“I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.”

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese genius who has kept the art firmament of the world lit up for now over seven decades, lives in a mental asylum in Tokyo since 1977, by choice. And she is still creative and productive. Pain for her is the reason for her survival!

If she is outrageously controversial, she is daringly different; if she is unorthodox and loves to challenge the conventional and the commonplace, she also leaves an indelible imprint of a genius, if she challenges sanity and order, she impersonates them in her own life- openly, un-pretended and un-disguised.

She is Yayoi Kusama, a woman who could outmatch any human in style, substance and success!

An Unusual genius

Few men or women, in recent times, who straddled the world of arts, have courted such controversy and invited such diverse attention as this Japanese contemporary artist. She began as a sculptor and an installation artist but conquered with panache and distinction fields as diverse as painting, performance, video art, fashion; even poetry and fiction.

She has experimented so extensively and successfully, and her works span such variety and range, that even while still alive, she has acquired a cult status. If there are ardent admirers of her art, there are as many trenchant critics; vociferous voices that deride her accomplishments and find her works of art too gross for appreciation. But all of them ungrudgingly grant her a rare talent expressed with extraordinary originality and fearless innovation.

A Defiant Feminism

Yayoi Kusama is perhaps the best and the finest contemporary symbol of a woman’s creativity standing out on pure merit and an uncommon daring of conviction undiminished and unaffected by the ambient male challenge. Her life and her oeuvre eminently establish a woman’s will, capability and determination to create a world fashioned by her impulses, intentions and innovations.

She is known to have displayed elements of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, a range impossible to find in one artist’s rapporteur. Her creations reflect autobiographical and psychological content and a sexualism that undergirds her exceptional creativity.

A scarred Childhood

Born in 1929 in Matsumoto, Japan and trained at the Kyoto School of Painting, Kusama’s troubled childhood and the hallucinations that visited her then and through most of her life, seem to be both the inspiration and reason for her art. Her life’s early experiences framed by a philanderer father and a jealous insecure mother, made her hate the usual ideas of pleasure and joy. Her own understanding of the women’s position in Japanese families and societies made her a rebel. Never apologetic, she flaunted her open disgust and ridicule of the prevailing tenets of propriety and sexuality.

The other source of her inspiration was her hallucinations, mostly of soft, soothing swathes of light descending around her, both divine and surreal. That she chose themes explicit with sexual connotations, defying the moral milieu by making nudity a central piece of her artwork, explains to some extent her tortured and rebellious mind.

Polka Dots

Kusama’s identity is distinctively the depiction of polka dots. In her most shocking exhibition, she made nudes wear only polka dots. ‘A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots become movement … Polka dots are a way to infinity.’, she reportedly explained her obsession with polka dots with this justification.

And in pursuance of her conviction, she could go to any length. Her crusade for ending Vietnam War compelled her to write an open letter in 1968 to the then American president, Richard Nixon, “let’s forget ourselves, dearest Richard, and become one with the absolute, all together in the altogether.”Many construed this letter as an invitation to Nixon to sleep with her.

Japan, New York, and Japan

Kusama’s creative life saw three distinct phases. She began as a painter of the Nihonga style, a traditional Japanese style of painting but found it unappetising and moved on to New York and through 60s and later, became a part of New York’s avant-garde scene largely inspired by Abstract Impressionism. It was here that she came into contact with Donald Judd, Eva Hesse  Georgia O’Keefe and Joseph Cornell, the latter of who was 26 years elder, in a passionate but platonic affair that continued till Cornell’s death in 1972.

Passionately embracing the then-popular Hippie culture and Pop Art, she caught public notice and even notoriety when she organised a series of happenings in which naked participants were painted with brightly coloured polka dots. In 70s and later she created art mostly by installations in various museums around the world.

In 1973 she returned to Japan and continued with her artwork. Later announcing to be in an abnormal mental state, she began dabbling in literature and produced poems and fiction of noticeable quality. Her forays in the arena of films and fashion too left a distinct impression and further evidence of her uncommon versatility.

Inspired Installations

Her installations including in Central Park, New York, Venice Biennale and Singapore Biennale and her Infinity installations at numerous venues, established her as an artist with uninhibited genius and extraordinary originality. She is best remembered for these installations, grand in scale, often shocking in theme, and always displaying an element of surrealism. Light, spheres, dots, space, and sky, even painted pumpkins mingled, merged and metamorphosed into brightly coloured patterns that never failed to attract and sustain attention and approbation. The millions of footfalls of visitors and the riveting spell cast on them ensured her an uncommon standing and ovation, and placed her in an enormously enviable position, a dream desperately coveted by every artist.     

Living Immortality

Since 1977, and to date, Kusama has been living permanently in a mental hospital, by choice. Her studio, where she has continued to produce work since the mid-1970s, is a short distance from the hospital in Tokyo.

Kusama is often quoted as saying: “If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago.”

Kusama is remarkable by any measurement of human ingenuity, talent, enterprise and achievement. She will be remembered by posterity not because she was a great artiste-prolific, versatile and original, which she indeed was- but because of the strength of her character, conviction and commitment to ideals that she ardently and fervently espoused and lived to personify. To remain in a mental asylum, in voluntary self-exile, betrays an extraordinarily strong determination and defiance trapped in a frail and delicate feminine frame. Hers is a spirit that steam-rolls a male-dominated value system and rules set to their advantage. 

At 93, alive and active, her defiance of mortality remains as compelling, as convincing.

Another gem from the pen of Uday Varma, Former I&B secretary, writing exclusively for us, on women in history overlooked by omission or distortion! 

This article is part of a series on women through history by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the woman who triggered the abolishment of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe, activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahloor Artemisia from Italy? And you must read the story of Mata Hari from the Netherlands– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

Or maybe the painter Okeefe ?

The post An artist extraordinare Yayoi Kusama appeared first on Woman Endangered.

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe was one of the few painters to have earned, sustained, and enjoyed the attention and adulation of commoners and connoisseurs alike and remained celebrated both during and after their lifetime. Known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers and New Mexico landscapes, O’Keeffe is celebrated as the originator of ‘female iconography’, despite her own refusal to join the feminist art movement or cooperate with any all-women projects.

Early Beginnings

Born November 15, 1887, O’Keeffe trained in her formative years at the Art Institute of Chicago (1905) and later at the Art Students League of New York (1908). With fierce zeal, she learnt industriously, taking up odd jobs and teaching, driving her learnings by self-education and intuition. She worked for two years as a commercial illustrator and taught in Virginia, Texas and South Carolina till 1918.

It was somewhere in this period that she was introduced to the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow, who created works of art based upon personal style, design, and interpretation rather than copying any previous style and emphasised the importance of the arrangement of shapes and colours. Understanding Dow’s style was a light-bulb moment for O’Keeffe; she explained: “his idea was, to put it simply, fill a space in a beautiful way”. She began to experiment with shapes, colours and marks. Dow’s lasting impact on her interpretation and purpose of painting can be seen in the originality and freshness with which she treated her subjects.

Stieglitz and New York

Despite having found inspiration, O’Keeffe was still looking for a mentor and guide to provide circumstances that favoured and facilitated her work. She was to find one in in Alfred Stieglitz, twenty-four years her senior, an art dealer and photographer who provided her financial support and arranged for a residence and studio for her in New York in 1918, where he persuaded her to move.

She came to know many early modernists who were part of Stieglitz’s circle, including painters Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and photographers Paul Strand and Edward Steichen. She was to be influenced by them all, especially the photography of Strand as well as that of Stieglitz himself. Notably, Stieglitz successfully discouraged O’Keeffe from using watercolours, something she had started after her time in Virginia, convincing her of its association with amateur women artists.

Madly in love, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz lived together in New York for more than ten years till 1929, five of them as husband and wife.

Enlarged Flowers and Tall Buildings

O’Keeffe in the mid-1920s made about two-hundred flower paintings. Several of these were large-scale depictions of flowers as if seen through a magnifying lens. Notable among these were Oriental Poppies, several Red Canna paintings and Petunia, No. 2, her first large-scale flower painting which was made in 1924 and exhibited in 1925.

O’Keeffe’s magnified depictions of objects and attention to close-ups created a sense of awe and emotional intensity. Following an exhibition of her flower paintings and her sensuous photographs taken by Stieglitz, critics saw in her paintings a depiction of women’s sexuality; many claimed her Black Iris III and the Red Cannas were morphological metaphors for female genitalia. O’Keeffe, however, remained in denial of this interpretation throughout her life.

From 1925, her studio established on the 30^th floor of the Shelton Hotel, O’Keeffe began a series of paintings of the city skyscrapers and skyline. One notable work demonstrating her skill at the precisionist style is the Radiator Building – Night, New York; others painted in this period include New York Street with Moon, The Shelton with Sunspots, N.Y., and City Night.  She made a cityscape called East River from the Thirtieth Story of the Shelton Hotel, painting her view of the East River and smoke-emitting factories in Queens.

