitic, there is no middle ground and were not given this option (C.S. Lewis quote paraphrased in my words)

Margery Kempe wrote, "The Book of Margery Kempe". She was one of the Middle Ages' most profound mystics and visionaries. She was a pilgrim and made numerous trips abroad. She made many contacts with notable people throughout Europe. Powerful friends backed her during trials in which she had been accused of heresy, due to her visions and ideologies.

During the Great Fire of Lynn in 1421, the town was threatened with total destruction. Priests said that if Margery was indeed under the care of God, then she could save Lynn. Three days later a blizzard came, putting the fire out. She was no longer persecuted after this miracle.

In 1431 Margery kept up with the news of the trial of Joan of Arc. She no doubt would have come to her aid, but her ailing husband prevented her from doing so. She was saddened at the news of Joan being put to death.

Her husband was John Kempe, the burgess of Lynn. She gave birth to 14 children. As Margery grew older, she had less physical contact with her husband. In fact, John was threatened by Margery with death from supernatural causes if he did not desist in having sex with her.

[Yike! Tho after 14 kids who wouldn't? - kmac]

The following is taken from, "Margery and Her Husband Reach a Settlement":

"Then they went forth to Bridlington-ward in right hot weather, the forsaid creature [Margery] having great sorrow and great dread for her chastity. And as they came by a cross, her husband set him down under the cross, cleping his wife unto him and saying these words unto her, 'Margery, grant me my desire, and I shall grant you your desire. My first desire is that we shall lie still together in one bed as we have done before, the second that ye shall pay my debts ere ye go to Jerusalem, and the third that ye shall eat and drink with me on the Friday as ye were wont to do.' 'Nay sir,' she said, 'to break the Friday I will never grant you while I live.' 'Well,' he said, 'then shall I meddle with you again.'"

Born 1532 in Cremona, Italy, Sofonisba Anguissola received, along with her five sisters (Elena, Lucia, Minerva, Europa and Anna Maria) a complete humanistic education, something very unusual at those times: ancient languages and literature, poetry, music, philosophy, and, even more unusual, painting. In fact, Sofomisba was the first female professional painter, and she became famous all over Europe. King Philip II of Spain invited her to the royal court, where she became court portraitist in the personal service of the queen. Her paintings are influenced by the late nothern italian Renaissance, and most of them are portraits. She introduced a new type of portrait, the conversation, a collective portrait where people are doing something, in "Three of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess". After she left Spain she lived in Genoa, and later in Palermo, where Van Dyck went to visit her and drawed her portrait when she was 80. She died there in 1625. Even more important than her painting was her life: she showed that women could not only paint, but earn their own money from their artistic work.

Self-portrait of Sofonisba Anguisciola

Three of the Artist's Sisters Playing Chess, by Sofonisba Anguisciola

Gallery of other paintings by Sofonisba Anguisciola and further information about her

16th Century: Elizabeth I (1533-1603)

"The Elizabethan age is celebrated for its literary and dramatic culture, its music and chivalry. The pagan goddesses had been driven underground by a thousand years of Christianity. The English Reformation had done its best to suppress the cult of the Virgin Mary. In place of these all-powerful female deities, England now had its Virgin Queen. She was compared by poets to the Moon Goddess, to a Virgin and Fertility Goddess, the bringer of Justice, and the cornerstone of Empire. Painters portrayed her in impossible magnificence and with the symbols of peace, virtue, majesty and truth."

[The following is a portion of one of Elizabeth's poems]

"….Till by the end of things it be supprest.

Some gentler passion slide into my mind,

For I am soft and made of melting snow;

Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.

Let me or float or sink, be high or low.

Or let me live with some more sweet content,

Or die and so forget what love ere meant."

"Eventually religious tension in the kingdom became a major problem. Rumors had been rife that Catholics were going to attempt to assassinate Elizabeth just as they had assassinated the other major Protestant leader in Europe, William of Orange. Protestants in Parliament, after the Babington Plot of 1586 to murder Elizabeth had been discovered, insisted that Mary Queen of Scots be executed immediately after being implicated in the plot. Elizabeth waited 3 months, but finally signed the death warrant." Mary Queen of Scots motto was embroidered on her clothing, "En ma fin git mon commencement": "In my end is my beginning." In life, Mary and Elizabeth never met, but in death, they lie only feet away from each other in perhaps the greatest of English Abbeys. Elizabeth's alleged last words were "All my possessions for a moment of time."

The following bio is take from Frederic Rowton, Esq

From the collection of poems entitled "The Female Poets of Great Britain." It was published in 1850.

Anne was born in the county of Licoln in England. Her talents were great and she received a learned education. Her family followed the Roman Catholic faith, but in her heart she believed only in Protestantism. Against her wishes, at her father's will, she married an RC gentleman but her devotion to the Protestant faith grew after marraige until her husband drove her out of the house and she sought refuge with friends in London.

While she was there she sought help from King Henry VIII in vain. The Bishop of Winchester caused her to be seized and committed to prison on the charge of Heresy. Remember, this was before Henry VIII had decided to change national religions so he could get a divorce....She was thrown into the tower and condemned to be burned at the stake.

Her demeanor throughout the whol proceedings was in the highest degree heroic; and affords striking proof of the religious sentiment in woman. A contemporary writer recorded that when being fastened to the stake she was asked the last time to recant, her reply was "I do not come here to deny my Lord and Master." The faggots were thereupon lighted and she was burnt to ashes. This was in 1546, the 26th year of her age.

After her last examination in Newgate, she composed a poem from which this is an inspiring excerpt.

"I AM NOT SHE THAT LIST

MY ANCHOR TO LET FALL

FOR EVERY DRIZZLING MIST;

MY SHIP SUBSTANIAL"

Interior Castle

"I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond."

St. Teresa of Avila, Spain, spent her life within convent walls. In her work, "Interior Castle", she envisioned the soul as "a castle made of a single diamond...in which there are many mansions". She describes the various rooms of this castle through which the soul in its quest for perfection must pass before reaching the innermost chamber, the place of complete transfiguration and communion with God.

There is no life more real than the interior life, and few have had such an extraordinarily rich experience of that reality as has Teresa. In "Interior Castle" she exhorts and inspires her readers to participate in the search for this ultimate spiritual reality...the source of her own profound joy:

"It is no small pity, and should cause us no little shame, that, through our own fault, we do not understand ourselves, or know who we are. Would it not be a sign of great ignorance, my daughters, if a person were asked who he was, and could not say...from what country he came? Though that is great stupidity, our own is incomparably greater if we make no attempt to discover what we are, and only know that we are living in these bodies, and have a vague idea...that we possess souls...All our interest is centered in the rough setting of the diamond, and in the outer wall of the castle - that is to say, in these bodies of ours."

"...If a thick black cloth be placed over a crystal in the sunshine...it is clear that, although the sun may be shining upon it, its brightness will have no effect upon the crystal."

"Learn to understand yourselves and take pity on yourselves! Surely, if you understand your own natures, it is impossible that you will not strive to remove the pitch which blackens the crystal?"

Looking at this from a non-traditional perspective, as a spiritual allegory, I was so moved by this.

To read more of the seven stages of mansions as described by Teresa in "The House of Mansions" from "Interior Castle", go to:

"And midst of them all is the chiefest mansion, where the most secret things pass between God and the soul."

- St. Teresa of Avila

You are inspiring me to go back and read her, as I initially got bogged down in her teenage hysteria...But the later years are very remarkable.

"Along the path to her conversion, which began in 1555 at the age of 40, St. Teresa had been haunted by hideous visions and illness, and her discussion of these, and fear of false mysticism, informs some of the most moving and remarkable passages in her 'Life'. SHe was an acute and trustworthy analyst of exhaltedstates. Above all, though, her account is helpful for readers developing an interest in Roman Catholicism and mysticism, for sceptics, beginners and for all those learning to pray."

From JM Cohen's translation of "The Life of St Theresa of Avila by Herself"

Penguin books, first translation published in 1957.

At the age of 40? Very very cool. I wanna have a conversion when I'm 40. Or at least an epiphany...

How about Artemisia?

She was born in the 16th century but I think the only thing she was painting then was patterns with her oatmeal. Still, she's very renaissancey.

This bio is taken from:

where you can find links to major works as well.

Artemisia Gentileschi was the most important woman painter of Early Modern Europe by virtue of the excellence of her work,the originality of her treatment of traditional subjects, and the number of her paintings that have survived (though only thirty-four of a much larger corpus remain, many of them only recently attributed to her rather than to her male contemporaries). She was both praised and disdained by contemporary critical opinion, recognized as having genius, yet seen as monstrous because she was a woman exercising a creative talent thought to be exclusively male. Since then, in the words of Mary D. Garrard, she "has suffered a scholarly neglect that is almost unthinkable for an artist of her caliber."

Like many other women artists of her era who were excluded from apprenticeship in the studios of successful artists, Gentileschi was the daughter of a painter. She was born in Rome on July 8, 1593, the daughter of Orazio and Prudentia Monotone Gentileschi. Her mother died when Artemisia was twelve. Her father trained her as an artist and introduced her to the working artists of Rome, including Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, whose chiaroscuro style (contrast of light and shadow) greatly influenced Artemisia Gentileschi's work. Other than artistic training, she had little or no schooling; she did not learn to read and write until she was adult. However, by the time she was seventeen, she had produced one of the works for which she is best known, her stunning interpretation of Susanna and the Elders (1610).

Among those with whom Orazio worked was the Florentine artist Agostino Tassi, whom Artemisia accused of raping her in 1612, when she was nineteen. Her father filed suit against Tassi for injury and damage, and, remarkably, the transcripts of the seven-month-long rape trial have survived. According to Artemisia, Tassi, with the help of family friends, attempted to be alone with her repeatedly, and raped her when he finally succeeded in cornering her in her bedroom. He tried to placate her afterwards by promising to marry her, and gained access to her bedroom (and her person) repeatedly on the strength of that promise, but always avoided following through with the actual marriage.

The trial followed a pattern familiar even today: she was accused of not having been a virgin at the time of the rape and of having many lovers, and she was examined by midwives to determine whether she had been "deflowered" recently or a long time ago. Perhaps more galling for an artist like Gentileschi,Tassi testified that her skills were so pitiful that he had to teach her the rules of erspective, and was doing so the day she claimed he raped her. Tassi denied ever having had sexual relations with Gentileschi and brought many witnesses to testify that she was "an insatiable whore." Their testimony was refuted by Orazio (who brought countersuit for perjury), and Artemisia's accusations against Tassi were corroborated by a former friend of his who recounted Tassi's boasting about his sexual exploits at Artemisia's expense. Tassi had been imprisoned earlier for incest with his sister-in-law and was charged with arranging the murder of his wife. Yet the trial ended with the charges against him being dismissed.

