Wollstonecraft Station upgrade is complete and the station is now accessible easier and more convenient travel for all customers Transport for NSW would like to thank the community for their continued support and cooperation during the upgrade work we invited the community to share their thoughts on a public art proposal for a mural at Wollstonecraft Station we received 292 submissions and would like to thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts on the most suitable theme and style for the artwork We are pleased to announce “a celebration of Country” was the most popular theme and Indigenous art the most popular art style Feedback received during this consultation has been considered by the project team and the preferred theme and style will inform the artist’s design brief.   The artist will be engaged in close consultation with Transport’s Aboriginal Engagement team and key stakeholders with work on the mural expected to be complete in 2023 Please visit the Wollstonecraft Station webpage for information on station facilities and transport services.  Transport for NSW would like to thank the community for their feedback during the planning process Transport for NSW recognise and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and care of Country We pay respect to traditional custodians and Elders past and present The one-bedroom unit at 10/19 Shirley Road was guided at $720,000 and its reserve was set at $730,000. There is a renovated kitchen and parquetry floors. starting at $700,000 and rising in varying increments The property was one of 1560 scheduled to go to auction in Sydney this week Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 63.5 per cent from 970 reported results throughout the week Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate The buyer had been searching for a property for some time and outbid first home buyers from Hornsby and the Hills District The vendor inherited the property and lives on the northern beaches Richardson & Wrench North Sydney’s Victoria Liu said the appeal was down to the location “There are no new listings as we head towards Easter I auctioned another unit in the building last year with four registered so the numbers increased due to supply and demand.” Kurrajong Hills dream cottage listed for sale Play at being Mr Darcy in this grand country estate for sale Family’s 115-year hold on Brunswick home ends through $1 million auction Auctioneer Edward Riley said the strong turnout showed serious buyers remained active priced right and supported by a strong marketing strategy it will always draw solid interest regardless of market conditions,” he said Wollstonecraft’s unit median rose 9.7 per cent to $1,295,000 in the year to December on Domain data a family who were upsizing in the suburb paid $1,951,000 for a five-bedroom home The property at 22 Paringa Drive had no guide; the reserve was $1.85 million. There is a bedroom and bathroom on the lower level for multi-generational living. 3 Baths2 ParkingView listing There were six registered and four active bidders Bidding started at $1.7 million and rose in mainly $10,000 bids The buyers had been searching for a home in the suburb for at least six months and outbid other local families First National Hills District’s Eddie Quispe said interest had been from all over Sydney during the campaign Records show the property last sold for $928,000 in 2014 Cooley auctioneer Michael Garofolo noticed a sense of urgency with buyers wanting to purchase ahead of Easter “A-grade properties will sell regardless of the market Quality homes will sell on Christmas Day.” The Ponds’ median house price rose 9.1 per cent to $1.62 million in the year to December on Domain data a first home buyer couple from the east paid $2.04 million for a cottage in a post-auction negotiation The two-bedroom property at 2 Alexander Street was guided at $2 million; the reserve was $2.2 million. Interiors feature timber floors, a study and a reading nook in one of the bedrooms. 1 Bath− .css-12a1b0h{position:absolute;width:1px;height:1px;margin:-1px;padding:0;-webkit-clip:rect(1px,1px,1px,1px);clip:rect(1px,1px,1px,1px);border:0;overflow:hidden;-webkit-clip-path:inset(100%);clip-path:inset(100%);-webkit-clip-path:none;display:none;}ParkingView listing There were two registered bidders but the couple were the only ones to make an offer The home passed in and sold soon afterwards McGrath Paddington’s Georgia Cleary said the vendor would be “happy with anything over $2 million” after it passed in The buyers had moved back in with their parents to save for a deposit The other registered bidder was a first home buyer from Paddington Records show the deceased estate last sold for $270,000 in 1989 Cleary plans to launch new listings after the election there will be quite a pause for the next three weeks because of Easter school holidays and the election,” she said Paddington’s median house price rose 3.8 per cent to $3,285,000 in the year to December on Domain data there was an impressive turnout for a home that sold for $3,267,000 to a family from Artarmon The five-bedroom property at 13 Beaconsfield Road was guided at $2.6 million; the reserve was $2.75 million. It features art deco curves and a retro bathroom. 3 Baths3 ParkingView listing There were 14 registered bidders and eight of them took part. The buyers, a young family who will live in the property with grandparents, outbid builders and families from the lower north shore. The vendor will move into a retirement home in Willoughby. Bidding opened at $2.5 million and rose in varying increments. Belle Property Lane Cove’s Patrick Lang said the guide “was on the cheaper side” as the home needed work. “The bathrooms and kitchen need to be done, but it’s very liveable,” he said. “There’s new carpet and paint. The price meant people were able to get into a blue-chip suburb.” Lang said A-grade properties sell regardless of market conditions. The information on this website is intended to be of a general nature only and doesn't consider your objectives, financial situation or needs. where we are privileged to live and operate Our editors will review what you’ve submitted and determine whether to revise the article Shelley finished writing the first edition of Frankenstein when she was 19 years old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s best-known book is Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818, revised 1831). She wrote several other novels including Valperga (1823), The Last Man (1826) The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck (1830), Lodore (1835) and a travel book, History of a Six Weeks’ Tour (1817) Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s father was William Godwin, a noted social philosopher, political journalist, and religious Dissenter, and her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft a writer and passionate advocate of educational and social equality for women Late 20th-century publications of her casual writings include The Journals of Mary Shelley and Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1995) Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time An owner-occupier from Chatswood paid $815,000 at auction on Saturday for an apartment in Wollstonecraft with Harbour Bridge views The one-bedroom unit at 10/19 Shirley Road was guided at $720,000 and its reserve was set at $730,000 There is a renovated kitchen and parquetry floors There were 12 registered and three active bidders An owner-occupier from Chatswood paid $815,000 at auction on Saturday for a unit in this block in Wollstonecraft The buyer outbid first home buyers from Hornsby and the Hills District A buyer paid $815,000 at auction on Saturday for a Wollstonecraft apartment with Harbour Bridge views.Credit: Steven Siewert The property at 22 Paringa Drive had no guide; the reserve was $1.85 million There is a bedroom and bathroom on the lower level for multi-generational living There were six registered and four active bidders The two-bedroom property at 2 Alexander Street was guided at $2 million; the reserve was $2.2 million a study and a reading nook in one of the bedrooms The five-bedroom property at 13 Beaconsfield Road was guided at $2.6 million; the reserve was $2.75 million It features art deco curves and a retro bathroom There were 14 registered bidders and eight of them took part a young family who will live in the property with grandparents outbid builders and families from the lower north shore The vendor will move into a retirement home in Willoughby Bidding opened at $2.5 million and rose in varying increments Belle Property Lane Cove’s Patrick Lang said the guide “was on the cheaper side” as the home needed work “The bathrooms and kitchen need to be done The price meant people were able to get into a blue-chip suburb.” Lang said A-grade properties sell regardless of market conditions The one-bedroom unit at was guided at $720,000 and its reserve was set at $730,000 Richardson & Wrench North Sydney\\u2019s Victoria Liu said the appeal was down to the location \\u201CThere are no new listings as we head towards Easter so the numbers increased due to supply and demand.\\u201D it will always draw solid interest regardless of market conditions,\\u201D he said Wollstonecraft\\u2019s unit median rose 9.7 per cent to $1,295,000 in the year to December on Domain data The property at had no guide; the reserve was $1.85 million First National Hills District\\u2019s Eddie Quispe said interest had been from all over Sydney during the campaign \\u201CA-grade properties will sell regardless of the market Quality homes will sell on Christmas Day.\\u201D The Ponds\\u2019 median house price rose 9.1 per cent to $1.62 million in the year to December on Domain data The two-bedroom property at was guided at $2 million; the reserve was $2.2 million McGrath Paddington\\u2019s Georgia Cleary said the vendor would be \\u201Chappy with anything over $2 million\\u201D after it passed in school holidays and the election,\\u201D she said Paddington\\u2019s median house price rose 3.8 per cent to $3,285,000 in the year to December on Domain data The five-bedroom property at was guided at $2.6 million; the reserve was $2.75 million Belle Property Lane Cove\\u2019s Patrick Lang said the guide \\u201Cwas on the cheaper side\\u201D as the home needed work \\u201CThe bathrooms and kitchen need to be done but it\\u2019s very liveable,\\u201D he said The price meant people were able to get into a blue-chip suburb.\\u201D Parents at Tresillian’s Guthrie Childcare Centre in Wollstonecraft have expressed frustration following a sudden announcement of significant fee increases for 2025 with some accusing the facility of inadequate financial transparency Tresillian CEO Rob Mills informed parents of a sharp rise in daily childcare fees citing the Australian Government’s recent decision to grant a 15% pay increase to Early Childhood Education and Care workers over the next two years which range from $160 to $175 per day depending on age group represent increases of between 22.1% and  27.7% “While we wholeheartedly support this increase for our early childhood educators it has a direct impact on the costs of providing care,” Mills wrote He explained that the fee adjustments were necessary to ensure the centre’s financial viability given that the centre had operated at a loss of $268,000 in 2023 we will be unable to support necessary wage increments for our dedicated staff providing high-quality care and services,” the letter stated But the announcement has drawn sharp criticism from parents who described the timing and scale of the increase as unacceptable A letter from some parents sighted by The Sun accused the centre of failing to communicate its financial difficulties earlier noting that an August fee review did not indicate any looming crisis “The $268k deficit at Guthrie would have been known when the 3% fee increase was proposed in August It is incomprehensible why a decision to impose a 20% increase has now been made with just one month’s notice,” the letter stated Parents also challenged the justification for the fee hike arguing that the 10% wage increase set for December 2024 did not warrant such a steep rise it could be expected that fees would increase by 14% from 2024 to 2025,” the letter claimed suggesting that the proposed fees far exceed the actual cost increases tied to wage adjustments and standard inflation benchmarks Mills addressed several of the concerns raised by parents emphasising that the additional fees were solely to fund the mandated pay increases “The additional staff pay increases imposed by the Federal Government are the only reason that the fees had to be adjusted to the current increase,” he wrote He clarified that while the 3% fee adjustment in August was deemed sufficient at the time it was based on increased occupancy rates following the completion of building works “This increment is not subsidising prior financial shortfalls The additional fees raised are used to support the increased staff pay increments imposed by the government,” Mills stated Mills also contested parents’ interpretation of Tresillian’s financial performance noting that the company’s overall $6.5 million surplus last year included $9.6 million from the sale of its Willoughby Centre “Your summary of Tresillian’s financial performance is based on incorrect assumptions and is poorly understood,” he wrote Mills extended the deadline for parents to submit their signed Complying Written Agreements by several days to tomorrow (12 Dec) and noted that many families had already expressed understanding of the challenges “A large number of families have already submitted their signed CWAs and I have received a number of personal emails from families respecting how difficult this fee increase decision has been for Tresillian,” he added Mills further highlighted that Guthrie’s new fees remain competitive “The new Guthrie fees are still lower than the not-for-profit centres in the area including those childcare centres managed by the Council,” he stated encouraging parents to explore their childcare options Another letter sighted by the Sun questioned the claimed benchmarking of Guthrie’s fees against for-profit agencies noting that those centres are subject to government-mandated caps on fee increases which have seperately been reported at just over 4% “The 2025 fee increase does not seem to take into consideration the rate cap and as such does not align with Guthrie’s / Tresillian’s values of the provision of affordable and accessible care to families especially considering the financial stress many families are currently experiencing,” the letter said including staging the fee increase over two to three years or committing to a freeze after the 2025 adjustment They also requested detailed financial updates to rebuild trust Mills’ follow-up correspondence acknowledged further sector-wide pressures driving the fee hikes “The Early Childhood Education and Care sector is in a workforce crisis with high numbers of trained educators and teachers leaving due to burnout and low pay,” he wrote Mills pointed to the Fair Work Commission’s upcoming review of the gender pay gap as another factor likely to drive costs higher “Families are being asked to shoulder the burden of what appears to be poor financial management with no accountability or explanation for why earlier adjustments weren’t made,” one parent commented Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" U704 6A Glen St Milsons PointNSW 2061 Australia 02 8208 6077 Copyright © 2023 Decisive Publishing Pty Ltd Mary Wollstonecraft shook up 18th-century Britain with her barnstorming treatises on equality and women’s fundamental rights And the thinker’s life was just as sensational and rule-breaking as her writing Ellie Cawthorne speaks to biographer Bee Rowlatt to uncover her story Mary Wollstonecraft was a firebrand thinker of the late 18th century whose writing proposed radical ideas about equality for all “Mary Wollstonecraft has a really significant philosophical legacy,” says Bee Rowlatt, author of In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys, who spoke about Wollstonecraft on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast That life took Wollstonecraft from humble beginnings to the heart of Enlightenment Europe, via a front row seat for the French Revolution a treasure hunt for stolen silver along the Norwegian coast Wollstonecraft did not have the most promising of beginnings Her family was sliding rapidly down the social scale as her father quickly squandered the wealth he had inherited Wollstonecraft recalled how he would turn violent after drinking and did not believe in educating girls “Eventually all that injustice bubbled up inside her And as soon as she started writing it just burst out; she went off like a blender with the lid off.” In order to escape her oppressive home life Wollstonecraft began working as a lady’s companion and governess forging connections with several intellectual families she gained access to the latest reading material of the day and was introduced to ideas that expanded her intellectual horizons and fuelled a desire to become a writer She was “a great absorber of current language After her stint as a governess and companion Wollstonecraft fell in with a set of radical thinkers and writers based in Newington Green From publishers and pamphleteers to writers and philosophers these were people questioning the social and political status quo and explored revolutionary ideals – and they inspired Wollstonecraft to do the same Wollstonecraft published her first major work a pamphlet titled A Vindication of the Rights of Men Penned in response to an attack on the French Revolution by philosopher Edmund Burke her arguments cemented her reputation as a noteworthy Enlightenment thinker Wollstonecraft followed this up in 1792 with her most influential treatise which passionately and brilliantly argued that girls should receive the same education as boys and called for the empowerment of women in society and politics Beyond her intellectual and literary contacts Wollstonecraft wanted to live out her revolutionary ideals through romantic connections she proposed a menage-a-trois with the painter Henry Fuseli and his wife but the relevant letters were sadly destroyed so we’ll never really know the truth about what happened there,” says Rowlatt “She was prone to fall massively in love with people – men and women Imagine receiving a hundred text messages in caps lock from the person you’re dating – that’s what a relationship with Mary Wollstonecraft would have been like.” Wollstonecraft – who vehemently believed in the ideals of the French Revolution – travelled to Paris to get a front row seat to this pivotal event in radical history She was warned by friends that her plan was too dangerous; the French king Louis XVI would be executed on the guillotine a month after she arrived “Wollstonecraft rocked up in Paris the week that William Wordsworth left because it was getting too scary for him,” says Rowlatt “Fear was not a problem for Wollstonecraft: she was utterly fearless Despite her unquestionable courage and revolutionary fervour Wollstonecraft’s life in France quickly became a nightmare When several associates from the Girondin faction were executed by the more extreme and violent Jacobins Rowlatt says: “Her entire political history legacy and network was bound up in the ideals of the revolution so it was hard for her when she witnessed the Reign of Terror.” The chastening experience wasn’t just political Wollstonecraft embarked on a passionate affair with an American diplomat and businessman named Gilbert Imlay Imlay left her for another woman and returned to London penniless and unmarried with a newborn baby Wollstonecraft was left to fend for herself through the coldest winter that Paris had seen in 100 years A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790)Her first major foray into print Wollstonecraft wrote this pamphlet in defence of her mentor Richard Price after he had become embroiled in a debate over the values of the French Revolution Driven by the principles of the Enlightenment it was a full-bodied argument in favour of republicanism.“You can read it as a blueprint for human rights fully inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution,” says Rowlatt Wollstonecraft actually lost her nerve halfway through writing it but she was spurred back into action by her publisher Joseph Johnson.“The result really marked her arrival on the scene as a writer and political thinker.”A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)With its demand for “justice for one half of the human race,” Wollstonecraft’s groundbreaking treatise is widely seen as a seminal text in the history of feminism she argues that women too are human beings and rational thought.“That may seem like a very basic point but that was the level of debate at the time,” explains Rowlatt They were simply objects with no rights whatsoever and any independent status they had would be lost at marriage.”Wollstonecraft follows up her assertion of women’s agency by arguing that they should therefore be educated as Rowlatt explains: “Her entire body of work is predicated on the significance of education as a transformative power.”Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden and Denmark (1796)Recounting Wollstonecraft’s time in Scandinavia searching for stolen treasure on behalf of her former lover Gilbert Imlay “It's structured as a series of letters addressed to Imlay although she never mentions him or the true purpose of the trip,” says Rowlatt.“What emerges is a unique combination of travelogue and economic/political treatise on everything she sees on her trip She jumps onto boats and into horse carriages and hijacking ships that aren't meant for passengers all with a baby in tow.”","image":null,"hasBackdrop":true,"useCommercialTheme":false}},{"type":"html","data":{"value":"Mary Wollstonecraft’s Scandinavian treasure huntIn 1795 she returned to London to seek out the father of her child but Imlay’s continued rejections plunged Wollstonecraft into despair and led her to attempt suicide She survived and in a final desperate hope of winning her former lover’s favour once again she agreed to undertake a mission on his behalf This mission was to locate a missing shipment of silver that Imlay had smuggled out of revolutionary France Wollstonecraft headed out on a treasure hunt up the coast of Norway While she never located Imlay’s lost silver the letters written to Imlay during her journey would be published as Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden Wollstonecraft attempted suicide for a second time by jumping into the Thames After finally accepting her affair with Imlay was over Wollstonecraft returned to her literary London life a romantic relationship was developing with the radical writer and philosopher William Godwin she finally found a partnership of equals,” says Rowlatt the relationship posed an intellectual problem for the pair of radical thinkers Godwin had previously argued publicly for the abolition of marriage the couple suffered “a dip in confidence in their ‘experiment in living’ The marriage caused further controversy by exposing that Wollstonecraft had never been married to the father of her first child – a fact which saw her condemned in some quarters Wollstonecraft gave birth to her second child – a daughter by William Godwin Her daughter survived and would follow in Wollstonecraft’s footsteps to become another world-renowned writer: Mary Shelley a grieving Godwin wrote the first biography of Wollstonecraft But this attempt to cement his wife’s legacy dramatically backfired Readers of his frank and uncensored account of Wollstonecraft’s convention-breaking life were horrified to learn of a stream of scandals: unchaperoned travel childbirth out of wedlock and suicide attempts “Godwin’s memoir unleashed a torrent of abuse,” says Rowlatt annihilating her as a credible presence in the political pantheon she was associated with disgust and disgrace.” In the centuries since her death and Godwin’s misjudged biography Wollstonecraft’s legacy has been re-evaluated Her writings on equality continue to inspire activists across the globe while her impassioned arguments on women’s rights have been repeated over and over by those who have hailed her as the ‘foremother of feminism’ “Although she’s not as well-known as she should be Mary Wollstonecraft is a massively significant historical figure,” says Rowlatt “She's one of the key Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century and an early architect of what we now call human rights Wollstonecraft was very much the leading thinker in the ideology of western feminism and was the first person in the English language to call for gender equality.” Bee Rowlatt (@BeeRowlatt) is a writer and cultural events programmer, and author of In Search of Mary (Alma Books, 2015). ). She is also chair of the human rights charity, the Wollstonecraft Society. (@TheWollSoc) She was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Mary Wollstonecraft has a really significant philosophical legacy,” says Bee Rowlatt, author of In Search of Mary: The Mother of all Journeys, who spoke about Wollstonecraft on an episode of the HistoryExtra podcast That life took Wollstonecraft from humble beginnings to the heart of Enlightenment Europe, via a front row seat for the French Revolution A portrait of writer and thinker Mary Wollstonecraft (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)In 1790 all with a baby in tow.”Mary Wollstonecraft’s Scandinavian treasure huntIn 1795 (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)On 30 August 1797 “She's one of the key Enlightenment philosophers of the 18th century Bee Rowlatt (@BeeRowlatt) is a writer and cultural events programmer, and author of In Search of Mary (Alma Books, 2015). ). She is also chair of the human rights charity, the Wollstonecraft Society. (@TheWollSoc) She was speaking to Ellie Cawthorne on the HistoryExtra podcast Member exclusive | Join Dr Lizzie Rodgers for our four-week course on Regency England – from the Georgian kings and Napoleonic Wars to the marriage market and the works of Jane Austen.Explore the course nowAuthorsEllie CawthornePodcast editor HistoryExtraEllie Cawthorne is HistoryExtra’s podcast editor She also contributes to BBC History Magazine runs the podcast newsletter and hosts several live and virtual BBC History Magazine events you are agreeing to site title terms and conditions