End of the Affair

Like all intense passions, the warmth and mutual attraction between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz cooled over time. As her biographer, Benita Eisler recorded, “their relationship was, collusion…. a system of deals and trade-offs, tacitly agreed to and carried out, for the most part, without the exchange of a word. Preferring avoidance to confrontation on most issues, O’Keeffe was the principal agent of collusion in their union”.

Artists are often sentimental and somewhat akin to delicate creepers of infinite tenderness and beauty. They naturally seek the support of a firm and strong mentor. But O’Keeffe’s natural flair, talent, and passion for painting ensured her mentorship could never substitute her fiercely independent mind and rare resolve.

Free from her emotional baggage and having established herself as a painter and artist of exceptional merit, talent, and accomplishments, she moved out of Stieglitz’s shadow. O’Keeffe did not revisit New York’s horizon in her works once she moved to New Mexico in 1929.

New Mexico

The New Mexico landscapes were to be her next home and inspiration. She stayed in Taos and explored the rugged terrains, mountains and deserts, making it the subject and inspiration for some of her best-known paintings. Her famous oil, The Lawrence Tree, was completed after her visit to the nearby D.H. Lawrence Ranch. She also made several paintings of the local church, offering a unique perspective to this genre as it amalgamated structure and sky in silhouettes of superb intensity.

Images of animal skulls, strewn across the desert, were inspired paintings such as Cow’s Skull: Red, White, and Blue and Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock, and Little Hills. She collected rocks and bones from the desert floor and added them as subjects in her work. She often talked about her fondness for Ghost Ranch and Northern New Mexico. A loner by now, O’Keeffe often explored the land she loved in a Ford Model A, which she purchased and learned to drive in 1929.

Her creations during her time in New Mexico and Abiquiú supplemented and strengthened her reputation as a painter who could see objects like few others could and translate them on canvas in a way that left the viewer both perplexed and exultant.

Last Days

In 1973, O’Keeffe hired John Bruce ‘Juan’ Hamilton as a live-in assistant and caretaker. Juan was a potter, divorced, broke and fifty-eight years her junior. Now in her final days, Juan’s presence served as a catalyst to O’Keeffe. She learnt from him working with clay. She was encouraged to resume painting despite her deteriorating eyesight, and finished her autobiography, all with his assistance. He was to stay with her for thirteen years till her death

In the latter half of her 90s and increasingly getting frail and weak, O’Keeffe moved to Santa Fe in 1984 where she died two years later on March 6, 1986. Her ashes were scattered on the land around Ghost Ranch, a place about which she wrote “… such a beautiful, untouched lonely feeling place, such a fine part of what I call the ‘Faraway’. It is a place I have painted before … even now I must do it again.”

Legacy

O’Keeffe was a true legend, known as much for her independent spirit and fierce femininity as for her dramatic and innovative works of art. In each phase of her painting journey, she was audacious and different. Her uncommon genius for giving a surreal hue and sublimity to simple natural objects like flowers, leaves and rocks defined her craft.

Her paintings today enjoy iconic status and even now command unusually high biddings. Almost three decades after her death, O’Keeffe’s 1932 painting Jimson Weed/White Flower No. 1 sold for $44,405,000 in 2014, more than three times the previous world auction record for any female artist. Her unprecedented acceptance as an artist was due to her own talent, powerful graphic expression, and extraordinary depiction; not due to her gender, as she herself took pains to ensure, disliking being called a ‘woman artist’ and insisting on just ‘artist’.

But O’Keeffe’s true celebration lies in her making her life a cascade of bold statements. Credited for practising pure abstraction, O’Keeffe’s legacy is far richer, both splendid and dazzling in its range and opulence. At a time when few artists were exploring abstractions, her experimentations were strikingly original and far ahead of their time. Displaying elements of surrealism and Precisionism, she perfected a synthesis uniquely her own, wherein her idiosyncratic contributions to the modern world of art lie.

Another gem from the pen of Uday Varma, Former I&B secretary, writing exclusively for us, on women in history overlooked by omission or distortion!

This article is part of a series on women through history by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the woman who triggered the abolishment of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe, activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahloor Artemisia from Italy? And you must read the story of Mata Hari from the Netherlands– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

The post Painter O’Keeffe: American Modernism appeared first on Woman Endangered.

it’s true, it’s true, it’s true.

This is the ring you gave me and these are your promises!”

(Artemisia’s statement to her perpetrator while being tortured during her rape trial. The judge had her tortured with thumbscrews, as was the norm. Loops of string were wound around her fingers and tightened till she cried ‘E Vero’!)

Women painters are not widely discussed and a list of outstanding painters is likely to miss a woman. Whether it is the result of relatively fewer women artists or the inherent male bias against them (or both) is debatable and an enduring conundrum. Fortuitously, many of them stand out judged even by the most exacting parameters and have presented to humanity some of the finest expressions of human emotions. And yet their talent and accomplishments offer fascinating but perplexing insights regarding their place in history. One such artist of foremost mention is Artemisia Gentileschi.

In the centuries of renaissance that provided a spurt in creative human genius, women still had few opportunities to pursue artistic training or work as professional artists. Artemisia bucked this trend, overcame convention and was to become the first woman member of the Accademia di Arte del Disegno in Florence. Her work got noticed not merely in Italy but was to earn a clientele far beyond her shores.

Artemisia was undoubtedly the greatest female artist of the baroque age and one of the most brilliant followers of the incendiary and violent Caravaggio. Her work, high in quality and fetching in themes, dominated the first half of the 17^th century with paintings defined by extraordinary colours, masterful brushstrokes, sartorial brilliance and of course, themes of revenge and reprisal.

Despite losing her mother at twelve, her first paintings appeared when she was just fifteen. Trained by her father Orazio, himself a painter of repute, and largely following the style and passion of the mercurial genius Caravaggio, she became a sincere, hardworking and devoted pupil to her father, who was also to be her collaborator in many of their future works across Europe. And yet, Artemisia’s approach to painting was different from her father’s, taking a highly naturalistic approach over his comparatively idealized works.

The Making of an Extraordinary Woman

Artemisia was raped by her own painting tutor, Agostino Tassi. This occurred when she was a mere teenager. Charges were pressed nine months after the incident because Tassi promised to marry her and restore her dignity, a promise on which he reneged. Artemisia thus had to become an active participant in her rapist’s trial were before reaching a verdict, the judge had her tortured with thumbscrews to verify her testimony. As was the norm then to discourage false accusations, loops of string were wound around her fingers and tightened till she cried out, “E Vero, e Vero, e Vero” – it’s true, it’s true, it’s true. Unbroken, she looked at her rapist and, referring to the loops of string, said: “This is the ring that you give me, and these are your promises.”

The trial lasted seven months and ended in Tassi’s conviction and sentenced him to exile from Rome. But the ordeal scarred Artemisia’s soul permanently. Things were to worsen when Tassi escaped unscathed, having managed a Papal pardon; ironically, much like her mentor Caravaggio once had, for murder. For many years after this, she remained a mere curiosity.

It is a persistent eternal irony of societal mores that while a lecherous Picasso, a lascivious Reuben and a murderous Caravaggio would never get censored or have their works discounted under a moral lens, Artemisia bore the burden of ignominy all her life and could never see herself be appreciated independent of the slur so involuntarily imprinted into her persona.

Her life and art have however been reexamined by scholars in the 20^th and 21^st centuries and she is now regarded as one of the most progressive and expressive painters of her generation; the recognition of her talents exemplified by major exhibitions of her work at internationally esteemed fine art institutions.

Her Craft and Subjects

There are about fifty-seven works by Artemisia and forty-nine of them feature women as protagonists or equal to men. Most of Artemisia’s paintings feature women from myths, allegories and the Bible, including victims, suicides and warriors. The characters she portrayed intentionally lacked the stereotypical ‘feminine’ traits — sensitivity, timidity and weakness and were portrayed as courageous, rebellious, and powerful.

Artemisia was known for being able to depict the female figure with great naturalism and for her skill in handling colours to express dimension and drama. She understood that the representation of biblical or mythological figures in contemporary dress was an essential feature of the spectacle of courtly life, and she abundantly employed this style in her paintings after carefully and meticulously studying the sartorial elegance and vibrancy of contemporary times.

Some of her best-known subjects are Susanna and the Elders, Judith Slaying Holofernes, Judith and Her Maidservant, Mary Magdalene, Esther before Ahasuerus, Cleopatra and Bathsheba.  Judith Slaying Holofernes remains her most representative and popular painting. Holofernes was an Assyrian general who was about to destroy Judith’s home, the city of Bethulia. He invites Judith to his tent and is tricked by her into passing out by excessive drinking. He is then decapitated by Judith with the help of her maidservant, and his head taken away in a basket and brought to Bethulia.