During and soon after the trial, Gentileschi painted Judith Slaying Holofernes (1612-1613) (see another version here). The painting is remarkable not only for its technical proficiency, but for the original way in which Gentileschi portrays Judith, who had long been a popular subject for art. One month after the long trial ended, in November of 1612, Artemisia was married to a Florentine artist, Pietro Antonio di Vincenzo Stiattesi, and they moved to Florence, probably the next year. While there, she had a daughter named either Prudentia or Palmira. In Florence, Gentileschi returned to the subject of Judith, completing Judith and her Maidservant in 1613 or 1614. Again, Gentileschi's treatment of the familiar subject matter is unexpected and original.

Both she and her husband worked at the Academy of Design, and Gentileschi became an official member there in 1616--a remarkable honor for a woman of her day probably made possible by the support of her Florentine patron, the Grand Duke Cosimo II of the powerful Medici family. During her years in Florence, he commissioned quite a few paintings from her, and Gentileschi left Florence to return to Rome upon his death in 1621.

From there she probably moved to Genoa that same year, accompanying her father who was invited there by a Genovese nobleman. While there she painted her first Lucretia (1621) and her first Cleopatra (1621-1622). She also received commissions in nearby Venice during this period and met Anthony Van Dyck, a very successful painter of the era, and also perhaps Sofonisba Anguissola, a generation older than Gentileschi and one of the handful of women who worked as artists. Gentileschi soon returned to Rome and is recorded as living there as head of household with her daughter and two servants. Evidently she and her husband had separated and she eventually lost touch with him altogether. Gentileschi later had another daughter, and both are known to have been painters, though neither their work nor any assessment of it has survived.

During this stay in Rome, a French artist, Pierre Dumonstier le Neveu, made a drawing of her hand holding a paintbrush, calling it a drawing of the hand of "the excellent and wise noble woman of Rome, Artemisia." Her fame is also evident in a commemorative medal bearing her portrait made some time between 1625 and 1630 that calls her pictrix celebris or "celebrated woman painter." Also at this time, Jerome David painted her portrait with the inscription calling her "the famous Roman painter."

Some time between 1626 and 1630 Gentileschi moved to Naples, where she remained until 1638. She is again listed as "head of household." While there, she painted her Self-Portrait as the Allegory of Painting (1630), a work unique in its fusing of art, muse, and artist, The Annunciation (1630), another Lucretia, another Cleopatra, and many other works. She collaborated with a number of (male) artists while in Naples. In 1637, desperate for money to finance her daughter's wedding, Gentileschi began looking for new patrons. In one letter soliciting commissions, she mentions "a youthful work done by [her] daughter" that she is sending along.

The new patron to whom she finally attached herself was King Charles I of England. Gentileschi was in residence at the English court from 1638 to 1641, one of many continental artists invited there by that art-collecting king. She may have gone specifically to assist her father, Orazio, in a massive project to decorate the ceilings of the Queen's house at Greenwich. After civil war had broken out in England in 1641 (a war that would result in the death of Charles I), Artemisia returned to Naples where she lived until her death. She remained very active there, painting at least five variations on Bathsheba and perhaps another Judith. The only record of her death is in two satiric epitaphs--frequently translated and reprinted--that make no mention of her art but figure her in exclusively sexual terms as a nymphomaniac and adulterer.

There has recently been a movie made about Gentileschi called Artemisia, which has been widely criticized for its biographical and historical inaccuracy.

This biography was compiled by Kari Boyd McBride

I was going to write a little about Artemisia Gentileschi too, but seems like I was too late. Anyway, some statements in the above post seem to be not complete. Here is what I found about the rape trial, confirmed by other sources:

The rape was followed by a vicious trial, where Artemisia was questioned and later tortured to make sure she was telling the truth. But in the end Tassi was imprisoned and Artemisia's reputation restored.

Its was unsual (now it's me once again) that the prosecutors had to prove under torture that they were telling the truth: usually the prosecuted had to do so. That's what the quotation means by a vicious trial. Artemisia could have avoided all that including torture by giving up the trial, but she didn't and proved Tassi raped her; her courage is remarkable. About her life, there's another quotation I would like to include:

Artemisia lived an unusually autonomous life for a women of her time. She set up her own atelier and learned to read. In later years she apparently lived as a single mother, travelled all over Italy and was court painter to the king of England.

Also, she died in Naples in 1651. From my personal point of view, and apart from her admirable life, Artemisia Gentileschi was probably the best female painter ever.

The kabuki form dates from the early 17th century, when a female dancer named Izumo no Okuni (who had been an attendant at the Grand Shrine of Izumo), achieved popularity with parodies of Buddhist prayers. She assembled around her a troupe of wandering female performers who danced and acted. Okuni's kabuki was the first dramatic entertainment of any importance that was designed for the tastes of the common people in Japan. The success of Okuni Kabuki led to the flowering of Onna Kabuki (women's Kabuki), which was performed exclusively by women. The sensuous character of the dances proved to be too disruptive for the government ("corrupting public morals"), which in 1629 banned women from performing. Young boys dressed as women then performed the programs, but this type of kabuki was suppressed in 1652, again because of concern for morals. Finally, older men took over the roles, and it is this form of all-male entertainment that has endured to the present day. Kabuki plays grew in sophistication, and the acting became "more subtle." Although women's Kabuki was eventually banned by the authorities, Kabuki as an art form remained. The seven original theaters closed one after another, however, and by 1893, the Minamiza (Okuni's company) was the only one still in operation. It was taken over by the forerunner of today's Shochiku Co. in 1906, and has thrived ever since.

Incidentally, Izumo no Okuni introduced the hanamichi, the "flower path" (hana= flower; michi= path), or runway leading to the stage from the left rear of the theatre, crossing between the audience.

From the Isles of Lesbos, you must take a look at this.

Take a closer look at what Gabrielle d'Estree is doing to the Duchess of de Villars.

My favorite - click on Francois Bouher and see how Jupiter takes the form of the goddess Artemis to seduce Callisto.

Such breathtakingly beautiful work!

I'm going to start us off on the 17th century. Technically Antigone did that earlier today since her entry painted all of her work in the 17th cent, but anyways.... Two of Maria Sibylla Merian's paintings have been turned into U.S. postage stamps, if anyone remembers the flowers with the insects on them.

Maria Sibylla Merian was born in Frankfurt in 1647. She came from a family of artists, scholars and booksellers, and had a keen interest in flowers and butterflies, which she painted on vellum. This work was held in such esteem that two collections of engravings based on her paintings of butterflies were published, in 1679 and 1683. After her divorce from the painter Johann Andreas Graff she moved with her two daughters to the Netherlands in 1685, where she soon became fascinated by the butterflies and beetles imported from the East and West Indies. So great was her interest that she decided, at the age of 52, to make a journey to Surinam to study its flora and fauna in person. She must have been a remarkable woman. She spent less time in Surinam (1699-1701) than originally planned, because the climate did not agree with her, but long enough to be able to make a large number of paintings of plants and insects. They were published in 1705 as Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium. The book consists of sixty large-sized (29.5 x 39.5 cm) engravings, coloured by hand, of butterflies and other insects (but also snakes, frogs, etc.), all painted on the very plants, flowers and fruit on which they can be observed in real life. Each plate has an explanatory description. The text accompanying the plate on the opposite page focuses mostly on the banana: ‘Banana is what they call this fruit in America, and they serve as apples and have a pleasant flavour, like the apples in Holland, they taste good, cooked as well as uncooked; when they are unripe they are light green, the ripe ones are lemon yellow both inside and outside [...].’ About caterpillar, pupa and butterfly she wrote, ‘I found this light-green caterpillar on this tree, with whose leaves I have fed her till 21 April, when she shed her skin, became a little pupa, and changed into the present beautiful butterfly on 10 May.’ French and Latin editions were also published. Maria Sibylla Merian died in 1717.

To see one of her pieces up close...

Maria kept a journal of nature obsevations for 53 years, from age 16 to age 69. Her journal was rediscovered and published in 1976. When she was 13, she wrote, "I collected all the caterpillars I could find in order to study their metamorphosis. I therefore withdrew from society and

devoted myself to these investigations." Understanding animals became the focus of her life, and from 1660 on she collected insects, recording and painting everything she could observe about their life cycles and behavior. Maria was the first person in history to record observations

on insect metamorphosis.

For more information:

Aphara Behn is one of the most prominent female British poets. She was born in 1645, married well and became a favorite at the court of Charles II. She was even sent on a secret mission to the Netherlands. However, she eventually quitted politics and focused entirely on literary pursuits.

Her cheif works are the Oronooko, a novel, micellaneous poems and a number of plays. Here is sample of her work:

"Love in fantastic triumph sat

Whilst bleeding heards around him flow'd

And whom fresh pains he did create

And strange tyrannic power he show'd

From thy bright eyes he took his fires

Which round about in sport he hurl'd

But 'twas from mine he took desires

Enough t' undo the amorous world

From me he took his sighs and tears

From thee his pride and cruelty

From me his languishment and fears

And every killing dart from thee

Thus thou and I the god have arm'd

And set him up a deity;

But my poor heart alone is harm'd

Whilst thine the victor is and free.

Born to Captain David Trotter, she showed early marks of genius, at 14 she wrote excellent verses, and at 17 she produced a tragedy called "Agnes de Castro" Which was acted with great success at the Royal theatre. She went on to write, besides plays and poems, extremely clever and acute treatises such as "Vindication of Locke's Christian Principles"

She died on the 11th of May, 1749 in the 70th year of her age...

"The vain advice:

Ah, gaze not on those eyes! Forbear

That soft enchanting voice to hear;

Not looks of basilisks give surer death,

Nor Syrens sing with more destructive breath.

Fly, if thy freedom thou'dst maintain:

Alas! I feel the advice is vain!

A heart whose safety but in flight does like,

Is too far lost to have the power to fly."

Little is known about this woman, and her chief work is considered the "Tragedy of Miriam, The fair Queen of Jewry, written by that learned, virtuous and truly noble lady"

Here is an excerpt from it.

The fairest action of our human life

Is scorning to revenge an injury;

For who forgives without a further strife,

His adversary’s heart doth to him tie.

And ‘tis a firmer conquest, truly said,

To win the heart, than overthrow the head.

Excerpted from Chorus to the Forth Act of The Tragedy of Mariam (1613) by Lady Elizabeth

Carew. Reprinted in The Female Poets of Great Britain, ed. By Frederic Rowton ESQ. (1848).

London: Longman, Brown Green & Longmans.

Shakespeared did INDEED have Many sisters...but I guess we'll cover that later when we get to V. Woolf, right?

...Duchess of Newcastle, from her "Poems, and Fancies"

-1653.

Margaret was married to William Cavendish, Marquis (and later Duke) of Newcastle, who formed the Newcastle Circle (a discussion group of intellectuals) in Paris in the 1640's. She sat in on discussions with, among others, Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes, and first developed her interest in science which she began to write about in 1652.