and privacy policy This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply Hull Truck theatreSnappy movement and a Billy Nomates score can’t make up for the lack of emotional range in this portrait of the 18th-century writer Avowedly independent and radical in thought she dazzled and discombobulated a crusty male establishment with her intellect She turned from governess to author and landed a reporting job in revolutionary France A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a foundational feminist text giving birth to Mary Shelley seems like a postscript Maureen Lennon’s patchwork tribute for Hull Truck and Pilot theatre is a musical collage of fast-paced scenes designed to memorialise a pioneer of sexual equality this is a woman who demands parity with men radicalises children and refuses to be shouted down The play is “told for all women who find themselves howling at the world” Laura Elsworthy has a mop of blood-orange hair that shrieks rebelliousness All this resists the pull towards romanticised period drama in favour of a cartoon-like immediacy But it is a jokey format without jokey content In the first half we get one overwrought scene after another too short for us to identify with the characters too angsty to show Wollstonecraft as a rounded human being There is much shouting and no emotional range all strident calls-to-arms performed with much earnestness – arms aloft clenched fists and punches in the air – but with as little joy as there is tonal variety Things perk up with the chewier scenes of the second half when Wollstonecraft wrestles with putting theory into practice and the dramatic momentum builds Mary and the Hyenas strains too hard to make its revolutionary point At Hull Truck theatre until 1 March, then at Wilton’s Music Hall, London agree with Dumler-Winckler’s characterization of a progressive Wollstonecraft though finding this to be a reason to condemn rather than to praise The inevitable conclusion of this line of thinking is that if Wollstonecraft is the face of first-wave feminism this appears to be a debate about how to interpret the thought of a philosopher who But I think the partisan appropriation and weaponization of Wollstonecraft—the so-called “mother of feminism”—is symptomatic of much greater issues than academic squabbles: it reveals our continuing struggle to see the needs of mothers and children not as in opposition to each other but instead as both essential and worthy of protection in a just and healthy society if Wollstonecraft is the figure that uncovers such profound polarization she can also help us move forward in the debate about “reproductive justice,” as Dumler-Winckler puts it Dumler-Winckler: Claiming Wollstonecraft for the Pro-Choice Cause evidence that Wollstonecraft would have been in favor of legalized abortion is found partly in Wollstonecraft’s “own life experience,” and partly “in her late novel The Wrongs of Woman.” Dumler-Winckler quotes but then discounts Wollstonecraft’s strong language against abortion in her most famous text pointing her reader to Wollstonecraft’s own life and her later novel instead But does the evidence actually support Dumler-Winckler’s claims through the experience of her own mother and later her sister Eliza—of the cruelty that women in her own time could be subjected to by abusive husbands Dumler-Winckler seems to infer that Wollstonecraft would have been sympathetic to women seeking to abort a child Dumler-Winckler extrapolates tacit approval of abortion This logic is closer to guessing than to inferring based on reliable records; in any case over-analyzing a thinker’s biographical details as evidence of her thoughts comes with its own set of issues what remains is the evidence presented by Wollstonecraft’s novel Maria: Or Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman: Pro-Life or Pro-Choice The Wrongs of Woman was left unfinished by Wollstonecraft and the partial manuscript was published posthumously a noblewoman wrongly accused by her husband of being mentally ill a lower-class woman who works at the asylum where Maria’s husband has had her imprisoned Both women suffer at the hands of men who fail to recognize their dignity as human persons; both women experience pregnancy as a grave burden because of the abuse to which they are subjected Dumler-Winckler agrees with me on this interpretation of the novel so far She admits that Jemima takes the abortifacient “not without compassion for the fetus within her,” but because she “was ultimately willing to sacrifice herself and the fetus to resist the cycle of social and gendered oppression.” Dumler-Winckler interprets this decision as an “agential refusal to reproduce those systems and cycles by generating yet another victim,” which is even more baffling As pro-life advocates often and rightly point out aborting an innocent child is not a brave act saving a child from an often cruel and unwelcoming world but rather the surest way of generating another victim but engaging in the act of domination oneself Jemima’s decision to abort is no act of radical feminism but a testament to what despair can do to a person’s moral compass is not that Dumler-Winckler herself justifies Jemima’s decision she did not clearly advocate women’s rights to abortion she “suspects” that Wollstonecraft was probably “an advocate of women’s gestational agency and what we would now call rights to abortion.” Her suspicion stems from this observation: “At no point in the novel is Wollstonecraft’s language or tone judgmental or condemnatory of these forms of judgment and agency The novel is meant to make readers identify with these women to sympathize with their decisions and action.” A gifted reader of Wollstonecraft she may otherwise be but Dumler-Winckler is not an astute literary critic She mistakenly conflates Wollstonecraft’s sympathetic portrayal of Jemima in The Wrongs of Woman with approval and even endorsement But this simply doesn’t square with the novel as a whole it would have been impossible for Wollstonecraft to portray Jemima unsympathetically given the gravely tragic course of her life recounting an action is not the same as condoning it if Wollstonecraft doesn’t explicitly judge or condemn Wollstonecraft does not in fact show Jemima to be empowered or liberated by her decision to abort her child highlighting how a difference of class may lead a poor woman (Jemima) to seek an abortion while another her similarly friendless but more financially stable counterpart (Maria) keeps her child As Jemima takes the “potion” procured for her by her master (and father of her child) she describes how emotions of “rage” at her mistreatment are “giving place to despair.” The abortifacient takes effect and immediately Jemima’s heart grows “sick” at the knowledge; her “mental anguish” is entirely “swallowed up” in “the horrors of approaching dissolution.” This sense of tragedy combined with the numerous scenes in which Maria describes what a blessing it is to be able to care for her child in spite of her hardships renders unlikely the conclusion that Wollstonecraft would support abortion access today Today’s Debate: Putting Children or Mothers First Though on its face this is a debate about how to interpret a literary work Dumler-Winckler’s article is symptomatic of a much wider and more pervasive issue the challenges we face in recognizing both the mother’s and the child’s well-being The battle cry of the pro-choice progressive Left is all too often that right-wing pro-lifers only care about the child until birth some pro-lifers—however well-intentioned—can in their enthusiasm to protect the unborn child fail to show understanding and compassion for those many women who consider abortion not because they are inherently evil but because they find themselves in desperate situations In a culture where the two options most often presented to us seem to be either a pro-life I suggest that Wollstonecraft can help us consider a third path Wollstonecraft encourages us to care about women’s rights and place in society not because of some abstract principle of individual self-determination with a view to women becoming more virtuous individuals it is frustrating that Dumler-Winckler should have all the right intuitions but bring them to puzzling conclusions the kinds of “systems of domination” to which Jemima and Maria are subjected “distort our concepts and cultivation of the virtues.” But instead of advocating a fairer society that punishes abusive men and supports pregnant women and mothers in precarious situations Dumler-Winckler proposes a pro-abortion “reproductive justice” as the solution that Wollstonecraft would have probably approved I believe Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on fostering the conditions for virtue to flourish—in her more famous work A Vindication of the Rights of Woman especially—is entirely reconcilable not only with a pro-life position but with a pro-life activism that considers the needs and well-being of mothers and their unborn children this means being truly pro-family in supporting both pro-family public policy and individual mothers in our local communities I am hardly making revolutionary suggestions and tax breaks for large families are all policies we would do well to support we should do what I think Wollstonecraft invites us to do with the character of Jemima: condemn abortion while being compassionate to those who believe it is their only plausible choice Wollstonecraft’s depiction of the tragedies of abortion suggests that a pro-life feminism is an antidote to both mainstream liberal feminism and right-wing anti-feminism. As Louise Perry has put it despite the negative connotations of the term some kind of feminism is still needed because the social and political interests of women and children the most vulnerable members of our society Given the concern for both mothers’ and children’s well-being throughout Wollstonecraft’s work it seems she would be in favor of a maternal feminism a feminism oriented not toward “choice,” but toward virtue I believe Dumler-Winckler is guilty of a severe misreading of Wollstonecraft that leads her to be weaponized by both the Left and the Right for their own agendas rather than accepted as the complex and idiosyncratic thinker that she was While I heartily disagree that Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman affirms women’s rights to abortion Dumler-Winckler is right that “maternal health and social support” are of central importance I think she would agree that better maternal health and social support for mothers are the way out of partisan disputes about feminism and reproductive justice We must love mother and child alike: there is no other path to true “reproductive justice.”  Image by leszekglasner and licensed via Adobe Stock the pro-life movement has made real progress Every child’s existence is a gift not simply to the mother and father but to… By carefully documenting his unique contribution to street level pro-life activism The two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment at 4/1 Milner Crescent had a guide and reserve of $1 million. The successful buyer purchased the unit as an investment property, outbidding first home buyers from St Leonards and the eastern suburbs. It was one of 595 scheduled auctions in Sydney on Saturday. By evening, Domain Group recorded a preliminary auction clearance rate of 50.7 per cent from 696 reported results across the week, while 197 auctions were withdrawn. Withdrawn auctions are counted as unsold properties when calculating the clearance rate. Auction Works auctioneer Lorenzo Giunti said it’s now common for bidding to be slow to start as buyers have become price sensitive in recent months. LJ Hooker Double Bay’s Aaron Del Monte said buyers from the eastern suburbs were interested in the unit due to its $1 million guide. “Some properties sell phenomenally well and others struggle. This property was offered at a good price point, and it’s in a convenient location, with the Metro and cafes nearby,” he said. Why Turramurra is the 'epitome of the leafy north shore' ‘$200,000 is the new $80,000’: Where even top earners can’t afford a house Five families bid for $4.6m Turramurra home to be near private schools Wollstonecraft’s unit median rose 8.1 per cent to $1.27 million in the year to September on Domain data. In Redfern, a two-storey house, where the upper level can be accessed only via an external staircase, sold under the hammer for $2.61 million to a young family from Alexandria. 3 Baths1 ParkingView listing The four-bedroom, three-bathroom unit at 44 Redfern Street had its guide and reserve set at $2 million. Five out of seven registered bidders raised the price in varying increments after an opening bid of $1.8 million for the deceased estate. The parties included investors and young families from Redfern, Alexandria, Woollahra and Coogee. BresicWhitney Inner East’s Michael Kirk said the buyers would reinstate the internal staircase and give the home a cosmetic upgrade. Kirk said that while there was good interest, the result was surprising as another property on the same street sold for $2 million in November. 