This particular painting has been a focal point in interpreting her artwork and her mind. Its understanding ranges from being seen as a representation of revenge and her rebellious sense of violence to being simply hailed for its brilliant colour scheme, elaborate expression, rich costumes and choice of characters. And yet, it is generally believed that her choice of themes was an expression of the repressed frustration and helplessness she faced in her adolescent life.

The Feminist Hue

For a woman at the beginning of the 17^th century, Artemisia choosing life as a painter represented an uncommon and difficult choice. Her evaluation that saw both recognition and prominence came about largely on merit but was also propagated by feminist scholars. She was elevated to the status of feminist icon largely because of the choice of characters she painted and for making a mark in a field dominated and dictated by men. That Artemisia was aware of her position as a female artist and the current representations of women’s relationship to art only reveal the acuity of her perception and grasp of the prevailing realities. In one of her self-portraits – La Pittura – she shows herself as a muse, as an embodiment of art and her artistic proclivities.

But the staunch feminists may have caused noticeable disservice to her by investing historically, intellectually and politically in a narrative that sought to undo a perceived injustice. There does rest a case to portray her as a traumatized but noble survivor whose work became characterized by sex and violence as a result of her experience, but this is likely a post facto feminist-oriented judgment, because merely a century after her death, her work was marvelled as free of feminist baggage. “No one would have imagined that it was the work of a woman. The brushwork was bold and certain, and there was no sign of timidness.”, a critic wrote then.

Legacy

It requires a certain degree of imagination and appreciation of the gender equations prevailing in Italian society then, to truly understand and evaluate the genius of this extraordinarily gifted and resolutely determined woman. Artemisia had to overcome the “traditional attitude and psychological submission to the brainwashing and jealousy of her obvious talent.” But overcome this she did. She was prolific and her paintings spanned over four decades in locations as diverse as Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples and London. She held commissions from the highest echelons of European society, including the Grand Duke of Tuscany,  Philip IV of Spain and Charles I of England. Commercially she never had to struggle and continued to get commissions from rich and powerful till the end.

As often happens, her work has seen interpretation from prisms representing contemporary concerns and societal predilections. Feminists have viewed her paintings as an expression of defiance of male dominance and suppression imposed on the women of her time, accentuated by her own traumatic life. The choice of subjects, scenes and characters of her paintings are argued to naturally reveal her underlying angst and resentment. The risk of feminist rediscovery, however, may save her from obscurity only to conscript her into a reductive, triumphal narrative. But this would be a gross injustice to her talent, tenacity and triumphs.

The interpretive evaluation of her work merits a look free of gender lest it colours the true worth of her art and the inspiration behind it. She needs to be recognized in her own right as a fine painter who chose characters from her own convictions and courage, embellished and beautified by her worldview of gender equations. Her brushwork is bold, decisive, certain and far from timid. An impartial evaluation, considering her personality, artistic calibre and the prolific range of her ample and diverse oeuvre will no doubt find her amongst the all-time greats.

While a rare tenacity and energy eloquently defined her personality, what sets her apart and qualifies her as one of the most famous artists of the world, is her communication of a powerful personal vision – something so rare and so close to impossible that it could not be managed by any other Renaissance or Baroque woman. Like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois or Tracey Emin, she put her life into her art.

Assessed, measured or critiqued from whatever perspective, Artemisia’s oeuvre presents a kaleidoscope of well-crafted, powerful and moving images whose richness of colour, the dominance of texture and the supremacy of theme place her at a pedestal deserving of only the best. That she was able to do so despite her gender and vulnerability adds an almost supernatural aura to her paintings, earning her a place of extraordinary standing. She deserves our commemoration, and not commiseration, for applauding what life gave her.

Roberto Longhi, an Italian critic, best summarized Artemisia as  simply “the only woman in Italy who ever knew about painting, colouring, drawing, and other fundamentals.”

This article is part of a series on women through history by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the woman who triggered the abolishment of slavery, Harriet Beecher Stowe, activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahlo? And you must read the story of Mata Hari– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

The post Painter Artemisia, failed by society saved by Art appeared first on Woman Endangered.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Where should one place a book known as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’? The assessment, that it was an extraordinary book will meet universal approval. But how extraordinary? It may seem an exaggeration to opine that it changed the destiny of slavery in the USA but it will be denying her due if she is not credited with triggering in a significant way, the epochal American Civil War leading to their emancipation. Or close to it.

Few authors in the history of humankind have been able to keep a tryst with human destiny. Das Kapital is believed to be one such book. But there have been others too. Some are privileged by providence to be widely acclaimed while others, by no means less significant, have to remain content by a mention in the footnotes.

That a strait-laced daughter of a preacher, herself married to a clergyman, could have been a trigger for the bloody and bitter American Civil War is inconceivable. But that was the fate of Harriet Beecher Stowe who was born on June 14, 1811.

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ was published in 1852. It was a heart-wrenching account of the conditions faced by enslaved African Americans based on her own observations and research. It was immediately seized upon by slavery abolitionists to strengthen their cause, at the same time being furiously denounced by leading figures in the Southern states. The book certainly enhanced anti-slavery feelings considerably; so much so that historians later cited it as one of the reasons behind the American Civil War.

Early Days and Inspiration

Sixth of eleven children born to an outspoken Presbyterian preacher and a devoutly Christian mother, she experienced bereavement and dislocation early in life. By the time she was 21, the family had moved to Cincinnati, Ohio. Only the Ohio river separated her from the neighbouring slave state Kentucky. It was here that she met, talked and empathised with runaway slaves from the South, from friends and acquaintances and by frequent visits to the slave colonies. She even offered refuge and shelter to slave fugitives. It was here that the immortal ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ was perceived and conceived.

Stowe claimed to have a vision of a dying slave during a communion service at Brunswick’s First Parish Church, which inspired her to write his story. Two more events fuelled her inspiration to write the book. First, her marriage to Rev. Calvin Stowe, a widower who fiercely opposed slavery and the other, the death of her own 18- month old son. She wrote: “Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathise with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions.” The tragedy helped her understand the heartbreak that slave mothers suffered when their children were wrenched from their arms and sold.

On March 9, 1850, Stowe wrote to Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the weekly anti-slavery journal The National Era, that she planned to write a story about the problem of slavery: “I feel now that the time has come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak… I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.”

But it was Brunswick, Maine where the book was given a concrete shape. After newspaper serialisation, it was published in book form in 1852 under the title “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Or Life Among The Lowly.”

The Book

The book’s emotional portrayal of the effects of slavery on individuals captured the nation’s attention and fired a new awareness and awakening. Stowe showed that slavery touched all of society, beyond the people directly involved as masters, traders and slaves. In the New York Times Book Review, a critic wrote that Harriet had “baptized with holy fire myriads who before cared nothing for the bleeding slave.”

The book was not acclaimed for any literary merit or style. It was the honest and sincere rendering and the emotional richness of the narration that moved the readers. And what a cataclysmic and cathartic impact it cast on them. It, many hold, was purgatorial both for her and the reader. Some say she did not write the book, she lived it. And her book was a living chronicle of a tragedy, torture, a trial but also underlining the luminosity of hope and radiance of human endurance.

 It sold 300,000 copies in its first year and in that time 300 babies in Boston alone were named after one of the book’s major characters, Eva.

But the fury and fire it created in the South were even more fierce. Steeped in their belief that slavery was necessary for the good of the economy and that slaves were inferior people who were unable to look after themselves, they felt under attack and retaliated in full might. She was depicted as out of touch, arrogant, and guilty of slander. They also responded with numerous works of what is now called anti-Tom novels, seeking to portray Southern society and slavery in more positive terms.

After the success of the book made her internationally famous, Harriet wrote to a friend: “I am a little bit of a woman – somewhat more than forty, about as thin and dry as a pinch of snuff; never very much to look at in my best of days, and looking like a used-up article now.

But she was not used up. It was not to be brief incandescence. She went on to write a score and ten books that ranged from novels, articles, collection of letters, travel memoirs, qualifying her as one of the most prolific writers and influential women of the 19th century.

Her Final Days

Her final days came two years after those of her husband. At the time she was staying in Hartford, Connecticut, and one of her neighbours was Mark Twain. He wrote of her:

“Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. [In] our neighbourhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs Stowe entered them of her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it.

She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes.

And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.

She succumbed to Alzheimer’s in 1896 on July 1, just a fortnight past her 85^th birthday

Views on Women

Her strong views about women’s role in the family and society have largely found articulation in her writings and portrayal of black women. “All places from where women are excluded tend towards barbarism; but the moment she is introduced, there come in with her courtesy, cleanliness, sobriety and order.” she wrote. Stowe campaigned for the expansion of married women’s rights, arguing in 1869 that: “The position of a married woman … is, in many respects, precisely similar to that of the negro slave. She can make no contract and hold no property; whatever she inherits or earns becomes at that moment the property of her husband… Though he acquired a fortune through her or thought she earned a fortune through her talents, he is the sole master of it, and she cannot draw a penny…”

 She also briefly edited the magazine Hearth and Home in 1868.