Between 1653 - 1671 she published 14 books on atoms, matter and motion, butterflies, fleas, magnifying glasses, distant worlds, and infinity. The half-decade 1646 - 1650 produced the greatest number of women's first editions in any of the century, and subjects broadened from the customarily "feminine" to include political controversy and instructional matter. Cavendish was the only one to speculate publicly on the most relevant scientific issues of the day.

Unlike her contemporaries, Cavendish admits frankly that through her writing she desires "Fame", a most immodest ambition for a 17th century woman.

She was the first woman to be invited to a meeting of the Royal Society, an all male, Baconian institution and forum for experiments and essays, though the invitation was due to her rank as Duchess rather than her many volumes on natural science. Still, 300 years would pass before the Royal Society invited another woman to visit one of their meetings.

Cavendish's atomic poems should be read in the light of 17th century science, when Galileo was imprisoned by the Church in 1633 until he withdrew support of the Copernican heliocentric universe, and when the "New Science" had only just emerged from alchemy, astrology, and magic.

"Of the Sympathy of Atomes"

By sympathy, Atomes are fixed so,

As past some Principles they do not go.

For count the Principles of all their workes,

You'le find, there are not many several sorts.

For when they do dissolve, and new Formes make,

They still to their first Principles to take.

As Animals, Vegetables, Minerals;

So Aire, Fire, Earth, Water falls.

"Motion directs, while Atomes dance"

Atomes will dance, and measures keep just time;

And one by one will hold round circle line,

Run in and out, as we do dance the Hay;

Crossing about, yet keepe just time and way:

While Motion, as Musicke directs the Time:

Thus by consent, they altogether joyne.

This Harmony is Health, makes Life live long;

But when they're out, 'tis death, so dancing's done.

For more Atomic Poems by Margaret (Lucas) Cavendish, go to:

Catalina Erauso was born in San Sebastian, Spain, in 1592. Her parents destined her to be a nun, but she escaped form the convent when she was 15. Dressed as a man, she went to South America, and in Chile she joined the spanish army as a simple soldier. She took part in the war against the native araucans, and her courage made her reach the degree of "alférez" (similar to lieutnant) in the spanish army, all the time pretending to be a man. She was involved in many duellings, and she was injured in one of them. That way her gender was revealed, and she became immediately famous. Popularly named "la monja alférez" (the lieutnant nun, so to say), she returned to Spain, where king Philip IV received her and gave her a pension in pay of her courage in war. Even the pope received her, and she wrote her own biography. But she got finally tired of fame and went in search for more adventures. Performing a man once again, using the name "Antonio de Erauso", she went to Mexico in 1635, where she finally disappeared and no one saw her again. She probably continued her life as a man, changing her name once again, till her unknown end, away from her fame.

Nothing in her biography or in her story mentions her as a lesbian, but there are some hints. Some of her duellings seem fights for women, and she was never involved with men. All about her seems to hide something, in the "don't ask, don't tell" way. Her disappearing could have been caused by a woman, specially since her fame and the public attention it brought made impossible a relation with one.

Okay, since I scratched my cornea on Xmas and am forced to wear an eyepatch... I bring you the ripping good yarn about a couple of pirates! Arrrrr Matey!

We first hear of Anne Bonny, born Anne Cormac, in 1710—as a thirteen-year-old tomboy in the port of Charleston, South Carolina, in the pre-Independence New World. Although the daughter of a wealthy lawyer and plantation owner, her red hair was cut short, her face was dirty, and her habits were rowdy. As one historian notes, Anne "grew up into a strapping, boisterous girl, of a `fierce and courageous temper' which more than once led her into sad scrapes, as when she slew her English servant-maid with a case knife. But apart from such occasional outbursts of temper she was a good and dutiful daughter."

About five years later we again hear of Anne, seen frequenting the taverns of the port, on the arms of various buccaneers, and there are stories that a would-be suitor was hospitalized for a month after she beat him with a chair. She once used her sword to publicly undress her fencing master, button by button.

Her father disinherited her when she eloped with James Bonny: in revenge, she burnt down the plantation, then fled to the British- controlled port of New Providence (on modern Nassau in the Bahamas), a haven for such pirates as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd. Upon her arrival, she quickly established herself by shooting off the ear of an already one-eared drunken sailor who blocked her way when she disembarked. In a short while she discarded her husband and went to live with the pirate Captain Jennings and his mistress Meg. Advised to get some male protection, she became the mistress of Chidley Bayard, the wealthiest man on the island.

But eventually she deserted Bayard for the pirate John "Calico Jack" Rackham, so named because of the loud striped patchwork trousers which he wore. Although they had one child (mysteriously disposed of), it has been suggested that Calico Jack may have come to New Providence as the paramour as well as quartermaster to a Captain Vane.

Another of Anne's menfriends was much more certainly gay—Pierre Bouspeut (sometimes called Pierre Delvin or Peter Bosket, or simply "Pierre the Pansy Pirate")—who ran a coffee shop, hairdressing and dress-making shop, for he was a designer of fine velvet and silk clothing. Anne and Pierre got word that a French Merchantman richly laden with costly materials would be sailing by, and together they organized their first "privateering" raid. With the aid of some of Pierre's friends they stole a boat from the abandoned wrecks in the harbor, and liberally covered the topsail, deck and themselves with turtle blood. In the bow they placed one of Pierre's dress-maker's dummies, dressed in women's clothing and similarly splashed with blood. Anne stood over this nightmare figure with a blood-soaked axe, and they sailed out to the Merchantman. When its crew caught sight of this demonic ship by the light of the full moon, they were so horrified by the impending mayhem that they turned over the cargo of their vessel without a fight.

Less theatrical acts of piracy were of course commonplace in the port, and Captain Woodes Rogers in due course attempted to secure the power and jurisdiction of the British government by offering the King's Pardon to all pirates who would turn themselves in and offer to reform. But Anne refused, knowing that she could not be pardoned for the attempted murder of her father. She and Calico Jack and Pierre broke through a blockade that Rogers had positioned in the harbor: for this incident, Anne was stripped to the waist like an Amazon, and dressed in black velvet trousers designed by Pierre; with one hand resting on the hilt of her sword, and the other waving a long silk scarf at the astonished governor, she sailed past "as daintily as any fine lady being seen off on a long ocean voyage." Soon she established her position aboard this ship by shooting a sailor whose attentions were becoming obnoxious to her. Though officially she was second in command, after Calico, she had thrown him out of the Captain's quarters and resided there alone.

Mary "Mark" Read

But eventually her crew decided to accept the pardon, which was made easier by Rogers' having obtained a special pardon for Anne, and they returned to New Providence peacefully. there it was that Anne met Mary Read—alias "Mark" Read. Mary's mother long ago, in England, had dressed her daughter as a boy and had pretended that she was her dead son Mark, in order to ensure an inheritance from Mary's and mother—such inheritances, like so much else, were reserved for the male. Mary eventually came to prefer her masculine role so much that her mother disinherited her. She was apprenticed as a footboy, then ran away to join the army as a soldier. She married a soldier and together they opened the Three Horseshoes Inn. But after three years her husband died and the public house failed, so she again donned men's clothes and signed on a Dutch Merchantman as Mark Read. This ship was captured by English pirates, whom she was persuaded to join, and thus it was that she eventually found herself finding pardon in New Providence and joining up with Anne.

At about this time—though Anne and Mary were already fast friends—Anne's husband James Bonny reappeared to reclaim his wife, i.e. his property. He kidnapped her and brought her bound and naked before the governor, charged with the felony of deserting her husband. He suggested "divorce by sale," a more "lenient" punishment, hoping to profit by the proceeds of such an auction. But Anne refused to be, as she said, "bought and sold like a hog or cattle"; in fact she expressed herself so vehemently that no buyers dared step forward to claim such a "hellcat." The governor was forced to release her on condition that she return to her rightful master,but James, who only wanted the money, fled in terror from the storm he had raised. Mary had to persuade Anne not to shoot the governor. Instead, together they set out in a sloop in pursuit of James; he escaped after a merry chase, but they burnt his turtle business to the ground.

In due course the pirate crew was re-formed, with Anne and "Mark" constantly together aboard ship. This intimacy aroused the jealousy of Calico Jack, who threatened to slit "Mark's" throat, but bursting into the cabin one day with just this in mind, he discovered Mary stretched out on the bed before Anne, not entirely clothed and visibly a woman. Some (male) historians would have us believe that only minutes before, Anne had ripped off Mary's clothing, and herself had only just discovered "Mark's" true gender. This is highly unlikely. The two women had already been intimate far too long—and shared such a rough lifestyle at that—not to have been fully acquainted with one another's gender. (And even if Mary had pretended to be a boy, surely Pierre would have discovered the truth long ago.) The bowdlerization of this episode and attempts to "explain it away" are typical of how this adventuresome pair is treated; Anne Bonny frequently appears in children's literature—and in boxes of Shredded Wheat—where she is similarly conventionalized and "normalized" by being portrayed as merely a pirate captain's mistress, rather than the leader she actually was.

Despite this supposed discovery of "Mark's" true gender, Anne and Mary (who stopped calling herself "Mark"), remained inseparable, and both alternately donned male and female clothing. In due course they took command of another ship, and Men-of-War were sent out to capture "those infamous women." They abandoned all caution and raided numerous other ships. One of the victims of their piracy happened to be the Royal queen, a vessel owned by Anne's former "lover" Chidley Bayard, and commanded by one Captain Hudson. On this occasion Anne seduced Hudson into bringing her aboard, then drugged his wine instead of sleeping with him, and secretly doused the firing pins of the cannons with water. She left the next morning, then returned with her pirates. The Royal Queen's gunmen were unable to open fire and they were easily captured. Only Captain Hudson was killed in this otherwise bloodless battle—but a jealous Mary.

Eventually Anne and Mary were captured by a Captain barnet. In the heat of this final battle their crew deserted them, staying below deck and refusing to fight. So Mary shot two of their own men, and wounded Calico. But it book an hour for Barnet's entire crew to subdue the two women. They and their pirate crew were taken to trial in St Jaga de la Vega, Jamaica, convicted of piracy on November 28, 1720, and sentenced to be hanged. Anne and Mary promptly "pleaded their bellies" and were pardoned. This was a common plea amongst women sentenced to death, the point being that no court would hang an innocent albeit unborn life though neither of them in fact bore a child, and almost certainly neither was pregnant.

Anne visited Calico before he was hanged, and said "I am sorry to see you in this predicament, but had you fought like a man you would not now have to die like a dog." Mary herself died of a fever contracted in prison, and Anne just disappeared. One unlikely story is that she got married and returned to Charleston—where she would still have been wanted for arson, attempted parricide, and conspiracy against the King's authority. An even more unlikely story is that she went into a nunnery.