1 Bath1 ParkingView listing “It has a north rear aspect, parking and is a bigger-sized house for Redfern, but in saying that, the four-bedroom, two-bathroom property at 38 Redfern Street sold for $2 million It’s surprising to see something similar with such a big difference in price,” he said an apartment sold for $2,021,000 at auction to a young couple from the suburb the price increasing almost six-fold since it last sold The three-bedroom, one-bathroom property at 4/5 William Street had a guide of $1.65 million and a reserve of $1.7 million Seven out of 14 registered bidders raised the price in varying increments after an opening bid of $1.65 million The parties included young families from Randwick and other pockets of the eastern suburbs Ray White Eastern Beaches’ Angus Gorrie said the successful buyers had sold another property in Randwick to upgrade Gorrie said buyers are motivated to purchase now ahead of a potential interest rate cut next year “I think buyers know that interest rates will go down next year so there’s a bit of motivation to secure something not just before Christmas but before rates start to come down,” he said Gorrie brought forward the auction by a week due to strong interest and although the kitchen and bathroom need renovating the auction result was really solid,” he said a portion of a bowling green sold under the hammer for $2.7 million All three registered bidders raised their paddles for the vacant block of land at 12 Apps Avenue. The price rose in $10,000 and $5000 bids after opening at $2.5 million. The successful buyer, who outbid other locals, is from the upper north shore. The Marshall Group Real Estate’s Craig Marshall said the buyer intended to build a house on the land but might sell it in future. Marshall said, while there was a lot of interest in the property, the fact it was half a bowling green confused some parties. “It’s unique, but for some it was too difficult to think about the possibilities,” he said. Marshall said bowling clubs are doing it tough, with patrons cancelling their memberships. “Club Turramurra has become a good social club, so they’re going to put the money into upgrades for more of a family-friendly club,” he said. “In general, the market has been slow for spring, but properties are still selling, as long as the owners meet the market.” 'Manosphere' and online abuse to be subject of lecture next month Tuesday, 11th March — By Dan Carrier Bee Rowlatt hangs a picture of the inspirational Mary Wollstonecraft This article was published in our ‘Stop The Trolls’ special for International Women’s Day 2025 IT was a celebration of one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment – but the people behind a piece of artwork marking the life of Mary Wollstonecraft faced a toxic online backlash the sculpture by Maggi Hambling was unveiled in November it did much more than mark Wollstonecraft life and her times in Newington Green – it prompted a vicious online backlash about the style and form of the sculpture who was the driving force behind the memorialisation of the trailblazing human rights advocate it was an interesting maelstrom she found herself pushed into It was a fairly radical break from what people thought constituted ‘public art.” It was very different,” she recalls The day the art work was unveiled saw social media awash with opinions about its validity Bee had to sit back and watch as voices were raised the response was a body blow but at the end of the day we wanted everyone to know who Wollstonecraft was and what she stood for,” she says “People had a hissy fit and the internet came crashing down We took an absolute beating online that week While some of the comments were at best misguided and others just plain mean Bee was able to see the positive side of being caught up in a media whirl “The thing was I managed to tell myself it did not matter as long as people were responding to Wollstonecraft “Thankfully it helped raise awareness and also brought support in for other statutes and other campaigns – for example I went to Newington Green soon after and there were crowds there looking at it and discussing it penned a book which saw her re-trace the writer’s steps as she set off on a quest to find a ship full of treasure “I have a long track record with Mary Wollstonecraft,” says the writer “I retraced the journey she made in 1795 from the streets of Paris during the French Revolution to Norway She embarked on a journey to find some stolen treasure that her dodgy boyfriend had nicked “She set off with her baby  and it just struck me as such an extraordinary thing to do so I decided to follow her journey and it became something of a full-blown obsession with her life and her courage She lived in radical times and was a voice for the age The statue in Newington Green was ‘misunderstood’ As social media and other digital spaces have become a poorly policed landscape full of toxic behaviour Bee wonders what Wollstonecraft would have made of it “She would be raging at the state of social media,” she says She really took to pamphlet writing and was a brilliant communicator She used all and every means she could to further her views.” is hosting its annual lecture at the University of Westminster in April with Laura Bates The topic is about the “Manosphere – and the rise of hostile environments online.” “It’s about the toxic take-over of the internet and digital spaces,” adds Bee “These places were used for community building and sharing ideas but they have become just not safe for women “Women are 17 times more likely to be trolled online than men – but so many people have to use these spaces to share and promote ideas It is a vital question that needs to be considered: how do you use a space with such toxicity to promote human rights?” Wollstonecraft would have engaged by using the power of her argument “Our emphasis with Wollstonecraft is her work “Even when she went into battle with those she fundamentally disagreed with That’s what she would be trying to do today.” https://www.wollstonecraftsociety.org/news-1/ws-lecture-2025 Community update on action to mitigate rail noise impacts on the Waverton and Wollstonecraft railway section Sydney Trains operates the Sydney metropolitan rail network The Waverton and Wollstonecraft railway section is located in a populated area on some of the tightest curves on the network These conditions generate high frequency rail noise when the wheel flange rubs against the rail and wheel squeal when the wheels stick and slip on the rail.   Studies and mitigation strategies over the past two decades have looked at reducing rail noise impacts for nearby residents and the EPA has engaged with the local community including the Waverton Wollstonecraft Rail Noise Action Group (WWRNAG) The EPA has required Sydney Trains to take action to address noise concerns including pollution reduction programs to identify the cause and possible mitigation methods the EPA commissioned an independent rail noise specialist to conduct a review of Sydney Trains’ operation and maintenance of the rail network at Waverton and Wollstonecraft The EPA issued  Sydney Trains with a Penalty Notice for failing to sufficiently maintain plant and equipment which was a breach of their Environment Protection Licence conditions.  Sydney Trains commissioned their own independent study of this railway section track engineering and wheel and rail dynamics to give further recommendations on noise mitigation measures This report and the program of implementation was provided to the EPA in 2022 As a result of regulatory action and studies Sydney Trains undertook significant maintenance work This work aims to mitigate noise and serves as a foundation from which further works can be conducted Sydney Trains is continuing to review its grinding regime to optimise the maintenance cycle It has also identified that the shape of the rail in the area may be altered to reduce noise output and has committed to implementing these actions The EPA is continuing to monitor the progress of these strategies and Sydney Trains’ environmental performance Sydney Trains will be required to conduct an assessment to determine their efficacy The EPA will review the results and consider its next steps to ensure a positive outcome is achieved and maintained We pay respect to the Traditional Custodians and First Peoples of NSW and acknowledge their continued connection to their country and culture Wollstonecraft is one of the lower north shore’s lesser-known pockets despite claiming harbour frontage Sharing its borders with Greenwich and Waverton and the amenity-rich suburbs of St Leonards and Crows Nest Wollstonecraft is nearly entirely residential with the exception of the private Mater Hospital on Rocklands Road and a cafe at the train station Tom Scarpignato from Belle Property Neutral Bay has been selling homes in Wollstonecraft for 12 years and says convenience is key to the suburb’s appeal “It’s suburban and leafy but you’ve got harbour foreshore and the city at your fingertips Aysha Anwar has lived in Wollstonecraft for two years and says the location was a major drawcard “There’s so much happening around it – a lot of commercial and residential development yet it’s one of those quiet suburbs you find in the back streets Zetland: The former industrial wasteland turned inner-city hub ‘It’s unbelievable’: Sydney’s newest million-dollar suburbs revealed Future-proof your assets: Why you should be investing in sustainable homes Anwar says she loves the quick city commute either by bus or train (just four stops to Wynyard) and the easy walk to Crows Nest’s many shops and eateries The latter juts into Sydney Harbour and is perfect for an easy bushwalk Positioned at the southern tip of the suburb overlooking Gore Cove to the west and Balls Head Bay to the east but especially as a vantage point on New Year’s Eve and for kids who make a beeline for the custom-designed adventure playground from families and young couples to people who’ve lived here for a long time and it feels like everyone’s welcome,” says Anwar “It’s particularly popular with downsizers who have sold the family home in the upper north shore or the Hills or Chatswood or Epping and want convenience and lifestyle,” he says Apartments make up about 80 per cent of dwelling stock and the 250-odd free-standing homes rarely come to market they typically fetch upwards of $5 million Scarpignato says units in the well-established smaller apartment blocks built from the 1950s to the 1980s are keenly sought by buyers wanting a reliable investment “They’ve never been more popular,” he says They’re built solidly and they’re boutique blocks of between nine and 14 apartments this four-level townhouse comes with level street access and a large rear courtyard The open-plan living spaces include a gas and stone kitchen and each bedroom has built-in storage Belle Property Neutral Bay’s Tom Scarpignato is selling the home with a guide of $2.05 million. this north-east facing apartment boasts Harbour Bridge and city skyline views from the kitchen Features include airconditioning and a communal rooftop terrace Marriott Lane Real Estate’s Stuart Howard takes the home to auction on April 30 with a guide of $935,000. We do not endorse or recommend any sponsored lenders or insurers, or their loan or insurance products. Critics suggest naked figure is a missed opportunity but artist Maggi Hambling defends her work It took 200 years to get a statue honouring the life of pioneering philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft but its creators have faced criticism from almost the moment it was unveiled The new sculpture was met with dismay and bafflement by some when it was unveiled in north London on Tuesday with critics asking why it did not directly depict Wollstonecraft and why the “mother of feminism” had been celebrated with a naked female form The sculpture, which shows a silvery naked everywoman figure held up by a swirling mingle of female forms, is the product of 10 years of hard graft and persistent fundraising by the Mary on The Green campaign, which raised the £143,000 required for its creation. Read moreBut on Tuesday some critics described the artwork – created by Maggi Hambling one of Britain’s most important and occasionally controversial artists – as a missed opportunity who played a key role in the campaign to erect a statue of Millicent Fawcett said the decision-making process had been “catastrophically wrong” “I don’t for a second want to take away from the huge effort that they put into doing this but what a waste of all the hard work,” she said “I honestly feel that actually this representation is insulting to her I can’t see her feeling happy to be represented by this naked A woman photographs the new sculpture of British author and feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft Photograph: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty ImagesShe argued that it should have depicted a recognisable Wollstonecraft as less than 3% of statues in the UK were of non-royal women – “We’ve celebrated so few women from the past that the temptation is to attempt [to represent] all of womanhood which is never an issue when it’s a male statue,” she said The writer Caitlin Moran tweeted: “Imagine if there was a statue of a hot young naked guy ‘in tribute’ to eg Churchill But Hambling told PA Media that the statue was every woman and clothes would have