A high point of Harriet’s life was a meeting with President Abraham Lincoln in Washington, just after the Civil War began. Her own accounts are vague. She wrote to her husband: “I had a real funny interview with the President.” There is no official record of what was said at the meeting but there are accounts of much joviality, and according to Harriet’s son the President greeted her with the words: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!”

Her Conviction and Message

Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s strong Christian message reflected Stowe’s belief that slavery and the Christian doctrine were at odds; in her eyes, slavery was clearly a sin. And she also believed that like all things evil and sinister and inhuman, even slavery will come to an end one day. “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”, She wrote. A telling and moving sentiment reflecting her optimism and conviction, belief in God and goodness of humans. Hers is a saga of faith and prayer, the force and power issuing forth from them, and their final and glorious triumph.

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

This article is part of a series on women through history by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahlo? And you must read the story of Mata Hari– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

The post A woman who triggered abolition of slavery appeared first on Woman Endangered.

Remembering Ms Katie Mulcahey’s defiance of smoking laws 114 years ago on this day

Smoking, whether you love or hate it, arouses strong sentiments. Its proponents and opponents are unequalled in passion and conviction and unrivalled in adherence and opposition.

There remains little debate over the pernicious outcome of this overpowering vice, its health detriments remain eminently and unequivocally proven through all tests of reason and rationale, best described poetically by Benjamin Waterhouse:

“Tobacco is a filthy weed,

That from the devil does proceed;

It drains your purse, it burns your clothes,

And makes a chimney of your nose.”

And yet, smoking continues.

Intoxication has been as much an aspect of human existence as perhaps food. Smoking has been commonplace for so long that one tends to forget it was a revolutionary concept. When smoking came to Europe like chocolate and tea, it was not treated as food or drink. It was a novelty without a name. People first referred to its consumption as “drinking tobacco” or “drinking smoke”, or more satirically, as “dry drunkenness”.

Opposition to the new pastime began early. By the 1570s, one historian was already denouncing tobacco as “a foul and pestiferous poison of the Devil”. In the early 1600s, King James took time out from reading his new Bible to eloquently condemn smoking as “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.”

In the United States of America, opposition to tobacco was never quite so dramatic, but it has always been around. The tone of the early debate was expressed in a pamphlet as early as 1798. Later, opinion-makers such as Horace Greeley joined the fight, wittily defining a cigar as “a fire at one end and a fool at the other”.

Tobacco’s most dangerous and subsequently ubiquitous incarnation, the cigarette, was developed in the mid-19^th century. In 1854, a doctor in New York complained that “some of the ladies of this refined and fashion-forming metropolis are aping the silly ways of some pseudo-accomplished foreigners, in smoking tobacco through a weaker and more feminine article, which has been most delicately denominated, cigarette.”

Despite, or perhaps because of, the cigarette’s initial popularity with society ladies, a law was promulgated in New York on January 21, 1908, named Sullivan’s Ordinance that made it illegal for women (and women only) to smoke in public. Its unsustainability would be demonstrated by its defiance only a day after: on January 22, a woman named Katie Mulcahey was arrested for lighting a cigarette and fined $5 for this offence. On refusing the fine and being brought up before a judge, she defiantly declared, “I’ve got as much right to smoke as you have. I never heard of this new law, and I don’t want to hear about it. No man should dictate to me.”

The public sentiment so brazenly expressed was sensibly sensed by the elected – the ordinance was vetoed two weeks later by Mayor George B. McClellan Jr.

Monarch after monarch and government after government have opposed tobacco. Punishments and penalties have been imposed, several more severe than preceding ones. Turkey, where once offenders were deprived of their offending heads, could be argued to have had the most effective smoking ‘cure’.

But even capital punishment hasn’t made nations quit smoking. And is unlikely to anytime soon.

The views are personal. This article is part of a series on women by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahlo? And you must read the story of Mata Hari– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

The post Cigarette was made for women?! appeared first on Woman Endangered.

The Roman empire has produced many outstanding emperors and dictators – Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, to name a few. But an Empress? Popular history does not sing paeans of female despots of the era. It has undervalued several women on merit and has given them far less than what was overwhelmingly their due.

Specifically, there is one instance of a woman who could exceed the charm of Cleopatra, the audacity of Caesar, the sagacity of Aurelius, the syncretism of Augustus, even the oratory of Marcus Anthony, and that was Theodora. In the almost 500 years after Cleopatra ruled the Ptolemaic kingdom, no woman participated in and controlled statecraft more effectively and actively than her. Viewing her life from the perspective of her humble and dubious early life, her accomplishments present an exceptional saga of grit, courage and an indomitable will.

She was crowned Empress of Rome in 527 AD and ruled for over two decades till her death in 548 AD, co-ruling with her husband Justinian from Constantinople, the seat and fulcrum of the Eastern Roman Empire. Several memorable aspects of her life and personality involve her resolute hold over her husband. She was his lover, mentor, guide, counsellor, and occasional conscience keeper. She not only saved her husband’s empire and throne but also saved his life while prolonging his rule of thirty-three years. Justinian once called her the “partner in my deliberations”, a sure, albeit, understated admission of her influence.

Humble Origin, Inglorious childhood, Dubious Adolescence

It is not known for certain when or where Theodora was born or from where she came. Many tales about Theodora were penned after her death and the contradictions prevailing in accounts over a large slice of time need to be treated with caution and the proverbial pinch of salt. Most of what is recorded about her come from ‘Secret History’, a salacious, controversial work written by a 6^th century Byzantine historian, Procopius of Caesarea. Many have defined his accounts as exaggerated gossip. But the essential framework around which her story was woven remains largely credulous.

According to him, Theodora’s mother was a dancer and an actress and her father was a bear-keeper named Acacius, who worked at the Hippodrome in Constantinople. Encouraged by her mother, and likely pushed by her father’s death when she was four, Theodora was the star of the Hippodrome by the tender age of fifteen. Edward Gibbon wrote of her:

“Her venal charms were abandoned to a promiscuous crowd of citizens and strangers of every rank, and of every position; the fortunate lover who had been promised a night of enjoyment was often driven from her bed by a stronger or more wealthy favourite; and when she passed through the streets, her presence was avoided by all who wished to escape either the scandal or the temptation.”

A particularly sleazy story of hers revolves around her portrayal in an adaptation of ‘Leda and the Swan’ in which she lay naked on the stage, her thighs covered with grains of barley which were gradually pecked away by a live goose.

Destiny had something more spectacular in store for Theodora than the cheers of the crowd. She was to abandon the Hippodrome at the age of 16 to become the mistress of Hecebolus, Governor of what is now Libya. When their relationship broke down, Theodora travelled back to Constantinople where she met Justinian, nephew of the Roman Emperor Justin I. The rest is history.

Theodora, Empress

She was soon to become Justinian’s mistress and so enamoured him that despite their 20-year age gap, he sought matrimony with her. Justinian was prevented by a Roman law that barred anyone of senatorial rank from marrying actresses. In 524, Justinian was able to prevail on his father to pass a new law decreeing that ‘reformed’ actresses could legally marry outside their rank if approved by the Emperor. Soon after Justin’s law, Justinian married Theodora in 525 AD. He succeeded his father as Emperor of Rome just two years later. Theodora was crowned Empress of Rome in the same coronation ceremony as her husband.

One of the tasks that Theodora, Empress undertook almost immediately was to establish women’s rights. And if immediacy was her concern, her reforms were indeed sweeping and revolutionary. She shut down brothels in every major city of the empire, brought in anti-rape laws, established houses where prostitutes could live without fear, helped young girls sold into sexual slavery, outlawed forced prostitution, and declared new rights for women in divorce, child guardianship and property ownership. That she has experienced many such indignities in her early days steeled her resolve and nurtured her spirit with an enduring urgency and an indefatigable zeal.

Theodora also helped rebuild Constantinople’s aqueducts, bridges and churches and transformed the metropolis into the finest city the world had seen for centuries. Her time saw more than twenty-five churches and convents built there.

The Nika Riots

Theodora’s finest hour was to come five years into Justinian’s rule when rioting broke out at the Hippodrome during a chariot race. Incited by political rivalry, the riots were severe and bloody. In the aftermath, seven rioters were sentenced to be hanged but the scaffolding collapsed at the time of their execution and two of the condemned men fled to the sanctuary of a church. Seeing this as an act of God, the people petitioned Justinian to pardon and free the men. But he refused. As a result, rioting again broke out across the city and continued for several days. The Emperor was forced to barricade himself into his palace. Enraged rioters named a new emperor, Hypatius, to take his place. Many public buildings were set on fire. Unable to control the mob, Justinian and his officials prepared to flee.