The episode of Calico Jack discovering them in the cabin together, with at least one of them in bed unclothed, has been worried over so much by (heterosexual)historians that there must have been something in it! Above all, it is odd that the only two women pirates that history records should have ended up together, and we cannot lightly dismiss their obvious love for one another. They are essentially a couple and it is impossible to totally ignore the lesbian ambience of their relationship.

Some thoughts on Marriage from the 18th Century:

The First is taken from the book I found in England called "The Ladies Library" Published in 1714 with information on how to conduct yourself as a wife, a daughter, a widow and the Mistress of the House.

"When it said in the scripture, The woman's Desire shall be to her husband; it signifies to be subject to his Will. She shall not be mistress of her self, nor have any desire Satisfy'd, but what is approved of her husband.....Dispute begets dispute, and Opposition Opposition; but silence and submission vanquish without fighting and resistance. There is unaccoutable force in Meekness, Patience and Forbearance. They cut off all Reply, remove all matter of Contention and leave men to consider with themselves the Injuries they have done. They excite in them a sense of shame and Gratitude and Honor, and furnish them with all the arguments that can be thought upon and urge them in favor of the Innocent. There is nothing, in a word, so likely to prevail upon a false husband, as and meek and quiet spirit, a patient and discreet submission, under those heavy injuries' and if it is so likely to succeed in this great Matter, it will certainly be of vast use in all the less concerns of Life.

You can see how Lady Chudleigh got the idea for THIS poem! 1703

To the Ladies, (1703), by Lady Mary Chudleigh.

"Wife and servant are the same,

But only differ in the name

For when that fatal knot is tied,

Which nothing, nothing can divide,

When she the word OBEY has said,

And man by law supreme has made

Then all that’s kind is laid aside

And nothing left but state and pride.

Fierce as an eastern prince he grows,

And all his innate rigor shows:

Then but to look, to laugh, to speak,

Will the nuptial contract break.

Like mutes she signs alone must make,

And never any freedom take,

But still be governed by a nod,

And fear her husband as her God:

Him still must serve, him still obey,

And nothing act, and nothing say,

But what her haughty Lord thinks fit,

Who with the power, has all the wit.

Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state,

And all the fawning flatterers hate.

Value youselves, and men despise.

You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.

Now that's why alot of these women were nuns, doncha think?

"Wu Tsao was born sometime around 1800; her year of birth and death are uncertain. She was the daughter of a merchant and married a merchant herself. Her experiences with these men were not positive and she sought out the company of women, as friends and as lovers. She wrote erotic poems to courtesans, creating unashamed lyric passages full of the sweetness of yearning.

She was China's great lesbian poet, and she was popular while she lived, her songs sung throughout China. Her poetry dealt with a variety of topics, unlike other women poets of her time. This versatility, combined with casual style and personal tone, probably contributed to her popularity.

Later in life, Wu Tsao moved to seclusion and became a Taoist priestess.

In regards to Wu Tsao, Kenneth Rexroth writes "She is one of the great Lesbian poets of all time, perhaps not as great as Sappho, but certainly greater than any modern ones." According to Rexroth, Wu Tsao is usually regarded as the third woman poet of China, after Li Ch'ing-chao and Chu Shu-chên, and with Ne-lan Hsin-tê as one of the two leading tz'u poets of the Ching (Manchu) Dynasty.

For the Courtesan Ch'ing Lin

On your slender body Your jade and coral girdle ornaments chime Like those of a celestial companion Come from the Green Jade City of Heaven. One smile from you when we meet, And I become speechless and forget every word. For too long you have gathered flowers, And leaned against the bamboos, Your green sleeves growing cold, In your deserted valley: I can visualize you all alone, A girl harboring her cryptic thoughts.

You glow like a perfumed lamp In the gathering shadows. We play wine games And recite each other's poems.Then you sing `Remembering South of the River' With its heart breaking verses. Then We paint each other's beautiful eyebrows.I want to possess you completely –Your jade body And your promised heart. It is Spring. Vast mists cover the Five Lakes. My dear, let me buy a red painted boat And carry you away.

Elizabeth Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830 in the quiet community of Amherst, Massachusetts. Being rooted in the puritanical Massachusetts of the 1800’s, the Dickinson children were raised in the Christian tradition, and they were expected to take up their father’s religious beliefs and values without argument. Later in life, Emily would come to challenge these conventional religious viewpoints of her father and the church, and the challenges she met with would later contribute to the strength of her poetry. Emily did not fit in with her father’s religion in Amherst, and her father began to censor the books she read because of their potential to draw her away from the faith.

Being the daughter of a prominent politician, Emily had the benefit of a good education and attended the Amherst Academy. After her time at the academy, Emily left for the South Hadley Female Seminary (currently Mount Holyoke College) where she started to blossom into a delicate young woman—"her eyes lovely auburn, soft and warm, her hair lay in rings of the same color all over her head with her delicate teeth and skin." She had a demure manner that was almost fun with her close friends, but Emily could be shy, silent, or even depreciating in the presence of strangers. Although she was successful at college, Emily returned after only one year at the seminary in 1848 to Amherst where she began her life of seclusion.

Although Emily never married, she had several significant relationships with a select few. It was during this period following her return from school that Emily began to dress all in white and choose those precious few that would be her own private society. Refusing to see almost everyone that came to visit, Emily seldom left her father’s house. In Emily’s entire life, she took one trip to Philadelphia (due to eye problems), Washington, and a few trips to Boston. Other than those occasional ventures, Emily had no extended exposure to the world outside her home town. During this time, her early twenties, Emily began to write poetry seriously. Only 6 or 7 of her poems were published during her lifetime, and those against her wishes.

The evidence that is available seems to show that the person who most affected her life and her work was Susan Gilbert--friend, eventual sister-in-law, and Emily's passionate love. This is the woman about which Emily wrote hundreds of poems, and the person who received three times more poems of any of Emily's other friends.

Susan and Emily probably met at Amherst. They were close friends from the beginning, sharing similar interests and desires. Emily trusted Susan completely, and was very affectionate toward Susan in all their correspondence. While Susan seems to have responded initially, Emily's attention turned cloying when Susan became engaged to Austin Dickinson, Emily's brother. For two years, their correspondence stopped completely. When Susan and Austin moved next door, their correspondence resumed again, and Emily continued her expressions of worshipful love.

Feminist scholars who have examined Emily's letters from a lesbian viewpoint note that her letters move beyond romantic friendship to the blatantly passionate. It isn't possible to know how Susan responded to Emily's proclamations of love, her desires to hold and kiss Susan, or her sorrow at being without Susan. When Emily died, all of Susan's letters were destroyed. Reading Emily's letters reveal a woman intensely dependent upon Susan's love, as this letter shows:

It's a sorrowful morning Susie--the wind blows and it rains; "into each life some rain must fall," and I hardly know which falls fastest, the rain without, or within--Oh Susie, I would nestle close to your warm heart, and never hear the wind blow, or the storm beat, again. Is there any room there for me, darling, and will you "love me more if ever you come home"?--it is enough, dear Susie, I know I shall be satisfied. But what can I do towards you?--dearer you cannot be, for I love you so already, that it almost breaks my heart--perhaps I can love you anew, every day of my life, every morning and evening--Oh if you will let me, how happy I shall be!

The precious billet, Susie, I am wearing the paper out, reading it over and o'er, but the dear thoughts can’t wear out if they try, Thanks to Our Father, Susie! Vinnie and I talked of you all last evening long, and went to sleep mourning for you, and pretty soon I waked up saying "Precious treasure, thou art mine," and there you were all right, my Susie, and I hardly dared to sleep lest someone steal you away. Never mind the letter, Susie; you have so much to do; just write me every week one line, and let it be, "Emily, I love you," and I will be satisfied!

Your own Emily

After Emily died in 1886, her sister persuaded Mabel L. Todd to edit Emily's poems, and some feminist scholars believe that female pronouns to some of her poems were edited out at this time. Mabel happened to be Austin's mistress, and, as Susan's direct rival, she had every reason to play down Susan's involvement in Emily's work. Mabel Todd published a small portion of the poems in 1890, and her daughter and Emily's niece followed with more poems later on. But because of a feud in the family, the entire collection was not published until 1955.

Wild Nights – Wild Nights!

Were I with thee

Wild Nights should be

Our luxury!

Futile – the Winds —

To a Heart in port —

Done with the Compass —

Done with the Chart!

Rowing in Eden —

Ah, the Sea!

Might I but moor – Tonight —

In Thee!

Her breast is fit for pearls,

But I was not a `Diver' -

Her brow is fit for thrones

But I have not a crest.

Her heart is fit for home -

I - a Sparrow - build there

Sweet twigs and twine

My perennial nest.

Her sweet weight on my Heart a Night

Had scarcely deigned to lie -

When, stirring, for Beliefs delight,

My bride had slipped away -

If `twas a Dream - made solid - just

The Heaven to confirm -

Or if Myself were dreamed of Her -

The power to presume - With Him remain - who unto Me -

Gave - even as to All -

A Fiction superseding Faith -

By so much - as `twas real -

And my personal favorite....

After great pain, a formal feeling comes--

The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-

The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The feet, mechanical, go round--

Of ground, or Air, or Ought--

A Wooden way

Regardless grown,

A Quartz contentment, like a stone--

This is the Hour of Lead--

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing Persons recollect the Snow--

First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go--

(ca. 1862)

For more on this remarkable woman, go to

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee---

And revery.

The revery alone will do

If bees are few.

"There is No Frigate Like a Book"

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any courser like a page

Of prancing poetry.

This traverse may the poorest take

With oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

Louisa May Alcott, born on November 29, 1832, is best known for her children's books such as "Little Women", "Little Men", "Eight Cousins", "Rose In Bloom", or "Jack and Jill". She did, however, also publish two books written for adults: "Moods" was the first, published before the internationally popular "Little Women", and the second, published in 1872 after her most famous work, is titled "Work".

In "Work", the story of a woman's search for a meaningful life, Alcott moves outside the family setting of her best known works. It is both an exploration of Alcott's personal conflicts as an independant woman seeking to support herself, and a social critique, examining women's independence, the moral significance of labor, and the goals to which a woman can aspire. Influenced by Transcendentalism and by the women's rights movement, it affirms the possibility of a feminized utopian society.

The final chapter of "Work" it titled, "At Forty", in which the central character Christy attends a women-worker's meeting and discovers that her life of hard work has prepared her to make a difference in her world, as a motivator. Alcott uses her wonderful wry wit to make her points -

"...she had gone to one of the many meetings of working-women, which had made some stir of late...There were speeches of course, and of the most unparliamentary sort...Any one who chose got up and spoke; and whether wisely or foolishly each proved how great was the ferment now going on."

"One accomplished creature with learning radiating from every pore, delivered a charming little essay on the strong-minded women of antiquity; then, taking labor into the region of art, painted delightful pictures of the time when all would work harmoniously together in an Ideal Republic, where each did the task she liked, and was paid for it in liberty, equality, and fraternity."