restricted her to a time and place “It’s not a conventional heroic or heroinic likeness of Mary Wollstonecraft a writer who has been a central figure in the fight to have a statue of Wollstonecraft said the statue represented “an idea of collaboration” and the birth of feminism “Maggie Hambling is a pioneering artist and we wanted to do something different to putting people on pedestals,” she said I would be having a slightly easier day today.” Others criticised the form of the naked figure who was involved in the Millicent Fawcett statue campaign said: “Any passing teenage boy is not going to think Rowlatt said the initial reaction to the statue in Newington Green had been positive and had provoked debate and recognition of Wollstonecraft’s life and work “I believe that public art is very political the more people that know about Mary Wollstonecraft By 2024-07-01T09:45:00+01:00 French director Mia Hansen-Løve’s If Love Should Die a biopic of UK writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft Mubi and Arte France Cinéma are financing production The Match Factory is handling worldwide sales Wollstonecraft is regarded as one of the founding feminist philosophers and is best known for her 1792 book A Vindication Of The Rights of Woman Hansen-Løve’s recent credits include One Fine Morning and Bergman Island Bookmark this page and keep track of the latest film release dates in the UK & Ireland The posting on Trump’s Truth Social platform is sending shockwaves around the world US industry frantically working out possible next steps ’Thunderbolts*’ has achieved the third-biggest opening number for a US studio film in 2025 Bookmark this page to keep track of all the latest festival dates CAD $90,000 in cash and prizes presented at Friday’s ceremony in Toronto Screen International is the essential resource for the international film industry access to the Screen International archive and supplements including Stars of Tomorrow and World of Locations Site powered by Webvision Cloud A fine portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft as an Enlightenment intellectual neglects the complexity of her views on the ‘oppression of my sex’ Reflecting on her career two years before her premature death, Mary Wollstonecraft described herself as one of those who serve as “sign-posts while forced to stand still themselves amidst the mud and dust” but the self-description seems particularly apt now when a statue of a nude woman commemorating her unveiled recently on Newington Green in north London is getting lots of critical mud chucked at it and the theme to which she returned repeatedly in subsequent writings until her death in childbirth Her short life was marked by bold nonconformity preferring to “struggle with any obstacles rather than go into a state of dependence” she determined to live as freely as possible in England’s class-ridden patriarchal society Schooled only in the rudiments of reading and writing she eventually became proficient in four languages and conversant with all the major strands of Enlightenment thought From the age of 19 she earned her own living often finding herself in very straitened circumstances But when the philandering father of her first daughter offered her financial support after deserting her for an actress she refused it: “I want not such vulgar comfort nor will accept it,” she told Gilbert Imlay was likewise told of her resolution to “earn the money I want” with her pen Pregnant with the future Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame she married Godwin but insisted that they live apart “I wish you from my soul to be riveted in my heart; but I do not desire to have you always at my elbow,” she wrote to him affectionately that she took on the heroic stature she enjoys today when we forcibly feel,” Wollstonecraft observed of herself in 1795 Sylvana Tomaselli’s book moves dexterously between he feelings and reasonings producing a portrait that is both fresh and compelling Beginning with an account of “What She Liked and Loved” (all the chapter titles are reminiscent of the novels of the period) the book takes some revealing new routes through her work We learn about her love of theatre and music and her passion for the beauties of nature ‘A very good hater’ … Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft by John Opie Photograph: Dea Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty ImagesRegularly portrayed (as feminists so often are) as a killjoy here we see Wollstonecraft embracing life’s pleasures (And a woman of uninhibited vitality: one of my favourite images enjoying every minute of it.) We also meet her as a friend and lover where again we witness strong feelings at play although here pleasure is often overmatched by pain But if Wollstonecraft was a woman of deep likes and loves she was also and most of Tomaselli’s book is devoted to what she hated about her society and how she aimed to change it The Rights of Woman made Wollstonecraft a celebrity the “Amazonian philosophess” who put feminism on the political map While acknowledging her outrage at society’s treatment of her sex Tomaselli wants to replace Wollstonecraft the pioneer feminist with Wollstonecraft the Enlightenment intellectual whose views on women were only part of a wide-ranging “philosophy of humanity” The Rights of Woman should be “dethroned” as the defining text of Wollstonecraft’s oeuvre in favour of A Vindication of the Rights of Men which rehearsed what Tomaselli regards as the foundational features of her thought: her damning critique of modern “civilisation” (an 18th-century coinage) alongside her revolutionary programme for a “true civilisation” of liberty equality and social justice founded on a moral reformation of humanity This broad perspective on Wollstonecraft’s thought is not the radical break with existing scholarship that Tomaselli implies although many align her political ideas with one or other “ism”: liberalism Tomaselli rightly rejects such labelling as misleading and/or anachronistic Instead she deftly weaves together material from Wollstonecraft’s minor works with her major nonfiction texts to capture the “tone and spirit” of her philosophy while highlighting its strongly historical-prognostic slant evident from A Vindication of the Rights of Men onward How had the civilised world reached its current critical juncture and what would come of this transformative moment all of Wollstonecraft’s thought is framed by these questions along with the combined faith in human potential and divine intention that kept alive her belief in the eventual arrival of an age of “more equal freedom Ought we to be commemorating Wollstonecraft the Enlightenment philosopher rather than the trailblazing feminist?Brave hopes from a courageous woman So ought we to be commemorating this Wollstonecraft rather than Wollstonecraft the trailblazing feminist While “feminist” is certainly anachronistic (the term didn’t come into use until the late 19th century) from 1792 onward the “oppression of my sex” was Wollstonecraft’s overriding concern reasoning deeply on it because she felt so strongly about it especially The Rights of Woman with its fierce denunciations of women’s failings: their irrationalism and – most off-putting perhaps for modern readers – women’s sensualism their willing enslavement to “casual lust” But this censoriousness was typical of proto-feminist writing in her day Tomaselli misses the changes: setting out to celebrate the major philosopher she diminishes the living thinker by not tracing the growth of her mind Wollstonecraft’s corpus is riddled with inconsistencies and paradoxes Tomaselli acknowledges this but does not value it seeking rather to reconcile competing positions whenever possible But Wollstonecraft is often best understood through these tensions which highlight both the novelty and complexity of the issues with which she was struggling and the creative energy that she brought to them She was not an academic but a revolutionary: what did mere consistency mean to her When Wollstonecraft died she left behind an unfinished novel In this extraordinary book she openly defended illicit female sexual pleasure (a note not struck again within feminism for well over a century) made a first attempt at intersectionality by exploring the connections between class and gender oppression These major developments in Wollstonecraft’s thought do not appear in Tomaselli’s book because as a political philosopher rather than a literary scholar But Wollstonecraft the philosopher cannot be separated from the writer who used imaginative literature as she said in the introduction to her first novel to conjure up “possibilities” – both for her sex and for humankind as a whole freedom-loving woman so widely (and controversially) celebrated – and who didn’t like brave freedom-loving women being depicted as heroines – we need a fuller picture of a Wollstonecraft whose equalitarian ambitions for her sex are still far from realised today Wollstonecraft: Philosophy, Passion and Politics by Sylvana Tomaselli is published by Princeton (£25). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com Both were born into privilege and steeped in empire Britain’s outstanding black women deserve to be honoured too The prospect of a lifesize statue of Virginia Woolf in the capital is moving closer with a fundraising event this week that campaigners hope will help reach their £50,000 target It makes perfect sense that Virginia Woolf should be honoured: she was perhaps the best known of the modernist writers in the early part of the 20th century an innovator of stream-of-consciousness writing She is recognised for her classic novels including Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and brilliant feminist essays such as A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas In fact, the campaign to have her recognised was aided by the backlash against another female statue – one honouring the writer, philosopher and founding mother of western feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft. Unveiled last month, the statue controversially portrayed a naked woman with a buff gym-body and abundant pubic hair The fact it took over 200 years for Wollstonecraft’s life to be commemorated only added to the sense of outrage Women have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to statues – a 2018 study found they were represented by only 174 statues of 828 surveyed in Britain many assumptions around gender need updating too Today these feminist icons are seen to deserve lasting recognition not only because of their achievements, but because they are somehow one of “us”. The artist behind the Wollstonecraft statue, Maggi Hambling, describes the figure as an “everywoman” Woolf campaigner Cheryl Robson suggests her bronze form near Richmond Bridge on a terrace overlooking the Thames will provide girls and women with a role model The sculpture includes a bench so that members of the public can engage in conversation with the author – a lovely idea though deeply ironic considering Woolf was a notorious snob Yet do Woolf and Wollstonecraft really represent all women Both were born into wealthy families and their writing is steeped in the language and ideology of the British empire Woolf herself had the freedom to write largely thanks to money inherited through her family’s colonial activities And in her most famous essay about women and writing she disparages a silent and very alien “negress” who apparently does not count as a woman Wollstonecraft herself built an argument on the value of women as intelligent and deserving of education by comparing them over and over to objectified slaves – 80 times in her landmark text A Vindication of the Rights of Woman And as writer and professor Moira Ferguson makes clear in her book Subject to Others Wollstonecraft pushed for political enfranchisement for white women while dehumanising black women and men These feminist writers might be a long way from the likes of white supremacists Cecil Rhodes and Edward Colston whose statues were targeted by anti-racism campaigners the representation of these two feminist figures as down-to-earth is well wide of the mark The memorial to Mary Seacole in the grounds of St Thomas’ hospital in London Photograph: PjrStatues/Alamy Stock PhotoEvidence that Wollstencraft Woolf and many other feminists of the past spared little if any thought to advocating for women of colour should not be swept under the carpet Do modern-day feminists really want to imitate those in power who have long omitted “unhelpful” passages of history Britain’s lack of statues of women is bad enough, but it is pitiful too that only two represent black women: one for Crimean war nurse Mary Seacole; the other for Olympian Kelly Holmes Hopefully we’ll see statues in the future representing a broader range of women. After all, Britain’s outstanding women have not all been white and posh. Surely deserving is Mary Prince the first woman to present an anti-slavery petition to parliament and the first black woman to write and publish an autobiography A petition is currently under way to install a statue of her outside the Museum of London Docklands Another contender must be Phillis Wheatley who in 1773 became the first female writer of African heritage to be published in the English language A plaque commemorating her achievement was installed outside London’s Dorsett City hotel last year Eaton raised 10 children and worked a series of jobs as a seamstress Her relatives are battling to have a plaque in her name Statues invite us to ask questions about who should be valued and why rather than the stiff privileged men on plinths we could see statues of amazing women from different backgrounds who contributed to society leading campaigns Claire Hynes teaches literature and creative writing at the University of East Anglia Looking for a job? Search and apply for jobs and fellowships at FII's Job & Opportunities Board. Click here Dear reader, this article is free to read and it will remain free – but it isn’t free to produce. If you want to support the work that goes behind publishing high-quality feminist media content, please donate to FII and keep us paywall free Discrete and overlapping patriarchal arrangements enforce a hegemony that has dictated the lives of women for centuries Women’s life narratives are an intervention in this discourse providing us with an epistemological standpoint with a more encompassing vantage point of the society In articulating their individual “self” women’s autobiographies also give a contrapuntal reading of the patriarchal heteronormative society these life narratives are polyphonic and cannot be homogenised in the context of postcoloniality caste hierarchy and cultural differences of the writer Different social locations demand different readings of the text Both of these documents undermined the earlier belief in a divinely ordained hierarchical society They established a new idea of man’s place in society based on the principles of rationality as much a claimant to natural rights as men If this status as rational subjects are at all denied or questioned This in itself is a sign not only of injustice but also of “tyrannical irrationality.”  “Who made man the exclusive judge of that if woman shares with him the gift of reason?“ Wollstonecraft does away with the question She claims the discourse by asking the question who says women are irrational She goes on to state that any statement regarding women’s irrationality is itself made from a position that is inconsistent argues that most women do appear to be ignorant because of any inherent lack of rationality in them rather it is because they are denied proper education by their fathers and because any exercise of their reasoning faculty is looked down upon by society at large which regards such exercise of the reasoning faculty as “unfeminine“ “It is requisite of her to be modest circumspect and reserved; and that she should bear in the sight of others Wollstonecraft is highly skeptical of having a female education which limits its doctrines to teaching women the maneuvering of their physical charms to entice men She asserts active engagement of women in all domains instead of passive domesticity Her aim is to culminate “more observant daughters more reasonable mothers.” Her suggestion is therefore to completely overhaul the education system for women which would allow them to emerge as fully rational beings But she is also aware that it requires more than the change of heart of individual patriarchs within the family about the education of their daughters to establish women as rational beings she argues that both men and women were ultimately “educated to a great degree by the opinions and manners of the society.”  she finds it too deeply rooted within the patriarchal society to allow women to emerge in the socio-political arena as rational citizens She therefore advocates that society itself should be radically transformed to “bring about a revolution in female manners.” The indoctrination of the patriarchal discourse is such that from an early age the female child is conditioned to follow the masculine assumption of femininity The text describes this as “barren blooming” which is attributed to a “false system of education” imposed by narratives written by men to create more “alluring mistresses than affectionate wives and rational mothers.” In other words she detested the infantilisation of women in male texts a contrapuntal reading of the text reveals how Wollstonecraft herself has internalised many of the prejudices of the dominant narrative of patriarchy “Wollstonecraft’s distrust of women’s sexuality (including her own) is evident.”  she is dissenting male texts like Emile and Bruke’s’ classist and sexist sentiments “on the other hand “her manner of rationalizing the claim of equal rights across sexes are strikingly similar to the male conservative voice of the abstract enlightenment rationalist.” Wollstonecraft’s construction of a category of new women compounded the intersection of moral reform Both transgression and subversion are evident in her text establishing it as the foremost document of Anglo-American feminist criticism it needs to be highlighted that these texts emerge from socially privileged locations on accounts of cultural capital and class Wollstonecraft’s distrust of the “feminine” was invisible to the section of working women in Industrial England as proto-feminist and early-feminist texts these writings laid the blueprint of the anticipated feminist waves It established a tradition of questioning the centre and dissent that not only created the category of “the new woman” but also introduced the possibility of dissent and revision within the feminist worldview poet and spoken word artist based in New Delhi Her works have been published on various platforms Indian Review E-Journal and department and annual magazines of Miranda House she is pursuing an MA in English at Jawaharlal Nehru University Shahinda is a multimedia journalist with an experience of more than five years She has done her Masters in Mass Communication from AJK MCRC Jamia Millia Islamia Feminism in India is an intersectional feminist media platform that has emerged as one of the biggest voices for young people from diverse sociopolitical backgrounds to write their lived experiences thought-provoking and informative feminist platform requires a lot of time A few hundred rupees or a few thousand would go a long way in helping us stay paywall free and keep serving you the fresh feminist content that you love By Sumedha Bhattacharyya By Priya Verma By Amarendra Kishore By Anushka Bharadwaj By Dipavali Hazra By Devrupa Rakshit By Lakshmi Yazhini By Shivani Patel Feminism In India is an award-winning digital intersectional feminist media organisation to learn educate and develop a feminist sensibility among the youth © FII Media Private Limited | All rights reserved Buy Now! [READ FULL BIO] Feminists want their poster women—and they want them to exemplify feminist virtues In Modern Virtue: Mary Wollstonecraft and a Tradition of Dissent Emily Dumler-Winckler is intent on rehabilitating this late-18th-century English thinker as a feminist theologian and ethicist but it is important to note how feminists fall short but because expecting other feminists (or oneself) to be perfect is self-destructive and politically counterproductive Wollstonecraft fell in love—madly and blindly Wollstonecraft’s posthumously published letters detail her disastrous and not-quite-clear-headed love affair with Gilbert Imlay a disreputable American businessman whom she met in France in the midst of the revolution but focuses on Wollstonecraft’s elevated philosophy of “enlightened love”—that is love informed and ordered by a clear mind and cultivated virtues that same Wollstonecraft who published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman also regrets being hoodwinked into this one-sided love affair that left her a single mother She eventually opted for what promised to be a stable marriage with a like-minded progressive thinker when she was several months pregnant with his child We cannot know if their experiment in egalitarian marriage (apparently with separate households) would have flourished since she died from complications of the birth of their daughter the future Mary Shelley of Frankenstein fame.  If we concede that rigorous critical thinking stands the test of time—even if lexicons of feminist terminology change—and if we concede that the most committed feminists can succumb to the vicissitudes of love then we have a Wollstonecraft we can still work with in the 21st century.  Modern Virtue offers a hefty and hard-to-ignore argument for Wollstonecraft’s ongoing relevance for philosophy and the fight for women’s rights today.  Dumler-Winckler tutors her readers not to pigeonhole Wollstonecraft as an outdated thinker Modern Virtue demands that Wollstonecraft be included in discussions relevant to feminist and other contemporary schools of thought and justice movements she deserves a place at the table not only out of respect for her stature as an early feminist but her views—on virtue especially—could enhance today’s efforts to address the ills of society.  This book does what a good book should do: provoke further thinking about how to respond to the world’s moral and political conundrums I knew that A Vindication of the Rights of Woman had a significant impact in the late 18th century with reverberations well into the 19th century but I was surprised to learn that Wollstonecraft’s notion of rights was religiously as well as a philosophically grounded Equality for Wollstonecraft is grounded in being created in the image of God and her pedagogical philosophy and political thought hinged on Jesus as moral exemplar (She was not a Deist.) Dumler-Winckler insists that a biblically based “theological imagination” lies at the heart of Wollstonecraft’s call to a political philosophy of virtue was central to what she might have said about the Kantian sapere aude “dare to be wise.” Wollstonecraft stitches her theology and philosophy eclectically together toward the same message: that we need a moral example Wollstonecraft’s writings are peppered with terms that strike the modern ear as quaint and outmoded—terms like “taste,” “manners,” and “modesty,” with Jesus’ modesty extolled as an example.  But before slouching away in disappointment at such a mild-mannered and unassertive Jesus we need to let Dumler-Winckler do her interpretive magic She insists on the radical potential of Wollstonecraftian modesty understood as individuals’ intention of “reforming themselves to reform the world.” Dumler-Winckler wants us to hear in Wollstonecraft’s words something like Gandhi’s motto: “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”  No one would call Gandhi mild-mannered and unassertive Wollstonecraft’s polemic about manners and virtue was meant to challenge women to think for themselves Teachers especially are supposed to be Christ-like moral standards for their students helping them “cultivate the ‘habits of virtue that render an individual independent.’”  Dumler-Winckler marshals some provocative textual and visual evidence to sketch the outlines of the christology (if that dogmatic term even applies) peeking through the pages of Wollstonecraft’s pedagogical book  Dumler-Winckler analyzes the extraordinary image (by William Blake) gracing the cover of Wollstonecraft’s volume which shows a female teacher in a cruciform posture flanked by her two pupils.  Feminists today might see a proto-Christa-like message at work here with resonances to the famous sculpture of a female Christ on a cross by Edwina Sandys (today housed at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in NYC).  A radical feminist mentorship simmers just below the surface in Wollstonecraft’s christologically inflected pedagogy feminists today might push back on Wollstonecraft’s emphasis on individual independence of thought.  Current feminist philosophy and theology trend more toward theories of relationality and the contextually embedded nature of human knowing and doing.  For example Jesus provides a particular kind of support for black communal survival in the wilderness of racism Christ is seen as part of a community of wounded and healing believers even Jesus himself.  Ecofeminist approaches theorize societal and environmental justice in intersectional and interrelated ways. Postmodernity challenges any appeal to transcendent divine Truth and the beautiful as intertextual and dialogical events whose meanings remain apophatically open But we cannot expect Wollstonecraft to have anticipated theologies and philosophies of our millennium She does value something akin to relationality but it comes under the rubric of friendship Depicted especially in Wollstonecraft’s novel creates “fitting sympathy.” The women in the story are not revolutionaries (and Wollstonecraft having lived through the French Revolution knew what such women looked like on the ramparts) Wollstonecraft’s female characters grow in virtue as their mutual friendship and understanding grow Dumler-Winckler makes the necessary translation and calls this type of Wollstonecraftian sympathetic friendship “feminist solidarity.” Or we might say How does one inspire virtue-strengthening personal friendship in feminist political movements?  