According to Procopius, at a meeting of the government council, Theodora spoke out against leaving the palace and said she preferred dying as a ruler instead of living as an exile:

“My lords, the present occasion is too serious to allow me to follow the convention that a woman should not speak in a man’s council. Those whose interests are threatened by extreme danger should think only of the wisest course of action, not of conventions. In my opinion, the flight is not the right course, even if it should bring us to safety. It is impossible for a person, having been born into this world, not to die; but for one who has reigned, it is intolerable to be a fugitive. May I never be deprived of this purple robe, and may I never see the day when those who meet me do not call me Empress. If you wish to save yourself, my lord, there is no difficulty. We are rich; over there is the sea, and yonder is the ship. Yet reflect for a moment whether, when you have once escaped to a place of security, you would not gladly exchange such safety for death. As for me, I agree with the adage that the royal purple is the noblest shroud.”

Her determined speech convinced the Emperor and everyone else who had been preparing to run away. Justinian then ordered his loyal troops led by the officers Belisarius and Mundus to attack the demonstrators in the Hippodrome, killing purportedly over thirty thousand rebels. The riots were quelled and the rioters were promptly put to death, including the emperor of the mob, Hypatius.

A certain defeat was, thus averted and Justinian’s reign and life both secured.  Instead of a humiliating flight, he went on to rule for another three decades.

Saint Theodora

Theodora had recognised early that controlling religious institutions was an integral aspect of power. She belonged to the Miaphysite branch of Christianity while her husband Justinian supported the rival branch, Chalcedonian. A difficult position to be in, by all accounts. But Theodora’s conviction and commitment to her faith and her political guile were such that despite being in the opposite camp to the Emperor, she continued for a long time to successfully protect, shelter and nurture adherents of her faith. Even when accused of fostering heresy and undermining the unity of Christendom, she continued relentlessly and prevailed against all her charges.

Her successful effort to convert inhabitants of Nobatae, a region south of Egypt, to the Miaphysites sect, while her husband’s express desire was to see them converted to the Chalcedonian faith, is one instance of her superior and uncommonly brilliant intellect and intuition. Such was her hold and influence and so tremendous was its projection that she was venerated as Saint Theodora while still alive and continued to do so after her death.

 
The Hagia Sophia

Another great triumph attributed to Theodora was the construction of the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), a proud remnant today of the epitome of Byzantine architecture and one of the world’s greatest architectural wonders.

The Hagia Sophia was the third church to be built on the by order of Emperor Justinian under the influence of Theodora in 532 AD after the riots mentioned earlier had destroyed the previous edifice. It was finished in just five years and was the largest building of the world of its time. It served for centuries as the Greek Orthodox cathedral and the place of coronation of the Eastern Roman Emperors.

Passing and Legacy

Theodora died in 548 AD on June 28^th, aged about forty-eight. Victor of Tonnena, who recorded her death, does not specify any clear cause, but the Greek terms used for her malady translate to cancer. Later accounts attribute her death specifically to breast cancer. Her body was buried in Constantinople in the Church of the Holy Apostles. Her memory alongside that of her husband Justinian stands beautifully adorned in mosaics that exist to this day in the Basilica of San Vitale of Ravenna, Italy. 

Her lasting legacy is perhaps less the tale of a beautiful, intelligent and ambitious woman who ruled a sprawling empire, and more the story of a determined, skilled and meticulous woman who tirelessly and passionately worked for the betterment of women during her overwhelmingly parochial times. Her own humble and scarring youth never clouded her vision, understanding or sensitivities towards the humiliations and excesses that women faced.

No other woman has wielded such influence in the running of state as this extraordinarily strong-willed woman of outstanding determination, courage and intellect, her dominance and might not in the slightest diminished by the massive controversies she courted. Her sincere and untiring efforts to obtain for women in that ancient world a more just and equitable perch in society and to support them in facing the adversities of a male-dominated society inured to the dignity of women demand that her legacy must live on and find modern champions.

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

This article is part of a series on women by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahlo? And you must read the story of Mata Hari– “Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’

The post Theodora: A crowned Empress in a Man’s council of Rome appeared first on Woman Endangered.

“… an independent woman, a divorcee, a citizen of a neutral country, a courtesan and a dancer, which made her a perfect scapegoat for the French, who were then losing the war. She was kind of held up as an example of what might happen if your morals were too loose.”

                                                                                                    – British Historian Julie Wheelwright

Does History judge men, women and events objectively and fairly? It is, they say, more objective than stories, or mostly. But they also say that it belongs to the victor, not to the vanquished. The life and times of Margaretha Geertrida Zelle, popularly known as Mata Hari, offer an intriguing and fascinating account of how history treats those who border on infamy and calumny.

Her beauty and charm were legendary. She was the most desired woman of her time. This succinct but evidently enthusiastic description of her beauty by a French journalist eloquently sums up her timeless pulchritude, ‘feline, extremely feminine, majestically tragic, the thousand curves and movements of her body trembling in a thousand rhythms.’ Another journalist saw her as “slender and tall with the flexible grace of a wild animal, and with blue-black hair, making a strange foreign impression.” Such was the sweep of her charm and unearthly beauty that the best of youth and virile masculinity of German and French army congregated around her like inebriated moths circling the sweet and bright luminosity of an irresistible, extraordinary flame.

The Transformation

Born Margaretha Geertrida Zelle in Leeuwarden, Netherlands on August 07, 1876. She acquired the stage name of Mata Hari when she chose to become a dancer and a courtesan. Her marriage to a Dutch colonial army Captain Rudolph MacLeod took her to Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia where she not only learnt the exotic dances but also changed her name to Mata Hari which in Javanese means ‘eye of the day’ or ‘Sun’. It is commonly believed that her choice or compulsion to stray into the very glamorous though questionable life of a dancer and a courtesan was largely due to the ill-treatment meted out to her by her husband from whom she got two children, a daughter and a son, a divorce later on and his betrayal when he reneged on his promise to maintain her.

The transition to a new avatar and her finding residence eventually in Paris, and her transformation into a spy, and then a double agent, is the stuff of fascinating legend that got built around her during her own life but even more after her execution on October 15, 1917. She was shot by a firing squad of the French Army on charges of espionage and subversive secret activities. More than 100 years after her death, her story never ceases to interest and excite common men and historians alike.

Her life saw three distinct phases. The one spent in East Indies (Java and Sumatra) along with her husband of Scottish origin, where she imbibed the local culture but more importantly, learnt the rudiments of oriental dances that she perfected later in a western setting, as uncommonly exotic and sensuous for the time. On her return to Paris, her second phase of life began when she became famous as an exotic dancer possessed with an attitude of extraordinary abandon and daring with the courage to display her assets boldly but always with grace and style. The third and the last phase began with the beginning of WWI when, she transformed into a courtesan and a spy, tragically ending in her arrest, trial and execution in 1917. Each one of her life’s phases reflected a beautiful and resolute woman’s struggles and triumphs to conquer her own vulnerabilities and conquest of the weakness that attracted men to her unusual beauty and charm.

Notwithstanding her reputation as a thorough professional and largely emotionless, she had an unusually sensitive and tender heart which was evidenced by her love for the Russian soldier Maslov whom she really loved. When Maslov was critically injured in war, she travelled all the way to an enemy country to meet him and to be with him, taking full advantage of her Dutch citizenship which made her a neutral citizen. However, like much in her life, her love also remained unrequited. Maslov, broken, deeply embittered and physically incapacitated having lost his eyes was so disillusioned that he declined to testify for her when she was facing her trial. This terrible development was such a heart-breaking moment that It was reported that she fainted when she learned that Maslov had abandoned her.

Beginning of an End

While her days as a dancer, which were also dominated by Isabella Duncan and Ruth St. Dennis on the other side of the Atlantic, contemporaneously, were the most glamorous and enticing, her role as a double agent working both for the Germans and French and the subsequent denouement in her life is what has fascinated historians.

Fresh evidence suggests that she was more a victim of circumstances and there is nothing on record to establish any serious espionage assignment that she may have carried out as such. By 2007, it was being convincingly argued that she may not actually be guilty of the charges that the French levelled against her. Fresh research has unearthed the likely conspiracy which the French Army hatched to retrieve its battering image of continuing defeats and sagging morale of its soldiers and found in Mata Hari an unsuspecting scapegoat who was powerless in retaliation to the charges of espionage and defenceless in the face of French army’s might. It did not help matters at all that she was living a life of opulence and luxury and maintained a lifestyle so lavish and glamorous that it stood so strikingly shocking and incongruous for those days of misery and privation that the people were experiencing at large.     

In a contrived communication on secret channels known to be intercepted by French, her connection with the Germans was revealed, which formed the basis for her arrest on 13 February 1917 from her room in Hotel Elysee Palace, Paris. She was put on trial on 24 July, accused of spying for Germany, and consequently causing the deaths of at least 50,000 soldiers. Although the French and British intelligence suspected her of spying for Germany, neither could produce definite evidence against her.  