"Unfortunately she talked over the heads of her audience...and the Ideal Republic met with little favor from anxious seamstresses, type-setters, and shop-girls..."

"Another eloquent sister gave them a political oration which fired the revolutionary blood in their veins, and made them eager to rush to the State-house en masse..."

"A third well-wisher quenched their ardor like a wet blanket, by reading reports of sundry labor reforms in foreign parts...She closed with a cheerful budget of statistics, giving the exact number of needle-women who had starved, gone mad, or committed suicide during the past year; the enourmous profits wrung by capitalists from the blood and muscles of their employees; and the alarming increase in the cost of living, which was about to plunge the nation into debt and famine, if not destruction generally..."

"As the statistical extinguisher retired, beaming with satisfaction at having added her mite to the good cause, a sudden and uncontrollable impulse moved Christie to rise in her place and ask leave to speak...When the president invited her to the platform she paused on the lowest step, saying...'I am better here, thank you; for I have been and mean to be a working-woman all my life'...She had known so many of the same trials...that she could speak understandingly of them...The women felt that this speaker was one of them; for the same lines were on her face that they saw on their own...[She was] full of practical suggestion, illustrations out of their own experience, and a spirit of companionship that uplifted their despondent hearts..."

Afterward, Christie considers taking a leadership role in the women's cause, after being approached with the request that she do so -

"Others have finished the emancipation work and done it splendidly, even at the cost of all this blood and sorrow [referring to the Civil War]...This new task seems to offer me the chance of being among the pioneers, to do the hard work, share the persecution, and help lay the foundation of a new emancipation whose happy success I may never see..."

"I accept the task, and will do my share faithfully with words or work, as shall seem best. We all need much preparation for the good time that is coming to us, and can get it best by trying to know and help, love and educate one another - as we do here."

Louisa May was a prolific writer, publishing many other children's works and magazine entries throughout her life. It wasn't until the 1970's that the magazine thrillers that she wrote under a male pseudonym (like her character "Joe" in "Little Women") were discovered and published in two works entitled:

"Behind a Mask: The Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott"

And, "Plots and Counterplots: More Unknown Thrillers of Louisa May Alcott"

And these, with their evidence of Louisa May's "wild side", would easily make yet another lengthy entry for the Millenial Countdown!

Susan B Anthony & Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who began their fight for women's rights at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, and died after fifty years of labor without ever receiving the vote. If you haven't read anything about or by these women, you are in for a treat. This is one of the great friendships in history. When Elizabeth died in the 1900's the newspaper headlines referred to Susan as the one left behind. It was Susan's photo (and not her husband's) that was placed in her coffin at the burial...

Editorial Note: On 19 June 1873, a day after Justice Ward Hunt found Susan B. Anthony guilty of the federal crime of voting without the right to vote, the judge denied her lawyer's motion for a new trial. Then before pronouncing sentence, Hunt asked Anthony a routine legal question. Her reply has become one of the best-known texts in the history of woman suffrage. [19 June 1873]

The court made the usual inquiry of Miss Anthony if she had anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced. Miss Anthony answered she had a great many things to say, and declared that in her trial every principle of justice had been violated; that every right had been denied; that she had had no trial by her peers; that the court and jurors were her political superiors and not her peers, and announced her determination to continue her labors until equality was obtained and was proceeding to discuss the questions involved in the case when she was interrupted by the court with the remark that these questions could not be reviewed. Miss Anthony replied she wished it fully understood that she asked no clemency from the court, that she desired and demanded the full rigor of the law. Judge Hunt then said: "The judgment of the court is that you pay a fine of one hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution," and immediately added, "there is no order that you stand committed until the fine is paid."

Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, 20 June 1873.

The crowning speech of Elizabeth's prolific life is usually considered to be "The Solitude of the Self" which she presented towards the end of her life. It is both feminist and existential, and I defy anyone to read the final passages without feeling as if a great bell has been struck inside them. This is a beautiful glimpse into a beautiful mind. The basic point is that even though men might want to control women, provide for women, take care of women, all the really important decisions we face in life we face alone. We are ultimately, each one, alone. And since that's the case, we may as well arm our daughters with the best education, the most confidence, and the broadest experience possible.

"The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right to choose his own surroundings. The strongest reason for giving woman all the opportunities for higher education, for the full development of her faculties, forces of mind and body; for giving her the most enlarged freedom of thought and action; a complete emancipation from all forms of bondage, of custom, dependence, superstition; from all the crippling influences of fear, is the solitude and personal responsibility of her own individual life. The strongest reason why we ask for woman a voice in the government under which she lives; in the religion she is asked to believe; equality in social life, where she is the chief factor; a place in the trades and professions, where she may earn her bread, is because of her birthright to self-sovereignty; because, as an individual, she must rely on herself.

No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation. To guide our own craft, we must be captain, pilot, engineer; with chart and compass to stand at the wheel; to match the wind and waves and know when to take in the sail, and to read the signs in the firmament over all. It matters not whether the solitary voyager is man or woman.

Shakespeare’s play of Titus and Andronicus contains a terrible satire on woman’s position in the nineteenth century-"Rude men" (the play tells us) "seized the king’s daughter, cut out her tongue, out off her hands, and then bade her go call for water and wash her hands." What a picture of woman’s position. Robbed of her natural rights, handicapped by law and custom at every turn, yet compelled to fight her own battles, and in the emergencies of life to fall back on herself for protection.

The girl of sixteen, thrown on the world to support herself, to make her own place in society, to resist the temptations that surround her and maintain a spotless integrity, must do all this by native force or superior education. She does not acquire this power by being trained to trust others and distrust herself. If she wearies of the struggle, finding it hard work to swim upstream, and allow herself to drift with the current, she will find plenty of company, but not one to share her misery in the hour of her deepest humiliation. If she tried to retrieve her position, to conceal the past, her life is hedged about with fears lest willing hands should tear the veil from what she fain would hide. Young and friendless, she knows the bitter solitude of self. How the little courtesies of life on the surface of society, deemed so important from man towards woman, fade into utter insignificance in view of the deeper tragedies in which she must play her part alone, where no human aid is possible.

In age, when the pleasures of youth are passed, children grown up, married and gone, the hurry and hustle of life in measure over, when the hands are weary of active service, when the old armchair and the fireside are the chosen resorts, then men and women alike must fall back on their own resources. If they cannot find companionship in books, if they have no interest in the vital questions of the hour, no interest in watching the consummation of reforms, with which they might have been identified, they soon pass into their dotage. The more fully the faculties of the mind are developed and kept in use, the longer the period of vigor and active interest in all around us continues. If from a lifelong participation in public affairs a woman feels responsible for the laws regulating our system of education, the discipline of our jails and prisons, the sanitary conditions of our private homes, public buildings, and thoroughfares, and interest in commerce, finance, our foreign relations, in any or all of these questions, her solitude will at least be respectable, and she will not be driven to gossip or scandal for entertainment.

Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one’s self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, every where conceded; a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment, by inheritance, wealth, family, and position. Seeing, then that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity. The talk of sheltering woman from the fierce sterns of life is the sheerest mockery, for they beat on her from every point of the compass, just as they do on man, and with more fatal results, for he has been trained to protect himself, to resist, to conquer. Such are the facts in human experience, the responsibilities of individual. Rich and poor, intelligent and ignorant, wise and foolish, virtuous and vicious, man and woman, it is ever the same, each soul must depend wholly on itself.

Whatever the theories may be of woman’s dependence on man, in the supreme moments of her life he can not bear her burdens. Alone she goes to the gates of death to give life every man that is born into the world. No one can share her fears, no one mitigate her pangs.

And so it ever must be in the conflicting scenes of life, on the long weary march, each one walks alone. We may have many friends, love, kindness, sympathy and charity to smooth our pathway in everyday life, but in the tragedies and triumphs of human experience each moral stands alone.

There is a solitude, which each and every one of us has always carried with him, more inaccessible than the ice-cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea; the solitude of self. Our inner being, which we call ourself, no eye nor touch of man or angel has ever pierced. It is more hidden than the caves of the gnome; the sacred adytum of the oracle; the hidden chamber of eleusinian mystery, for to it only omniscience is permitted to enter. Such is individual life.

Who, I ask you, can take, dare take, on himself the rights, the duties, the responsibilities of another human soul?

Well if you want to know more....check out these sites which are from the fabulous PBS documentary this season...

In honor of our beloved computerized message board, I present...

Ada Byron: mathematician, scientist, visionist.

Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace, was one of the most picturesque characters in computer history. August Ada Byron was born December 10, 1815 the daughter of the illustrious poet, Lord Byron. Five weeks after Ada was born Lady Byron asked for a separation from Lord Byron, and was awarded sole custody of Ada who she brought up to be a mathematician and scientist. Lady Byron was terrified that Ada might end up being a poet like her father. Despite Lady Byron's programming Ada did not sublimate her poetical inclinations. She hoped to be "an analyst and a metaphysician". In her 30's she wrote her mother, if you can't give me poetry, can't you give me "poetical science?" Her understanding of mathematics was laced with imagination, and described in metaphors.

At the age of 17 Ada was introduced to Mary Somerville, a remarkable woman who translated LaPlace's works into English, and whose texts were used at Cambridge. Though Mrs. Somerville encouraged Ada in her mathematical studies, she also attempted to put mathematics and technology into an appropriate human context. It was at a dinner party at Mrs. Somerville's that Ada heard in November, 1834, Babbage's ideas for a new calculating engine, the Analytical Engine. He conjectured: what if a calculating engine could not only foresee but could act on that foresight. Ada was touched by the "universality of his ideas". Hardly anyone else was.

Babbage worked on plans for this new engine and reported on the developments at a seminar in Turin, Italy in the autumn of 1841. An Italian, Menabrea, wrote a summary of what Babbage described and published an article in French about the development. Ada, in 1843, married to the Earl of Lovelace and the mother of three children under the age of eight, translated Menabrea's article. When she showed Babbage her translation he suggested that she add her own notes, which turned out to be three times the length of the original article. Letters between Babbage and Ada flew back and forth filled with fact and fantasy. In her article, published in 1843, Lady Lovelace's prescient comments included her predictions that such a machine might be used to compose complex music, to produce graphics, and would be used for both practical and scientific use. She was correct.

When inspired Ada could be very focused and a mathematical taskmaster. Ada suggested to Babbage writing a plan for how the engine might calculate Bernoulli numbers. This plan, is now regarded as the first "computer program." A software language developed by the U.S. Department of Defense was named "Ada" in her honor in 1979.