Wollstonecraft would answer that question pedagogically and theologically “Lure us to the paths of virtue.” For Wollstonecraft Christ as exemplar marks that virtuous path but not in any traditional sense of a doctrine of reconciliation She has little interest in appealing to forensic atonement or metaphors of being washed in the blood of the Lamb Many feminist theologians today would also want to excise such penal concepts or violent imagery from the theological canon.  Ignoring atonement theories in lieu of the lure of Christ does not make Wollstonecraft a bad theologian just perhaps a more process-oriented one. Feminist and other progressive theologians today would be interested Wollstonecraft put much stock in how women’s and girls’ access to education would cultivate a taste for virtue is a necessary condition for justice.  Dumler-Winckler thus makes the case for a theological justification for feminist thought and activism.  That is societal justice hinges on the idea that an individual created in God’s image can acquire “the dignity of conscious virtue”—Wollstonecraft’s phrase Wollstonecraft’s life—her scholarly achievement and setbacks—reminds us of two things: feminist theologians can be found in times and places where one least expects them; and there are no feminist saints only thinkers speaking courageously to gender and other injustices while managing their particular context of the personal and the political Wollstonecraft can be a serious feminist interlocutor without being a feminist saint.  Davis Professor Emeritus of Religion at Oberlin College where she taught courses in gender and religion for over 20 years She received her PhD in religious studies from Yale University and is the author of Feminist Theology and the Challenge of Difference; Abortion and the Christian Tradition: A Pro-choice Theological Ethic; and the soon-to-be published Unborn Bodies: Resurrection and Reproductive Agency She also edited The Embrace of Eros: Bodies and Sexuality in Christianity and has published essays in The Oxford Handbook of Theology and Gender and in a variety of scholarly journals including: Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Some see a new statue commemorating Mary Wollstonecraft as an affront to the pioneering feminist but its creator says she is used to controversy Maggi Hambling, the renowned British artist who outraged a large section of the general public and many feminists last week to say nothing of the surprised residents of a north London community has defended her right to artistic freedom Her new statue commemorating Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled last week the culmination of a 10-year campaign to mark the groundbreaking feminist philosopher who started her writing career and established a girls school in Newington Green in the late-18th century But Hambling’s work sparked a furious reaction she produced an abstract sculpture which features a small telling the Observer she would not have taken on the job if she had been directed to produce a certain image or even steered in a traditional direction how she responds to a commission for either public or private work: “No I need complete freedom to respond to the spirit of my subject and could not work if constrained by convention or preconceived demands.” The 75-year-old artist, the subject of a BBC Two documentary last month and a current show at a leading London art dealership had been enjoying a busy lockdown and a phase of renewed recognition the storm that has blown up around her statue is the kind of adversity she has weathered throughout her long career The large shell-shaped work marks the life and music of composer Benjamin Britten and is inscribed with lines from his opera Peter Grimes: “I hear those voices that will not be drowned.” Although not yet drowned voices of criticism for this work have been slowly replaced with an acceptance of its status as a cultural landmark Hambling told the Observer she was again prepared for attacks and called upon the example of one of her literary heroes in her defence “I’m always braced,” she said this weekend when critics are divided the artist is at one with himself.” In 1998, Hambling’s sculpture, A Conversation with Oscar Wilde, commemorating the writer and showing his head rising up from a sarcophagus, was put up in central London. It caused a stir, but was judged by most critics to show both wit and nerve. “I can see that it might not matter to an artist whether a work is thought to be ‘appropriate’, and it is not a word I much like myself,” said Dr Julia Long, a resident who is disappointed by the work. “But the problem is this seems to be about an artist’s ego. The fundraising campaign was called ‘Mary on the Green’, not ‘Maggi on the Green’.” Read moreLong, a feminist and member of Object!, a group that protests against the objectification of the female form, can now see the statue from her flat and was one of those who covered the naked figure in a T-shirt last week as well as the mother of writer Mary Shelley she founded the school on Newington Green and she is now hailed around the world as an inspirational figure for feminists The effort to put up a statue was spearheaded by journalist Bee Rowlatt has been repeatedly asked to account for the unorthodox work since its unveiling The “overwhelming scale of the response” has thrown her given that the work does not stand in a prominent London location and has been a voluntary project but we also recognise that over a million people have now read about Mary Wollstonecraft on BBC news alone not to mention all the other articles and foreign media,” Rowlatt said Campaigners covered the statue in a T-shirt in protest against the objectification of women Photograph: Paul Childs/Reuters“By choosing Maggi we understood that we were choosing a sculpture that attempted to represent the birth of a movement rather than a representation of Wollstonecraft herself We were excited by the idea of getting away from putting people on pedestals which frankly is not in the spirit of Wollstonecraft’s philosophy.” Unlikely support for Hambling’s aesthetic might be drawn from the words of one of the many influential men who are memorialised with clothed statues in London said he believed “audacity” was the first quality any artist required But it is an argument that does not wash with many of those who use Newington Green stencilled graffiti image of Wollstonecraft on the side of the neighbouring church were sold Dr Long is one of those who bought a print and assumed the eventual statue would resemble the stencil the committee selecting the artist for the job invited two candidates of their proposed statue to show the community with a third coming from those living close to the green The argument last week recalls the surprised reaction two years ago when Newnham College, Cambridge, alma mater of Germaine Greer and Mary Beard, unveiled a work by sculptor Cathy de Monchaux to celebrate women’s academic achievements It features a small nude female figure embedded in the middle of pages of a book that also resembles a vulva While Rowlatt urges critics to put their energy into supporting campaigns for the “missing” statues of other notable women such as Sylvia Pankhurst or Virginia Woolf one of the first public responses is more likely to be finding a good nickname for Hambling’s new work Candidates so far include The Barbie on the Boulder and Frankenstein’s Granny referring to the best-known work of Wollstonecraft’s daughter This is the archive of The Observer up until 21/04/2025 The Observer is now owned and operated by Tortoise Media A CAMPAIGN has been launched to celebrate the mother of British feminism with a statue in Islington Newington Green Action Group (NGAG) wants to ensure a lasting legacy to human rights champion Mary Wollstonecraft The 18th-century writer – author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women – lived in a “radical village of dissenters” where Newington Green is today She wrote books about education while living there and set up a boarding school for girls in 1784 Speaking on BBC4’s Women’s Hour yesterday (Thursday) Mary on the Green committee member Roberta Wedge said: “It’s important we recognise significant women everywhere – for wom­en’s rights and what we would now call human rights Thoughts on the Education of Our Daughters was written while she was in Newington Green.  “They were pivotal those few years spent in that little isolated village a couple of miles from London at that point There were radical dissenters living there and prosperous merchants It was very different to the violent father she grew up with.” Wollstonecraft was born in Spitalfields in 1759 and opened the boarding school in Islington partly so she could live with her there in peace.  A green plaque to Wollstonecraft was un­veiled at Newington Green Primary School near the site of the pioneering feminist’s school on Tuesday as part of International Women’s Day celebrations Wollstonecraft made friends with Richard Price Price and his friend Joseph Priestley were the leaders of a group of men known as Rational Dissenters.  Wollstonecraft married the philosopher William Godwin in March 1797 but died in September the same year who wrote the Gothic thriller Frankenstein The calls for “Mary in the Green” reached Parliament on Wednesday when Islington North Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn tabled an Early Day Motion It read: “That this House believes her memory would be enhanced by an appropriate sculpture on Newington Green as a symbol of her great work – A Vindication of the Rights of Women.” A spokeswoman for NGAG said: “Despite the significance of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and work there has never been a public memorial statue of her anywhere.  “The location of her home on Newington Green where her radical ideas about women’s equality seems a logical place for a permanent memorial to such an important and influential woman.” Designs submissions will begin in May and it is hoped unveiling will be in the spring of 2013 For details at www.newingtongreen.org.uk One of Wollstonecraft’s largest landholdings has set a new price record after selling in a hush hush deal worth more than $10.5 million The 1884sqm property is one of only a handful of homes in the area with a private tennis court and came to market with a price guide of $10.5 million MORE: The north shore’s most expensive home Eagles Nest lists with $9.5m guide Wollstonecraft has been home to former Prime Minister John Howard for many years and he lives a few streets away from this property The sale of 3 Milray Ave was negotiated by Geoff Smith and Bernard Ryan Mr Smith said he could not reveal any details of the sale other than to confirm it sold for more than the guide to a Sydney-based buyer it smashes the previous Milray Ave sale record set by No It also takes the crown as Wollstonecraft’s most expensive house which sold in February this year for $9.2 million The three-level home at 3 Milray is on a prime corner block on two titles and has been meticulously and respectfully restored it’s one of very few big estates in Wollstonecraft and having the level lawn and the tennis court makes it a standout,” Mr Smith said “The house is in a really good spot on the block It’s just got a really nice feel to it and it’s got very good family functionality.” He said there were four Sydney-based buyers all vying for the property in the end and the vendor was very happy with the result Hot on the heels of the record sale came another very special property in the same street last week Coincidentally, this one is right across the road from No. 3. While it is not as large as that, No. 4 Milray Ave is also a rare find the home has a bushland setting that creates a level of privacy and seclusion that belies its proximity to the CBD In fact the Sydney CBD is just a 10-minute train ride and the Crows Nest village and North Sydney CBD are both within walking distance It’s no surprise the owners of the property have been there since 2005 The property is marketed by Annika Bongiorno and Aaron Bongiorno They have set an auction date of November 7 and a price guide of $5.75 million for the property Annika Bongiorno said waterfront reserve properties of this size rarely became available “It’s a very special property and has direct access to the foreshore walk,” she said The contemporary style home gives nothing away from street level Past the front door it has an impressive and versatile floor plan that is ideal for families of all ages Multiple living areas open out to terraces that capture the water views through the treetops and over Gore Cove “Everything leads out to a terrace so you’ve got this wonderful outlook with beautiful sunsets,” Ms Bongiorno said The home has five double bedrooms plus a study as well as a teenage retreat with separate access The main bedroom is spread over an entire floor and includes a walk-in robe Other features include a 20m pool with deck and two cabanas Wollstonecraft values have been holding steady this year despite the negative impact of COVID-19 According to realestate.com.au’s latest Market Trends report the suburb’s median apartment price has grown by 14.1 per cent to $1.085 million Data for the suburb’s median house price is not available as there have been too few sales in the past 12 months to provide data Another significant sale in the suburb last week was the former home of legendary