Contrived Trial

In 1917, France had been badly shaken by the Spring Mutinies of the French Army, failure of the Nivelle Offensive leading to a huge strike wave. Many believed that France might simply collapse as a result of war exhaustion. In July 1917, a new government under Georges Clemenceau had come into power, utterly committed to winning the war. In this context, having one German spy on whom everything that went wrong with the war so far could be blamed was most convenient for the French government, making Mata Hari the perfect scapegoat, which explains why the case against her received maximum publicity in the French press and led to her importance in the war being greatly exaggerated.

Wesley Wark, the Canadian historian maintained that Mata Hari was never an important spy, if at all. “They needed a scapegoat and she was a notable target for scapegoating”. British historian Julie Wheelwright likewise stated: “She really did not pass on anything that you couldn’t find in the local newspapers in Spain.”

During trials, she was portrayed as a femme fatale, the dangerous, seductive woman who uses her sexuality to effortlessly manipulate men. Her prosecutor Bouchardon argued, “without scruples, accustomed to making use of men, she is the type of woman who is born to be a spy.”Her defence counsel, veteran international lawyer Édouard Clunet, on the other hand, faced impossible odds; he was denied permission either to cross-examine the prosecution’s witnesses or to examine his own witnesses directly.

Unfazed in the face of Execution

She was executed by a firing squad of 12 French soldiers just before dawn on 15 October 1917. She was not bound and refused a blindfold. She defiantly blew a kiss to the firing squad. A British reporter Henry Wales, an eyewitness, recorded her death, thus: “After the volley of shots rang out, slowly, inertly, she settled to her knees, her head up always, and without the slightest change of expression on her face. For the fraction of a second, it seemed she tottered there, on her knees, gazing directly at those who had taken her life. Then she fell backwards, bending at the waist, with her legs doubled up beneath her.” A non-commissioned officer then walked up to her body, pulled out his revolver, and shot her in the head to make sure she was dead.

Her Remains- mysterious and missing

Mata Hari’s body was not claimed by any family members and was accordingly used for medical study. Her head was embalmed and kept in the Museum of Anatomy in Paris. In 2000, archivists discovered that it had disappeared, possibly as early as 1954, according to curator Roger Saban, during the museum’s relocation. Her head remains missing. Records dated from 1918 show that the museum also received the rest of the body, but none of the remains could later be accounted for.

A New Assessment

American historians Norman Palmer and Thomas Allen, in many ways, reflect her new assessment. “She was naïve and easily duped, a victim of men rather than a victimizer.”

“Harlot? Oui! Mais traitoress, jamais!” ‘Courtesan! Yes; Spy, never!’. This is how she reacted when confronted with the charge by the French Military that she was a spy for Germans.

After almost a century, her statement made then rings a truth, or almost.

Author Uday Kumar Varma’s PostScript

History does it treat men and events evenly? Mostly perhaps, in the long run! But there are injustices and atrocities, not caused by circumstances but by the chroniclers of these circumstances. Mata Hari, the (in)famous spy of WWI times, denigrated and later executed as a spy working for Germans presented a multi-hued life, kaleidoscopic but tragic. Not much was understood about her during her lifetime and till almost a hundred years afterwards. However, new evidence and fresh evaluation of her life offer glimpses of life largely misunderstood. The above piece endeavours to present her life in the light of new discoveries about her deeds and misdeeds.

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

This article is part of a series on women in history by author Uday Kumar Varma, former secretary of the Ministry of Information & broadcasting and MSME, Government of India. An ardent proponent of gender equity, Varma writes on women through history who have excelled in their area of passion and defied conventions. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko from Russia,  the American pilot Amelia Earhart or Judge Ruth Bader Ginsberg or just maybe a piece on the Spanish artist  Frida Kahlo?

The post Mata Hari – The Femme fatale appeared first on Woman Endangered.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg was an extraordinary person on multiple counts. Judged by any standard, her character, conduct and conviction were so out of ordinary and so distinctly unorthodox that they elicited unqualified appreciation, even adoration, often grudgingly, at times reluctantly but never insincerely.

She was not only the second woman judge to serve on the US Supreme Court, she was also synonymous with the struggle and advocacy of women’s equal rights. She was outspoken to a fault, her voice and views resonating far and wide with an impact unparalleled in the US judiciary but also that lingered long enough to leave a permanent imprint. She is known more for her dissenting judgments that created as much impact if not more as the majority view did; and whose words – courageous, convincing, often caustic but never casual, left behind a legacy that lasted much beyond the contemporary context.

She engendered a culture, a cult, one that was followed passionately and loyally. And she was fiercely independent and intrepid. In US Supreme Court’s tradition, the dissenting judge will record, ‘I respectfully dissent’; Ginsberg will record, ‘I dissent’, signifying the salience and substance of dissent and underlying its equality with the majority view. The term ‘respectfully’, she termed as avoidably disingenuous, a nicety and embellishment eminently insincere.

Born on Ides of March 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, she was appointed a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980 at the age of 47. President Clinton nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and she took her seat on August 10, 1993, and continued till her death on September 18, 2020.

On the Court, Ginsburg became known for her active interventions and avid participation at the time of oral arguments. She also became famous for wearing jabots, or collars, with her judicial robes. She used them to convey a message, a symbolic one. Curiously she wore both a majority-opinion collar and a dissent collar.

The way women are?
Early in her tenure on the Court, Ginsburg writing the majority opinion in United States Vs. Virginia (1996) observed, “generalizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description,” She held that the men-only admission policy of a state-run university, the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), violated the equal protection clause. Rejecting VMI’s contention that its program of military-focused education was unsuitable for women, Ginsburg noted that the program was in fact unsuitable for the vast majority of Virginia college students regardless of gender. This was a judgment that foretold the tenor and spirit of slew of outstanding pronouncements that were to follow in a large number of cases that would create judicial history.

Ginsburg, however, attracted greater attention for several strongly worded dissenting opinions and publicly read some of her dissents from the bench to emphasize the purport of dissent. In the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart case, which upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act on a 5–4 vote, Ginsburg decried the judgment as “alarming,” arguing that it “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right [the right of women to choose to have an abortion]declared again and again by this Court.” The same year, in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, another 5–4 decision, Ginsburg criticized the majority’s holding that a woman could not bring a federal civil suit against her employer for having paid her less than it had paid men. Ginsburg argued that the majority’s reasoning was inconsistent with the will of the U.S. Congress —a view that was somewhat vindicated when Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first bill that Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama signed into law.

Dissent for perspective
The number of landmark dissents, representing the liberal perspective on many prominent and politically charged matters, won her admirers both passionate and reluctant but more than that they established her intellectual perspicacity and clear-sightedness. What she authored ensured that the legal debate on a variety of issues remained open on an unaddressed moral dimension and that the matter was far from concluded.  And while the majority may have settled the law, for the time being, its questioning was possible, palpable and prominent. In Shelby County V. Holder (2013), the Court’s conservative majority struck down as unconstitutional, Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which had required certain states and local jurisdictions to obtain prior approval – “preclearance” from the federal Justice Department of any proposed changes to voting laws or procedures. Ginsburg, in dissent, criticized the “hubris” of the majority’s “demolition of the VRA” and declared that “throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.”

If her conviction was unflinching, her articulation of it was unequivocal, sharp and even reprimanding. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. (2014), Ginsburg wrote that the majority opinion “falters at each step of its analysis” and expressed concern that the Court had “ventured into a minefield” by holding “that commercial enterprise…can opt-out of any law (saving only tax laws) they judge incompatible with their sincerely held religious beliefs.” Prior to this in 2012, in the Affordable Care Act cases that posed a constitutional challenge to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as “Obamacare”), she criticized her five conservative colleagues for concluding—in her view contrary to decades of judicial precedent—that the commerce clause did not empower Congress to require most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay a fine. It was a partial dissent.

Multi-dimensional
That she was a brilliant judge, was established beyond doubt but the brightness of her intellect and comprehension had shown right from the days of her upbringing and education. She tied for the first place for her law degree from Columbia Law School and was also the first woman to be on the editorial board of the Law magazine when she attended the Harvard Law School. She did her clerkship with Edmund L. Palmieri, Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, from 1959–1961.  She was a Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law from 1963–1972, and Columbia Law School from 1972–1980, and a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences in Stanford, California from 1977–1978.

In 1971, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, and served as the ACLU’s General Counsel from 1973–1980, and on the National Board of Directors from 1974–1980. She served on the Board and Executive Committee of the American Bar Foundation from 1979-1989, on the Board of Editors of the American Bar Association Journal from 1972-1978, and on the Council of the American Law Institute from 1978-1993.

A feminist
Her strong beliefs and unshakable conviction about equality of sexes and getting women their rightful place in harnessing the opportunities of life coupled with her fearless articulation of them made her a feminist folk hero. In part because of her increasing outspokenness, Ginsburg became, during the Obama administration (2009–17), a progressive and feminist folk hero. Inspired by some of her dissents, a second-year law student at New York University created a Tumblr blog entitled “Notorious R.B.G.”—a play on “Notorious B.I.G.,” the stage name of the American rapper Christopher Wallace—which became a popular nickname for Ginsburg among her admirers.