After she wrote the description of Babbage's Analytical Engine her life was plagued with illnesses, and her social life, in addition to Charles Babbage, included Sir David Brewster (the originator of the kaleidoscope), Charles Wheatstone, Charles Dickens and Michael Faraday. Her interests ranged from music to horses to calculating machines. She has been used as a character in Gibson and Sterling's the Difference Engine, shown writing letters to Babbage in the series " The Machine that Changed the World" and I have gathered her letters and writings in "Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron's Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer Though her life was short (like her father, she died at 36), Ada anticipated by more than a century most of what we think is brand-new computing.

For more information on Ada Byron, refer to Ada, The Enchantress of Numbers, written by Betty Alexandra Toole Ed.D. and published by Strawberry Press. Ada can be purchased through Science News Books on the East Coast at 1-800-468-544-4565, on the West Coast at Opamp 1-800-468-4322 or from Critical Connection P.O. Box 452 Sausalito,CA94966. There a few copies left at Borders. For more information about the book or poster email adatoole@well.sf.ca.us or fax 415-388-2328.

This touches me as one who lives in an area historically known for it's underground railroad system.

Harriet Tubman was born a slave in Dorchester County, Maryland and is known for having been the greatest conductor of the Underground Railroad. In 1848 she successfully escaped despite the threat from her husband to report her to their master. A compassionate and extraordinarily brave woman, Tubman returned to the South some 20 times over the next ten years and helped more than 300 slaves escape to their freedom. She caused such a stir that a bounty of $40,000 was placed on her head. As a participant during the Civil War, Tubman served the Union forces as a nurse, soldier, spy and scout (because of her successful routes with the Underground Railroad). Among her many honors, was a medal from Queen Victoria of England. Some 30 years after the Civil War, Tubman received a pension of $20/month for the rest of her life. She used the money to fund a place for the aged and needy. The house was later named in her honor, The Harriet Tubman Home. On this day in 1913, the brave little lady called "Moses" of her people, died.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was raised in a Puritan tradition of high moral standard and proselytization. Her father Lyman Beecher was a Congregational Minister and brother Henry Ward Beecher became pastor of Brooklyn's Plymouth Church. The Beechers moved to Cincinatti when Lyman Beecher was appointed President of Lane Theological seminary. There, Harriet's sister Catharine founded Western Female Institute, where Harriet taught until her 1834 marriage to widower Calvin Stowe, a Biblical Literature professor at Lane. During the first seven years of marriage she bore five children, writing pieces for magazines to compliment Professor Stowe's meager salary. She won a short story prize from Western Monthly Magazine, and her literary production and skill increased steadily. In 1834, her short-story collection The Mayflower was published.

This Ohio period gave Stowe the impetus to write Uncle Tom's Cabin. Cincinatti was just across the river from the slave trade, and she observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot. The family shared her abolitionist sentiment and was active in hiding runaway slaves.

In 1850 Calvin Stowe was appointed at Bowdoin, and the entire family returned to the Northeast. They reached Boston at the height of the public furor over the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, which mandated the return of runaway slaves already in the North to their owners. Many former slaves fled to Canada from their homes in New England. Harriet set about writing a polemical novel illustrating the moral responsibility of the entire nation for the cruel system. She forwarded the first episodes to Dr. Bailey, editor of the Washington anti-slavery weekly, The National Era. He agreed to pay $300 for the work, then published it in 40 installments. The suspenseful episodes were read weekly to families and gatherings throughout the land. Despite The National Era's small circulation, limited to an audience already sympathetic to abolitionism, the installments reached a large audience as worn copies were passed from family to family. Although many Northerners considered slavery a political institution for which they had no personal responsibility, Uncle Tom's Cabin was becoming a national sensation.

The episodes attracted the attention of Boston publisher, J. P. Jewett, who published the work in March of 1852. Uncle Tom's Cabin immediately broke all sales records of the day: selling half-a-million copies by 1857. Harriet Beecher Stowe received royalties only on the American editions; unauthorized dramatic productions boomed, as did a profusion of artifacts, "Tomitudes," based on the story. Pirated European editions also had astronomical sales. As the book drew attention to the abolitionist cause, southern critics began to attack Stowe's credibility. However, they could do little to thwart the book's success and appeal to the nation. Putnam's Magazine called Uncle Tom's Cabin, "the first real success in bookmaking." Stowe went on to many other literary projects, producing about a book a year from 1862 to 1884, but she is still most remembered as the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

The success of Uncle Tom's Cabin stemmed largely from its status as an icon of the abolitionist movement. After all, the story presented facts which were known to most, and its style was overwrought and moralistic, even by contemporary standards. While Stowe claimed the book was written by God, it was her personal conviction and moral fervor, and her simultaneously domestic and realist style, that ensured the work's popular appeal. The issue of slavery had divided sentiments well before 1852, but it took a sentimental, human novel to catapult it to the national spotlight. Upon meeting Stowe at a White House reception, Abraham Lincoln is said to have exclaimed, "So this is the little lady who started this big war!"

From Mary Arnold’s web page:.

For the first twenty-eight years of her life, Sojourner Truth was a slave. Given the name Isabella at birth sometime in 1797, she was the second youngest of twelve siblings. Since the punishment for disobedient slaves was usually harsh, Belle’s first lesson from her parents, James and Betsy, was that of obedience. They instilled the importance of hard work, honesty and loyalty in their daughter. At the age of three, Belle’s master, Colonel Hardenbergh, died; and she, along with her parents, became the legal property of his son, Charles. They moved into the cellar of Charles’ new home with numerous other slaves. The experience of twelve slaves sharing a common living space in deplorable conditions is one that Sojourner never forgot. The ventilation was poor and the only light that shone threw the tiny window slits was sparse. In the winter the slaves huddled around a fire in the middle of the cellar to keep warm, and during the summer the hot and smelly room made it difficult to sleep on the board planks they used for beds. Aside from providing poor living conditions, Charles had been a fairly decent slave owner who had not separated families or beat them.

But, unfortunately, after Charles’ death in 1808, Belle and her younger brother were auctioned off. Belle’s new owners, the Neelys, took their frustrations with the Dutch community out on her. She endured many beatings simply because she did not speak English and could not understand or communicate with the Neelys. At the urging of Belle’s father, who was then free because of his old age, Martin Schryver purchased her from the Neelys for $105. Belle stayed with the Schryvers for about a year and a half and was treated with decency by being rewarded for her hard work with decent clothing, food and shelter.

Within two years, Belle was transferred three times. John I. Dumont made the final purchase of Belle after making the Schryvers an offer of $300, which they couldn’t refuse. Belle grew to womanhood and spent her remaining years as a slave on Dumont’s farm, where she often did the work of at least two people. Her duties included acting as a field hand, milkmaid, cleaning woman, weaver, cook, and wet nurse. Dumont often bragged that Belle could do a good family’s washing in the night and be ready to go into the field the next morning, where she would do as much raking and binding as his best hands.

Belle became a very strong woman, both mentally and physically, during her years of bondage. Through her beatings, she learned determination. She suffered great heartbreak with the loss of her parents and was also deeply saddened when she was forbidden to see the man she loved. Belle dealt with her pain privately and, as she was taught in her early childhood, she put away the hurt when it was time to work. Her experiences as a slave helped Belle to become the striking woman with a strange combination of wit, wisdom, wild enthusiasm and flint-like common sense that individuals like Frederick Douglass later described her as.

When Dumont felt that it was time for Belle to be married so that she could produce more slaves for him, he picked a husband for her. Even though Belle was not in love with Tom, the two respected each other and formed a bond. Belle gave birth to Diana one year after they were married and had four more children over the next ten years.

Two years before Dumont was legally obligated to set Belle free, he approached her with a proposition. He promised Belle that if she worked extra hard for him over the following year, he would set her free one year early. Like all slaves, Belle longed for freedom. So, believing in the integrity of her master’s word, Belle put in endless hours of grueling work only to be disappointed when Dumont broke his promise. A furious Belle planned her escape. One October morning, with her infant daughter in her arms, she escaped at dawn and found refuge in the home of a Quaker family down the road. The Van Wagenen family bought out the remainder of her time as a slave and gave her lodging. Living and working with the Van Wagenen family was one of the happiest and most peaceful times in Belle’s life. Not wishing to be known by the name of her previous slave owner, Belle adopted the last name Van Wagenen. She again changed her name many years later when she thought she received a message from God during a time of deep prayer. "She became an instrument of God and began her life as a traveling preacher"

At age forty-six years old when she left New York on June 1, 1843, "Isabella Van Wagenen became Sojourner Truth, a woman whose proclaimed mission was to ‘sojourn’ the land and speak the ‘truth’ of God’s word". Sojourner went on to become one of the most distinguished and highly regarded African-American women in the nineteenth century.

Margaret Washington, an Associate Professor of History at Cornell University, describes Truth:

She was devoted to the antislavery movement and was a fiery advocate of women’s rights. She practiced spiritualism, temperance, hydrotherapy, perfectionism, and Grahamism. She was a mystic and a witty, folksy storyteller whose narrations always contained a compelling message. Towering in both stature and oral eloquence, Sojourner Truth was an omnipresent, quintessential figure among the progressive forces that refashioned nineteenth century America. Many doors were closed to African-American women in her day, but it was difficult to shut out Sojourner Truth. She was bold and insistent. Her teaching, preaching, and speaking methods; her moving renditions of Methodist hymns and songs of her own creation; her intuitive, universal insights; her unfailing commitment to black progress; and her enduring friendships with Erudite American reformers made Sojourner a force in history. She even held audiences with two American presidents in behalf of her people. Scholars, dramatists, schoolchildren, and others in popular circles still recite her speeches, recall her maxims, and praise her contributions.

Truth offered her services to those in need for the first several months of her new life. But it wasn’t until she first spoke out about God’s glory, love, and protection to a large outdoor religious meeting that she felt satisfied. Truth then began traveling from meeting to meeting talking about her life as a slave. Soon word spread that she was a dramatic and inspirational speaker leaving audiences filled with emotion. "The simplicity of her language and the sincerity of her message, combined with the courage of her convictions, made Sojourner a sought-after speaker". Her friends later described her as a "commanding figure with a dignified manner. She hushed every trifle into silence".

As the debate over slavery raged, Sojourner was sometimes harassed. Western states were particularly virulent toward abolitionists. On one occasion, Sojourner was told that the building she was to speak in would be burned if she attempted her address. "Then I will speak to the ashes," she replied. In another instance she was mauled so badly in a mob attack that she walked with a cane for the rest of her life. But Sojourner stayed in the fray, believing that God would protect her and that her message warranted the danger involved in its deliverance.

Wandering from place to place, Sojourner spoke to all those who would listen. She eventually arrived in Northampton, a town located on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts, where she was introduced to the women’s equality movement. When Truth listened and observed the struggle of women, black and white alike, she decided that women’s rights was a cause worth fighting for. However, not every suffragette was pleased when Truth took up the issue of women’s rights. For example, some women tried to keep Truth from speaking out at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio in 1851. They were afraid that their cause would get mixed up with abolition and the newspapers would denounce them. But Frances Gage, organizer of the meeting, called upon Truth to answer a group of ministers who had come to heckle the women. Only those who saw Truth’s powerful form, her whole-souled, earnest gesture, and listened to her strong and truthful tones can appreciate Truth’s "A’n’t I A Woman" speech.