Part of this conviction arose from her own experiences of discrimination and inequity meted out to her early in her life. What affected her the most was the refusal of a Supreme Court Justice to accept her as a clerk because she was a woman despite having the most outstanding credentials. Her frequent encounters with the societal sense of fairness and equity, invariably biased and loaded against women, filled her with a steely resolve to face, oppose and transform it. This resolve and determination continued till the last, in fact, became stronger and vociferous increasingly with the passage of time.  

Late in her term in the Supreme Court, some liberals, citing Ginsburg’s advanced age and concerns about her health (she was twice a cancer survivor) and apparent frailty, argued that she should retire in order to allow Obama to nominate a liberal replacement. Others, however, pointed to her vigorous exercise routine and the fact that she had never missed an oral argument to urge that she should remain on the Court for as long as possible. For her own part, Ginsburg expressed her intention to continue for as long as she was able to perform her job “full steam.” On the day after Martin Ginsburg died in 2010, she went to work at the Court as usual because, she said, it was what he would have wanted.

She never shied away from opening her convictions on her sleeves, often to the detriment of her public image. In an interview in 2016, Ginsburg expressed dismay at the possibility that Republican candidate Donald Trump would be elected president—a statement that was widely criticized as not in keeping with the Court’s tradition of staying out of politics. (Ginsburg later said that she regretted the remark.) Trump’s electoral victory renewed criticism of Ginsburg for not having retired while Obama was president. She remained on the Court as its oldest justice, publicly mindful of John Paul Stevens’s service until the age of 90.

Her life was marked by a clarity of purpose unequalled in intensity and richness. She did not learn the art and craft of conceit, nor practised it, nor even entertained it. The transparency and integrity of her convictions were infectious, endearingly and perhaps her greatest strength.

Views are personal. The author was the former Information and Broadcasting Secretary, GOI. Mr Uday Kumar Varma serves as an esteemed jury member on the SABERA The Social and Business Enterprise Responsible Awards 2021 Jury Board.

Postscript

Varma shares “Writing about Judges has always been difficult, some may even find it odious. The inscrutability of their lives and their overly sensitive reaction to anything unpalatable or controversial makes the task a bit more challenging if not altogether daunting. But it may change soon. Ginsberg was, however, an exception in many ways. Her life and her philosophy were so transparent and her uncommon capacity to practise what she preached was so rare, that they made her loved, adored and respected, even when one disagreed with some of the things she believed in and the manner in which she articulated them. But she never minced words nor did shy away from wearing her convictions and ideologies on her sleeves. Her honesty in adhering to her beliefs was legendary and an inspiration to judges of today and tomorrow. She fought effectively and combatively for women’s rights and opportunities and will be long remembered for her landmark judgments setting precedents in the judicial arena. But above all, her unflinching commitment to her convictions and the unusually exceptional courage to articulate them will be commemorated for a long time to come.”

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

This article is part of a series on women in history who have excelled in their area of passion. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England, the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko,  the American Amelia Earhart pilot or just maybe a piece on Frida Kahlo?

The post Ruth Bader Ginsberg appeared first on Woman Endangered.

-Nietzsche

The world has seen innumerable brave and courageous men and women who have in the face of impossible situations defied death, even conquered it. But there are only a few whose spirit for adventure is so overwhelming that they choose to embrace certain extinction in possession of a passion they hold supremely satisfying and sublimating. Life for them is a perpetual pursuit of a continuously exciting and constantly engaging enticement, it is a dream whose actualization fuels their determination and dictates their craft and conscience. Adventure is their lifeline, fearlessness their DNA.

There could not be a better and more illuminating example of this ilk than Amelia Earhart.

Amelia Earhart resides in the heart of people not because she was an aviator who set many flying records, not because she championed the advancement of women in aviation, not because she set her heart on things belonging to men’s exclusive preserve, though her list of accomplishments is long and distinguished, actually exceptional.  She is dear to people because she displayed an indomitable spirit in pursuit of her life’s purpose and passion. She attempted and accomplished successfully all that was deemed impossible in domains far removed from the imagination of the women of her times.

Missing for 85 years but not forgotten

She became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the first person ever to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland. During a flight to circumnavigate the globe, Earhart disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in July 1937. She was to complete 40 springs of her life only two weeks away. Her plane wreckage was never found, and she was officially declared lost at sea after a year and a half in March 1939.  Her disappearance remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

Early Life

Born in Atchison, Kansas on July 24, 1897, she defied all that was traditional and embraced everything so atypical of women of her times. Earhart’s tryst with flying, destined to bring her immortal fame and glory began in California in December 1920 when she took her first airplane ride with famed World War I pilot Frank Hawks—and was forever hooked. In January 1921, she started flying lessons with female flight instructor Neta Snook. Later that year, she purchased her first airplane, a second-hand Kinner Airster and nicknamed it “the Canary.” Earhart passed her flight test in December 1921, earning a National Aeronautics Association license. Two days later, she participated in her first flight exhibition at the Sierra Airdrome in Pasadena, California.

Record heights

Earhart’s first record came in 1922 when she became the first woman to fly solo above 14,000 feet. In 1932, Earhart became the first woman (and second person after Charles Lindbergh) to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She left Newfoundland, Canada, on May 20 in a red Lockheed Vega 5B and arrived a day later, landing in a cow field near Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Upon returning to the United States, Congress awarded her the Distinguished Flying Cross—a military decoration awarded for “heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight.” She was the first woman to receive the honour.

Later that year, Earhart made the first solo, nonstop flight across the United States by a woman. She started in Los Angeles and landed 19 hours later in Newark, New Jersey. She also became the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the United States mainland in 1935.

Between 1930 and 1935, Earhart had set seven women’s speed and distance aviation records in a variety of aircraft, including the Kinner Airster, Lockheed Vega, and Pitcairn Autogiro. By 1935, recognizing the limitations of her “lovely red Vega” in long, transoceanic flights, Earhart contemplated, in her own words, a new “prize … one flight which I most wanted to attempt – a circumnavigation of the globe as near its waistline as could be”.

Experimental

She was a maverick, an iconoclast, who loved demolishing traditional images of women. She was also a loner. A 1915 college yearbook caption captured the essence of her character, “A.E. – the girl in brown who walks alone”. Her restlessly wandering yet extraordinarily resolute mind took her through several experiments and experiences in life, sampling and savouring diverse tastes of adventure. In 1935, Earhart became a visiting faculty member at Purdue University as an advisor to aeronautical engineering and a career counsellor to women students. She became a member of the National Woman’s Party and a pioneer supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment.  In 1929, after placing third in the All-Women’s Air Derby—the first transcontinental air race for women—Earhart helped to form the Ninety-Nines, an international organization for the advancement of female pilots. She became the first president of the organization of licensed pilots, which still exists today and represents women flyers from 44 countries.

Rebel

If she was notably unorthodox in her professional, she was as much of a defiant rebel in her personal life. She married a publisher George P. Putnam, a divorcee himself with two sons from his previous marriage after he proposed six times to her. Earhart referred to her marriage as a “partnership” with “dual control”. In a letter written to Putnam and hand-delivered to him on the day of the wedding, she wrote, “I want you to understand I shall not hold you to any midaevil (sic) code of faithfulness to me nor shall I consider myself bound to you similarly.” She continued, “I may have to keep someplace where I can go to be by myself, now and then, for I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinement of even an attractive cage.” Evidently, Earhart’s ideas on marriage were liberal for the time, as she pointedly kept her own name rather than being referred to as “Mrs Putnam”. There was no honeymoon for the newlyweds, as Earhart was involved in a nine-day cross-country tour promoting autogyros and the tour sponsor, Beech-Nut chewing gum.

But her marriage further strengthened, whetted and refined her passion of flying. Putnam not only shared her dreams but actively helped her plan and execute them. The understanding they shared matured and flourished. He taught her how to present her ambitions and accomplishments to the world at large. Following her disappearance over the Pacific and not being satisfied with the Roosevelt administration’s efforts to find her, he commissioned a private search that unfortunately did not yield any success.

Around the World

In pursuance of her dream, Amelia Earhart took off from Oakland, California, on an eastbound flight around the world. The date was Ist of June, 1937. It was her second attempt to become the first pilot ever to circumnavigate the globe. She flew a twin-engine Lockheed 10E Electra and was accompanied on the flight by navigator Fred Noonan. They flew to Miami, then down to South America, across the Atlantic to Africa, then east to India and Southeast Asia. The pair reached Lae, New Guinea, on June 29. When they reached Lae, they already had flown 22,000 miles. They had 7,000 more miles to go before reaching Oakland and fulfilling her long-cherished dream.

Missing in Action

Earhart and Noonan departed Lae for tiny Howland Island—their next refuelling stop—on July 2. It was the last time Earhart was seen alive. She and Noonan lost radio contact with the U.S. Coast Guard cutter ‘Itasca’, anchored off the coast of Howland Island, and disappeared en route.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt authorized a massive two-week search for the pair, but they were never found. On July 19, 1937, Earhart and Noonan were declared lost at sea.