Wall, chilern, whar dar is so much racket dar must be somethin’ out o’ kilter. I tink dat ‘twixt de niggers of de Souf and de womin at de Norf, all talkin’ ‘bout rights, de white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what’s all dis here talkin’ ‘bout?

Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober dithes, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! And A’n’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm? I have ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And A’n’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear de lash as well! And A’n’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen chilern, and seen ‘em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And A’n’t I a woman?

Den day talks ‘bout dis ting in de head; what dis dey call it? ("Intellect," whispered someone near.) Dat’s it, honey. What’s dat got to do wid womin’s rights or nigger’s rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yourn holds a quart, wouldn’t ye be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?

Den dat little man in black dar, he say women can’ have as much rights as men, ‘cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Whar did your Christ come from? Whar did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothin’ to do wid Him.

If de fust woman God ever made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese women togedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now dey is asking to do it, de men better let ‘em. "Bleeged to ye for hearin’ on me, and now ole Sojourner hasn’t got nothin’ more to say.

After Sojourner’s speech, Gage reported that "Sojourner Truth has taken us up in her strong arms and carried us safely over the difficulty, turning the tide in our favor."

Olive Gilbert, an early feminist and a member of the Northampton society, encouraged Truth to write her own story, and even offered to write it as Sojourner dictated it. Leading Massachusetts abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison, immediately saw the advantage of adding Truth’s story to the growing collection of anti-slavery literature and agreed with Gilbert. He felt that Truth’s story was unique because it revealed how slaves in the North had been treated. He offered to print it and even wrote the introduction. Narrative of Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave was published in 1850, the same year that Congress passed a firmer version of the Fugitive Slave Act in the Compromise of 1850 which continued to be a thorn in the side of abolitionists. Truth left Akron loaded with 600 copies of her book and traveled around Ohio and Indiana in a borrowed horse and buggy making speeches against slavery and for women’s rights. After the meetings, people would rush to shake her hand and speak with her. She made enough money selling her books to these people to support herself.

By 1851, there were many people speaking out against slavery and some spoke so passionately they could evoke a riot. But Truth was a pacifist, she had no desire to stir people to violence. For example, at the Anniversary Convention of the Anti-Slavery Society in Salem, Ohio, activist Frederick Douglass expressed his belief that freedom could only be won through war.

"The Negro," he said, must rise from degradation through their own efforts. Strike off the black man’s shackles, said Douglass, "and he will by the power of his native intelligence and his own strong right arm." "Be careful Frederick," cautioned the pacifist Sojourner. "Is God Almighty dead?!" Her words were "perfectly electrical, and thrilled through the whole house, changing as by a flash the whole feeling of the audience." Douglass quickly modified his meaning.

"Sojourner Truth’s national acceptance and popularity outside progressive circles were greatly enhanced in 1863. The year began with the January 1 signing of the Emancipation Proclamation and America’s acceptance that the Civil War was no longer "a white man’s war" over states’ rights".

Harriet Beecher Stowe also published an account of her 1853 meeting with Sojourner, called "The Libyan Sibyl" that same year. Because Uncle Tom’s Cabin had made Stowe one of America’s favorite writers, the article boosted Truth’s reputation.

Stowe seemed genuinely impressed, and perhaps discomfited, by this sinewy African-American woman in Quaker dress. She noted Sojourner’s imperious carriage, extreme height, and large sparkling eyes. "I do not recollect ever to have been conversant with anyone who had more of that silent and subtle power which we call personal presence than this woman," wrote Stowe. She added that the "self-possessed" Sojourner was perfectly "at her ease," displaying "an unconscious superiority" mixed with humor as she looked down upon the renowned author.

Stowe’s article was partly meant as an obituary since there were rumors that Truth was dead. Truth had been hurt badly and arrested in Indiana by pro-slavery forces, but she made it through and was, in fact, very much alive. Truth began to feel a new significance to her life with the national adversity that had led to emancipation. "Sojourner recruited "colored troops" for a Michigan regiment; worked as "counselor to the freed people" in Arlington Heights, Virginia; met with Harriet Tubman, who had been on the front lines with black soldiers in South Carolina; and conversed with Abraham Lincoln,".

It has been said that her greatest achievement of the war years was desegregating the streetcars of Wahington, D.C. The conductor refused to let her ride and Truth took legal action. "It was a victory which cost Sojourner a dislocated shoulder; nevertheless, she was among the first freedom riders,". In October of 1865, Truth described her experience in Washington, D.C. in a dictated letter to her friend Amy Post:

A few weeks ago I was in the company with my friend Josephine S. Griffing, when the conductor of a street car refused to stop his car for me, although closely following Josephine and holding onto the iron rail they dragged me a number of yards before she succeeded in stopping them. She reported the conductor to the president of the City Rail Way who dismissed him at once; and told me to take the number of the car wherever I was mistreated by a conductor or driver, and report to him and they should be dismissed. On the 13th inst. I had occasion to go for blackbury wine, and other necessieares for the patients in the Freedmen’s Hospital in this city where I have been doing and advising, for a number of months under sanction of the Bureau. As they had often refused to stop for me, I thought now I would get a ride without trouble as I was in company with annother friend Laura S. Haviland of Mich.. As I assended the platform of the car, a man just leaving it, called out, "Have you got room for niggers here?" as the conductor then noticed my black face, pushed me, saying "go back - get off here." I told I was not going off, "then I’ll put you off," said he furiously, with clenching my right arm with both hands, using such violence that he seemed about to succeed, when Mrs. Haviland reached us and told him, he was not going to put me off, placing her hands on both of us, "Does she belong to you? if she does, take her in out the way" said he, in a hurried angry tone. She replied "She does not belong to me, but she belongs to Humanity and she would have been out of the way long ago, if you had have let her alone." The number of the car was noted, and conductor dismissed at once upon the report to the President (Mr. Gideon) who advised his arrest for Assault and Battery as my shoulder was sprained by the wrench given by the conductor in his effort to put me off. Accordingly I had him arrested and the case tried before Justice Thomson who refered the case to the Grand Jury of the United States, and placed James C. Weedon, the conductor under bonds for his appearance to court which opens next Wednesday. My shoulder was very lame and swolen, but is better, but I sometimes fear it will trouble me for a long time, if I ever get entirely over it. It is hard for the old slave-holding spirit to die. But die it must."

Following the Civil War, Truth aided freed people that wanted to leave the crowded huts and temporary shelters of Washington, D.C. and Arlington Heights. From 1865 until her death in 1883, Truth doubled her efforts on behalf of African-Americans despite her old age and sicknesses. Disillusioned by black poverty, white racism, and violence, she encouraged the government to make land available to black Southerners. Her advocacy of women suffrage and other postwar campaigns came second to this commitment.

Many African-American leaders, like Frederick Douglass, expressed undogged faith in the failed political process. Others, like Henry Highland Garnet, became expatriates. Sojourner’s "tongue of fire" not only proclaimed black America’s birthright, while challenging the nation to incorporate African-Americans in its vision of economic progress, but also upheld the right of blacks to live with dignity separately.

"She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history."

Well, we've waded to the end of 1000 years of women writers and we're signing off with one of my favorites. If you don't have the patience to read this whole post, at least scroll down for the last paragraph. It's worth it.

Virginia Woolf was born in 1882 in London. After her father's death in 1904, Woolf moved with her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, to the Bloomsbury section of London, where along with their brothers and their close circle of friends they formed the Bloomsbury Group, an avant-garde association devoted to the search for new perspectives on art, literature, and philosophy. In 1905 Woolf began to write for the Times Literary Supplement. She was working on her first novel, The Voyage Out, when she married Leonard Woolf in 1912. Together, they founded the Hogarth Press in 1917 and published their own work and that of T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and Katherine Mansfield as well as translations of Tolstoy and Chekhov.

Along the way she developed the love/friendship/partnership with Vita Sackville-West about whom so much has been written that defies gender and tradition thinking about love. But one of my favorite essays is "A room of one's own" when she addresses what women NEED to be creative, and the difficulties they face in the world.

Exerpts from A Room of One's Own

For it is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet. What were the conditions in which women lived, I asked myself; for fiction, imaginative work that is,is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps,but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible; Shakespeare's plays, for instance, seem to hang there complete by themselves. But when the web is pulled askew, hooked up at the edge, torn in the middle, one remembers that these webs are not spun in midair by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.

I went, therefore, to the shelf where the histories stand and took down one of the latest, Professor Trevelyan's History of England. Once more I looked up "Women", found "position of," and turned to the pages indicated. "Wife-beating," I read, "was a recognized right of man, and was practiced without shame by high as well as low....Similarly," the historian goes on, "the daughter who refused to marry the gentleman of her parents' choice was liable to be locked up, beaten and flung about the room, without any shock being inflicted on public opinion. Marriage was not an affair of personal affection, but of family avarice, particularly in the 'chivalrous' upper classes.... Betrothal often took place while one or both of the parties was in the cradle, and marriage when they were scarcely out of the nurses' charge." That was about 1470, soon after Chaucer's time. The next reference to the position of women is some two hundred years later, in the time of the Stuarts. "It was still the exception for women of the upper and middle class to choose their own husbands, and when the husband had been assigned, he was lord and master, so far at least as law and custom could make him. Yet even so," Professor Trevelyan concludes, "neither Shakespeare's women nor those of authentic seventeenth-century memoirs...seem wanting in personality and character."...Indeed, if woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater. But this is woman in fiction. In fact, as Professor Trevelyan points out, she was locked up, beaten and flung about the room.

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.

History scarcely mentions her...But what I find deplorable, is that nothing is known about women before the eighteenth century. I have no model in my mind to turn about this way and that. Here am I asking why women did not write poetry in the Elizabethan age, and I am not sure how they were educated; whether they were taught to write; whether they had sitting-rooms to themselves; how many women had children before they were twenty-one; what, in short, they did from eight in the morning till eight at night. They had no money evidently; according to Professor Trevelyan they were married whether they liked it or not before they were out of the nursery, at fifteen or sixteen very likely. It would have been extremely odd, even upon this showing, had one of them suddenly written the plays of Shakespeare, I concluded, and I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He wrote to the papers about it. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare.