Scholars and aviation enthusiasts have proposed many theories about what happened to Amelia Earhart. The Crash and Sink Theory, the most prevalent one, suggested that Earhart’s plane ran out of fuel while she searched for Howland Island, and crashed into the sea and perished. Another theory hints that she may have landed in a neighbouring island, the Gardner Island, now called Nikumaroro having failed to locate Howland Island, where they may have survived for some time before dying. There are other fanciful theories as well. One such theory mentions that she was captured by the Japanese and executed while another equally fanciful theory is that they worked as spies for the Roosevelt administration and lived under new identities on their return to the US. Her disappearance, even after decades, continues to arouse interest and excitement and is one of the most controversial unsolved mysteries. The official position, however, is that her plane crashed into the sea near Howland Island possibly because the plane ran out of fuel or due to navigational errors. While the controversy is still alive, she still remains the most wanted missing person.

Legacy

Earhart became an acclaimed international celebrity at an early age during her own lifetime. Her charismatic appeal is accentuated by her shyness, steely resolution, fierce independence, dogged persistence and death-defying determination combined together in her rare personality. Her mystifying disappearance and the circumstances leading to it lent a lasting lustre to her legacy and a glowing hue to her uncommon accomplishments. She has been discussed and eulogised in hundreds of articles. Scores of books have been written about her life as a motivational tale for everyone, especially for girls. Hailed as one of the brightest feminist icons, Hillary Clinton in a 2012 memorial address said, “Earhart … created a legacy that resonates today for anyone, girls and boys, who dream of the stars.

Earhart, even after over eight decades of disappearance towers tall in defiance of death. There are people who still believe that she did not perish in the sea. Her iconic legacy has only become richer and more enduring with the passage of time. She is remembered as a fearless intrepid courageous person of outstanding grit and determination. But, above all, she is part of a treasured heritage nurtured by young women across the world for leading a life that was not only eminently successful but exceptionally inspirational. She lived with passion and purpose each day of her life.

“Once more into the fray

Into the last good fight, I’ll ever know

Live and die on this day

Live and die on this day”

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

The author was the former Information and Broadcasting Secretary, GOI. Mr Uday Kumar Varma serves as an esteemed jury member on the SABERA The Social and Business Enterprise Responsible Awards 2021 Jury Board.

This article is part of a series on women in history who have excelled in their area of passion. You may also like to read about the activist Emmeline Pankhurst from England or the lady sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko or just maybe a piece on Frida Kahlo?

The post Amelia Earhart – Girl who walked alone appeared first on Woman Endangered.

Universal suffrage may not yet be universal across the world but any idea challenging or opposing it, shall, without the slightest doubt, be uproariously decried, not by the women organizations or activists but universally, or almost. India on her freedom was fortunate that such a right for women to vote was enshrined in the Constitution and has been scrupulously practiced, without opposition or reservation. But most countries in the world had to struggle to realize this right that seems so naturally available to us. Even Britain, whose legacy is writ large on and has deeply impacted every institution of consequence in our country, has a record of long, sustained, and often bitter struggle to get it for her women. And one person whose determined and untiring struggle could make it possible was born this date 163 years ago.  

The Radical Thinker

Emmeline Pankhurst was born Emmeline Goulden, on July 14 in 1858 in Manchester, England in a family of radical thinkers. She was a militant champion of woman suffrage whose 40-year long and often frustrating campaign achieved complete success, ironically in the year of her death. She died in the year 1928 on June 14 at the age of 69. It was the same year when British women obtained full equality in the voting franchise, but only a few months after her death.

In 1879 Emmeline Goulden married Richard Marsden Pankhurst, lawyer, a friend of John Stuart Mill, and author of the first woman suffrage bill in Great Britain (late 1860s) and of the Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882), which allowed women to keep earnings or property acquired before and after marriage. Her husband had a deep impact on her thinking and significantly shaped and refined her approach to the causes she took to heart. His death in 1898 causing her great stress and disorientation as she lost her strongest pillar of support.

Her first foray into organized protests was through the Women’s Franchise League, which she formed in 1889. Her first major success came when she secured for married women the right to vote in elections to local offices (not to the House of Commons) in 1894. From 1895 she held a succession of municipal offices in Manchester, but her energies were increasingly in demand by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), which she founded in 1903 in Manchester. The union first attracted wide attention on October 13, 1905, when two of its members, Christabel Pankhurst (her own daughter) and Annie Kenney, thrown out of a Liberal Party meeting for demanding a statement about votes for women, were arrested in the street for a technical assault on the police and, after refusing to pay fines, were sent to prison. WSPS gained much notoriety for its activities and its members were the first to be christened ‘suffragettes’. Such was the underlying passion of their conviction that in 1913, WSPU member Emily Davison was killed when she threw herself under the king’s horse at the Derby as a protest at the government’s continued failure to grant women the right to vote. British politicians, the press, and the public were astonished by the demonstrations, window-smashing, arson, and hunger strikes of the suffragettes. It was then that Emmeline’s description of broken window panes as “The argument of the broken window pane is the most valuable argument in modern politics.” caught the public fancy.

The Maverick

She was a maverick, a path-breaker, a rebel, and a strong-willed and pugnacious personality, who, once committed to a cause, will spare no effort and brook no opposition. She used public demonstrations and acts of militancy to tip public opinion in favor of equal suffrage.  She allowed the movement to turn militant and justified it in the following words,

“The condition of our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty to break the law in order to call attention to the reasons why we do.”

She did not mind going to prison. In fact, she relished the prospect. Between 1908 and 1909 Pankhurst was jailed three times, once for issuing a leaflet calling on the people to “rush the House of Commons.” From July 1912, the WSPU turned to extreme militancy, mainly in the form of arson directed by Christabel, her equally committed daughter from Paris, where she had gone to avoid arrest for conspiracy.

Pankhurst herself was imprisoned, and, under the Prisoners (Temporary Discharge for Ill-Health) Act of 1913, also derogatorily called the “Cat and Mouse Act”, by which hunger-striking prisoners could be freed for a time and then re-incarcerated upon regaining their health to some extent. She was released and rearrested 12 times within a year, serving a total of about 30 days. She was not a great admirer of the judiciary’s role in the dispensation of justice and a quote that ‘Justice and judgment lie often a world apart’ is famously attributed to her.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the suffrage campaign was called off, and the government released all suffragist prisoners.

Pankhurst’s autobiography,’ My Own Story’, appeared in 1914.

During the war, Pankhurst, visited the United States, Canada, and Russia to encourage the industrial mobilization of women. She lived in the United States, Canada, and Bermuda for several years after the war. In 1926, upon returning to England, she was chosen Conservative candidate for an east London constituency, but her health failed before she could be elected.  

In her own lifetime, dividends on her valiant, heroic, and determined efforts began to materialize. In 1918, the Representation of the People Act gave voting rights to women over 30. Emmeline died on 14 June 1928. The Representation of the People Act of 1928, establishing voting equality for men and women(at 21) was passed a few weeks after her death. She must be a happy, contented soul with a gratifying, spontaneous, and generous smile on her otherwise tense and terse clipped face, as she awaited her tryst with the Lord.

The Activist

That Pankhurst as a leading British women’s rights activist, led the movement to win the right for women to vote, is well recognized. But what is her legacy and what must the leaders of women’s movements need to imbibe and implant within their ongoing struggles. Obviously, the contours of challenge and the nature of issues have undergone a transformation, and so have the strategies of protest. A major upshot of securing legal rights for women is to recognize the dichotomy and binary of ‘rich and resourceful’ and ‘poor and resource less’, that has come to divide and stratify the women’s universe with the same pernicious and pervading effect that plagues the society in general. Another formidable challenge is to understand the discrimination and exploitation of women by women themselves.

Emmeline thrust denial of voting rights to British women into the public consciousness. She channelized the public discourse by sheer dint of her conviction and commitment. She believed in ‘deeds and not words’, which so eloquently describes and justifies her often controversial strategies to draw public attention but caused serious concern to authorities. She, singlehandedly, brought the issue of denial of equal voting rights to women to the political fore in an era that was seized with, as most then believed, far weightier and graver challenges.

God is a woman

For her, God was a woman, as she will often say,” Trust in God – She will provide.”

Women have often been neglected as major contributors to the history of the world either through commission or distortion. It’s a delight for us to have taken on the challenge to unearth these overlooked gems and keep relevant the stories of amazing women in history.

The author was the former Information and Broadcasting Secretary, GOI. Mr. Uday Kumar Varma, serves as an esteemed jury member on the SABERA The Social and Business Enterprise Responsible Awards 2021 Jury Board.

You may also like to read our article on Margaret Thatcher

The post Emmeline Pankhurst- right for women to vote appeared first on Woman Endangered.