Be that as it may, I could not help thinking, as I looked at the works of Shakespeare on the shelf, that the bishop was right at least in this; it would have been impossible, completely and entirely, for any woman to have written the plays of Shakespeare in the age of Shakespeare. Let me imagine, since the facts are so hard to come by, what would have happened had Shakespeare had a wonderfully gifted sister, called Judith, let us say. Shakespeare himself went, very probably - his mother was an heiress - to the grammar school, where he may have learnt Latin - Ovid, Virgin and Horace - and the elements of grammar and logic. He was, it is well known, a wild boy who poached rabbits, perhaps shot a deer, and had, rather sooner than he should have done, to marry a woman in the neighborhood, who bore him a child rather quicker than was right. That escapade sent him to seek his fortune in London. He had, it seemed, a taste for the theatre; he began by holding horses at the stage door. Very soon he got work in the theatre, became a successful actor, and lived at the hub of the universe, meeting everybody, knowing everybody, practicing his art on the boards, exercising his wits in the streets, and even getting access to the palace of the queen.

Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother's perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter - indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father's eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighboring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings,let herself down by a rope one summer's night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen.

The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother's, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager - a fat, loose-lipped man - guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting - no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted - you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last - for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows - at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so - who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body? - killed herself one winter's night and lies buried at some crossroads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.

That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare's day had had Shakespeare's genius. But for my part, I agree with the deceased bishop, if such he was - it is unthinkable that any woman in Shakespeare's day should have had Shakespeare's genius. For genius like Shakespeare's is not born among labouring, uneducated, servile people. It was not born in England among the Saxons and the Britons. It is not born today among the working classes. How, then, could it have been born among women whose work began, according to Professor Trevelyan, almost before they were out of the nursery, who were forced to it by their parents and held to it by all the power of law and custom? Yet genius of a sort must have existed among women as it must have existed among the working classes. Now and again an Emily Bronte or a Robert Burns blazes out and proves its presence. But certainly it never got itself on to paper. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. It was a woman Edward Fitzgerald, I think, suggested who made the ballads and the folk-songs, crooning them to her children, beguiling her spinning with them, on the length of the winter's night.

This may be true or it may be false - who can say? - but what is true in it, so it seemed to me, reviewing the story of Shakespeare's sister as I had made it, is that any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century would certainly havegone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at. For it needs little skill in psychology to be sure that a highly gifted girl who had tried to use her gift for poetry would have been so thwarted and hindered by other people, so tortured and pulled asunder by her own contrary instincts, that she must have lost her health and sanity to a certainty. No girl could have walked to London and stood at a stage door and forced her way into the presence of actor-managers without doing herself a violence and suffering an anguish which may have been irrational - for chastity may be a fetish invented by certain societies for unknown reasons - but were none the less inevitable. Chastity has then, it has even now, a religious importance in a woman's life, and has so wrapped itself round with nerves and instincts that to cut it free and bring it to the light of day demands courage

I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young - alas, she never wrote a word. She lies buried where the omnibuses now stop, opposite the Elephant and Castle. Now my belief is that this poet who never wrote a word and was buried at the crossroads still lives. She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so - I am taking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's hogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was hakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. Drawing her life from the lives of the unknown who were her fore-runners, as her brother did before her, she will be born. As for her coming without that preparation, without that effort on our part, without that determination that when she is born again she shall find it possible to live and write her poetry, that we cannot expect, for that would be impossible. But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.

For more on Virgina Woolf or the full text of this speech, go to these sites...

I ran across an announcement for a speaking engagement by the author dated Oct. 2, 1984. (with photo……..very beautiful woman!!!)

20th Century, Lady Antonia Fraser, Biographer and Novelist.

Her non-fiction work "The Weaker Vessel" is a brilliant historical re-creation through first-hand account of the varied roles of women in 17th century England whose lives defied society’s concept of women as morally, spiritually, and intellectually the "weaker vessel". Represented are heiresses, dairymaids, holy women and prostitutes, criminals and educators, widows and witches, courtesans, prophetesses, writers, businesswomen, ladies of the court, midwives, and that new breed, the actress.

She also wrote: Mary, Queen of Scots, Cromwell, King James VI and I, Royal Charles, and Jemima Shore mystery novels "Quiet As A Nun" and "A Splash of Red".

Alice Walker's sequel to her most well-known work, The Color Purple, is called The Temple of My Familiar, and is described by the author as "a romance of the last 500,000 years". Described by Ursula K. LeGuin, another wonderful 20th century writer, as a novel whose characters are "relentlessly raising the great moral questions and pushing one another towards self-knowledge..."

In the following, Lissie, the wise and now old daughter of Celie, is talking about those who die standing against "the torturers", her word for the oppressors of history:

"...what is moving to me is that when people die whole, a wonderful power is released in the world; a wonderful fearlessness before death, which in turn inspires in others a more profound joyousness about life. This is what all torturers learn...[They] who are so broken they will have no choice when their own time comes but to die utterly, leaving not one iota of inspiration, encouragement, or joy...If you tear out the tongue of another, you have a tongue in your hand the rest of your life. You are responsible, therefore, for all that person might have said. It is the torturers who come to understand this, who change. Some do, you know."

Renée Vivien (1877-1909), a great English poetess who lived in France and was also the lover of Natalie Barney, the friend of Colette and so much more that I would share with you but this bloody barrier of language is so annoying...

"Que de souvenirs à la chute du jour

Et moi, dont les pieds errent depuis l'aurore,

Comment ai-je su garder vivant encore

L'amour de l'amour"

Poème intitulé "Soir" in Evocations

I know that I have posted about Peace Pilgrim before, but for those of you who have not heard about her, here is some info and the link to her site. Please go there to check out her enlightening life and beautiful picture (what joy and peace in her face).

"Between 1953 and 1981 Peace Pilgrim walked more then 25,000 miles across the country spreading her message — This is the way of peace: "Overcome evil with good, falsehood with truth, and hatred with love." Carrying in her tunic pockets her only possessions, she vowed, "I shall remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." She talked with people on dusty roads and city streets, to church, college, civic groups, on TV and radio, discussing peace within and without.

Her pilgrimage covered the entire peace picture: peace among nations, groups, individuals, and the very important inner peace — because that is where peace begins.

She believed that world peace would come when enough people attain inner peace. Her life and work showed that one person with inner peace can make a significant contribution to world peace."

By the way, what a great way to finish the Millenium, you know, remembering these great women who inspired us. To the list, I would add Djuna Barnes and Carson McCullers who are, in their respective way, among the greatest writers of the Century according to me.

Anais Nin wrote one of the most comprehensive and revealing diaries by a woman ever. She also authored several books and is well known for her erotica, which she wrote for money and disliked. She is probably best known for "Henry and June" an account of her relationships with Henry Miller and his wife, June Miller. Although adamant that she was not a lesbian and had never acted upon her sexual attraction to June as well as others, she nonetheless brought to light the female sexual awareness that most women never dared speak about.

One of my favorite quotes:

"As I discover myself I feel I am merely one of many, a symbol. I begin to understand women of yesterday and tody. The mute ones of the past, the inarticulate, who took refuge behind wordless intuitions, and the women of today, all action, and copies of men. And I, in between..."

[The next passage, while long, has special meaning for me because of my profession and my exposure to the sex industry. Miss Nin grew frustrated by the man who was paying her to write erotic stories because he insisted that she remove the poetry of her writing and stick to the explicit sex. Here is a letter she wrote to the man in response.]

"Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships which change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of others, which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? Not two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; not tow odors, but if we expand on this, you cry, "Cut out the poetry." Not two skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture: for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variation of maturity and innoncence, perversity and art, natural and graceful animals.

We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running like tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy."

Anais Nin is truly one of the great women writers of our time. She died in 1974 from cancer.

"I have a dandy little beau, he lives down in the town,

And when he asks me to 'be his,' I'll look at him and frown.

Yes, Papa votes, but Mama can't, oh, no, not yet, not yet.

And I'll not marry any man, 'til I my suffrage get.

- From "I Am a Suffragette," early 20th century

***Well, I guess we have come a long way.... :)

In a letter written in 1934, Radclyffe Hall, details the reason she wrote the "The Well of Loneliness.

"The Well of Loneliness" was a tiring book to write; after it was finished I felt pretty well washed out, but then came the storm a month after publication and this left me no time to think about myself, the only thing that mattered was to keep the book alive, to rescue it from those who had set out to kill it."

***We have kept it alive....

And from Virginia Woolfe:

"Thought ... had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until - you know the little tug - the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line ..."

"A Room of One's Own"

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***My last millennium post is not entirely dedicated to great women writers, for there were too many to choose from (thank the gods)...instead it includes two women pilots of the 20th Century - I can only imagine the freedom they must have felt as aviators, no longer bound by gravity.

If reading the following captures your adventurous spirit then you may want read a more recent novel, "Leaving Earth" by Helen Humphreys.

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Amelia Earhart (1897-1937)

Letter to George Putnam the morning of their marriage on February 7, 1931.

Dear GP,

There are some things, which should be writ before we are married. Things we have talked over before, ---most of them. You must know again my reluctance to marry, my feeling that I shatter thereby chances in work, which means so much to me. I feel the move just now as foolish as anything I could do. I know there may be compensations, but have no heart to look ahead.In our life together I shall not hold you to a medieval code of faithfulness to me, nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly. If we can be honest I thing the differences which arise may best be avoided.Please let us not interfere with each other's work or play, nor let the world see private joys or disagreements. In this connections I may have to keep some place where I can go to be myself now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.I must exact a cruel promise, and this is that you will let me go in a year if we find no happiness together. I will try to do my best in every way. A.E.

And a poem:

COURAGE

Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace,

The soul that knows it not, knows no release

From little things;

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear,

Nor mountain heights where bitter joy can hear

The sound of wings.

How can Life grant us boon of living, compensate

For grey ugliness and pregnant hate

Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay

With courage to behold the restless day,

And count it fair.

---Amelia Earhart

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Beryl Markham was born in England in 1902 and was taken by her father to East Africa in 1906. From 1931 to 1936 she carried mail, passengers, and supplies in her small plane to the remote corners of the Sudan, Tanganyika, Kenya, and Rhodesia. In September 1936 she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west---taking off in England and crash-landing in Nova Scotia twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes later. She died August 3, 1986, at her home in Nairobi, Kenya. The following is the an excerpt from her book, "West with the Night."

"How is it possible to bring order out of memory? I should like to begin at the beginning, patiently, like a weaver at his loom. I should like to say, "this is the place to start; there can be no other." But there are a hundred places to start for there are a hundred names---Mwanza, Serengetti, Nungwe, Molo, Nakuru. There are easily a hundred names, and I can begin best by choosing one of them---not because it is first nor of any importance in a wildly adventurous sense, but because here it happens to be, turned uppermost in my logbook. After all, I am no weaver. Weavers create. This is remembrance---re-visitation; and names are keys that open corridors no longer fresh in the mind, but nonetheless familiar to the heart."

As was this journey with all of you that posted, familiar to the heart. I am grateful for the knowledge regarding our lives as women that each of you so thoughtfully shared. To the Mistress of the Millennium , Antigone - masterfully done, I suspect a muse at heart...

My heartfelt thanks to all of you that posted.