award-winning Australian landscape architect He built 10A Rocklands Rd, Wollstonecraft in 1988 and lived there until his passing in 2000 The current owners bought the property from Harry’s estate in 2001 and put it to auction on Saturday with Tom Scarpignato of Belle Property Cammeray and James Bennett of Belle Property Lane Cove The three-bedroom home sold at auction for $2.316 million “This result is testament to the design and renovation of the home as well as its fabulous presentation,” Mr Scarpignato said “Wollstonecraft and Waverton continue to attract demand from all buyer demographics Buyers are also coming from many areas of Sydney and this is ensuring consistently strong prices.” The buyers are a family from the lower north shore SIGN UP HERE FOR THE NSW REAL ESTATE NEWSLETTER third parties have written and supplied the content and we are not responsible for it completeness or reliability of the information nor do we accept any liability or responsibility arising in any way from omissions or errors contained in the content We do not recommend sponsored lenders or loan products and we cannot introduce you to sponsored lenders We strongly recommend that you obtain independent advice before you act on the content realestate.com.au is owned and operated by ASX-listed REA Group Ltd (REA:ASX) © REA Group Ltd. By accessing or using our platform, you agree to our Terms of Use. own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment University of Westminster provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK View all partners Mary Wollstonecraft has had something of a revival in recent years As the author of an impassioned plea for human rights and one of the earliest and most-read statements of feminism Wollstonecraft today has a well-deserved status as a feminist icon But we should also take pause when looking at how she is presented especially when she is shown as the main representative of British feminism Born in 1759 in London to a middle-class family Wollstonecraft spent her youth watching her mother suffer at the hands of an abusive father frustrated by the limited education and career options open to girls she opened a day school for girls in Newington Green The focus of most of her writings was moral conduct education and child rearing because she believed that this was the main route to changing the culture and creating a new path for women and girls Wollstonecraft was a passionate supporter of the French Revolution She hoped for a similar shift toward democratic republicanism in British politics Both Paine and Wollstonecraft defended a doctrine of “natural rights” This is the idea that man is naturally endowed with rational thought and an ability to think independently But neither Paine nor most of the French revolutionaries that Wollstonecraft so admired actively extended this thinking to women relegated all women (and men without property) to the status of “passive” (non-voting) citizens who were not considered independent enough to make their own decisions Wollstonecraft’s most famous text, A Vindication of the Rights of Women is largely a treatise on the edifying effects of the right kind of education on virtue Wollstonecraft did not mean sexual purity when she spoke of virtue Virtue was indicative of moral character and primarily expressed in the ability to make sound humility and self-discipline and a willingness to look outward from selfish or trivial wants to the needs of others These were the republican (and indeed Protestant) virtues that good citizens in the new post-revolutionary democracies would need Wollstonecraft argued that women are equally capable of acquiring these virtues and of benefiting from a full education if only given the chance to develop their capacities in the same way as men The idea that reason is not the sole provenance of men also meant that Wollstonecraft was already making an argument, often attributed to Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex and to the so-called second-wave feminism of the 1950s and 1960s that gender norms are socially constructed They are learned and shaped by environment it will produce narrow and confined thinking This is what she meant when she wrote of women: “Make them free and they will quickly become wise and virtuous.” Wollstonecraft wanted to free women from being forced to focus solely on trivial accomplishments that would make them a better wife Wollstonecraft herself lived a life that largely defied convention still the life that women live today: caught in a struggle to break free of preconceived notions about who and what we can be Wollstonecraft asserted the simple idea that women were fully fledged people with the capacity to decide on and forge a path for themselves but the revolutionary character of this idea It is the same notion that nearly a century later got John Stuart Mill lampooned and laughed at in the House of Commons when he proposed to substitute the word “persons” for the word “men” in the voting reform bill of 1867 so as to include women in universal suffrage that women are rational beings with a right to self-determination must still be fought for daily around the world we are forced to assert that we are not objects that we have not been made for someone else’s use or pleasure that it is not justified to exclude us from education or politics Wollstonecraft has striking relevance for us and she is responsible for inspiring generations of activists She was not writing for working class women and she said little about women of colour in spite of her abolitionism Today’s women around the world deal with issues that Wollstonecraft could never have imagined Nor is it helpful when she is simplistically presented as paving the way for the suffragettes the suffragette movements rescued her memory from a largely negative obsession with her sexual morality But they also did her a disservice by reducing her aims to a battle for legal and political equality Equal treatment is indeed a necessary condition for women’s progress But it is not a sufficient condition for women’s freedom Wollstonecraft herself was more interested in personal liberation she never made voting a focus of her writings Wollstonecraft wanted something much more than voting something that too often we still do not have: liberation from prescribed notions of who or what we can be and from the fear of being who we are Liberation from oppression means being able to define ourselves and the direction of our lives And this requires access to the intellectual resources and knowledge needed to develop independence of mind This is Wollstonecraft’s most important message and one that should speak to everyone regardless of gender Her tribute to the feminist icon caused outrage at last month’s unveiling She hits back at her critics – and explains why this women’s rights pioneer had to be naked Edward Onslow Ford’s attempt to depict the sea-shrunken corpse of the drowned poet We’re sitting on the pavement outside the Marlborough Gallery in Mayfair so Hambling can have a cigarette It’s stupidly cold but this is the only place we can do the interview refusing to be photographed without a cigarette in hand “But the people in the offices above objected to the smell,” she says “They threatened to close down my show.” So she has evicted herself from her own exhibition for the length of four cigarettes and a coffee “The figure had to be nude because clothes define people,” she says “Put someone in country tweeds and they become horsey Put someone in period dress and they become part of history The studio is where my real life is. The rest of life is, well, less intenseShe adds: “I wanted to capture the spirit of Mary Wollstonecraft and the struggle for the rights of women It’s a struggle that goes on – and so the figure is a challenge to our world.” The controversy doubtless helped make Wollstonecraft better known. Bee Rowlatt was among the women who had campaigned for a statue She pointed out that millions read about Wollstonecraft because of the outcry Hambling knows from experience that anything can happen once her art leaves her studio “It goes out into the world and I’m not in charge of it any more.” Yet she feels that a lot of the commentary missed the point was to get away from putting people on pedestals Protests … banners were left against the statue’s plinth. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PABut if that were true, shouldn’t Hambling have done something more akin to, say, Kathryn Gustafson’s Hyde Park memorial to Princess Diana a fountain deliberately conceived as anti-phallic and anti-representational albeit one that Britons swiftly diminished by washing their dogs in I suppose you could say my sculpture is phallic ‘It’s like a skyrocket going up.’ I like that.” Hambling’s Wollstonecraft is not so much resting on a pedestal as rushing skywards on a froth of mysterious matter represents the fight against the patriarchy “The tower the figure rests upon refers to the struggle of women They are mingling female forms.” As she points out many of the articles damning her sculpture cropped out that context to focus on the nude figure Would she have done Wollstonecraft differently had she known the uproar it would cause The subject speaks through me when I work.” To keep the cold out … knitted clothes left for the figure. Photograph: Aaron Chown/PAA recent BBC profile of Hambling was called Making Love with the Paint then making love using the silly old medium of oil painting.” Or She calls this the erotics of the studio and it’s why she won’t be filmed or photographed at work “I don’t want to be looked at while I’m fucking “She invited me to her home and said she would sit for me in the garden or in the house But I realised that I needed to paint her at work to be true to be spirit.” Hambling is used to controversy. In 1998, another bronze, A Conversation with Oscar Wilde faced derision from critics when it was unveiled in London’s St Martin in the Fields The Irish writer’s face emerges from one end of the bench-like structure which bears a quote from Lady Windermere’s Fan that may resonate with the area’s many rough sleepers “but some of us are looking at the stars.” her 12ft-tall sculpture erected on the beach at Aldeburgh in 2003 There was a petition against Scallop which Hambling now claims it has been responsible for a tourist boom – and rocketing sales of fish and chips and ice-creams The artist learned to shrug off criticism early into a studio and painted the night sky from her window When she arranged the resulting paintings before schoolmates asked their sobbing creator what was the matter Drewry said: “Criticism has got to be water off a duck’s back.” “as has another remark I heard a year later.” This came from the sculptor Arthur Lett-Haines “He told me you must make your work your best friend but it is how I have lived my life.” That must be disappointing for her lovers to hear don’t worry about that,” she says with a wink Most memorably she had an affair with Henrietta Moraes In the introduction to a book of Moraes portraits Hambling wrote: “Henrietta began to pose for me at the end of May 1998 She seized power as ruthlessly as a Borgia Her death in January 1999 left me with ‘unfinished business’ and her confrontational presence continues to fill the studio.” ‘I never get the same breed’ … Hambling and her new dog, Peggy. Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The GuardianWe go inside the gallery, for a tour of Maggi Hambling 2020 an exhibition of recent paintings coinciding with her 75th birthday “Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.” Nearby is her favourite picture in the exhibition a complicated self-portrait that includes an empty dog basket to memorialise Lux “After a suitable period of mourning,” she says “I went to Lux’s grave and asked her permission to get another dog She said I could.” And so she has: a six-year-old black rescue pug called Peggy “I never get the same breed otherwise I might compare them unfavourably.” This exhibition includes the superb Self Portrait (Angry) “I had a show in New York and another in Italy She leads me upstairs with the words: “You must see the animals.” We enter a gallery full of paintings that include a rhino without a horn and a chained dancing bear sporting a hideous rictus She says many of these works are about “how we are fucking everything up” a black canvas overpainted with a vague form looks like a calf that has lost its mother We finally come to a black canvas showing a bird in a cage rendered in white Underneath this picture is a self-portrait that’s been painted over It’s tragic but necessary to paint over things sometimes.” The caged bird has become unwittingly topical as if the self-portrait has reasserted itself Hambling gazes at the work and says: “We are all in cages this year.” Maggi Hambling 2020 is at the Marlborough Gallery A new townhouse development in Wollstonecraft on Sydney's Lower North Shore is expected to meet a large gap in the market for downsizers PBD Architects have put the plans together for a 10-townhouse development at 7-9 Selwyn Street, a 1,546 sqm site near the Wollstonecraft Train Station Each of the townhomes will have three-bedrooms across three levels and a shared basement with parking for 16 cars Local agency Atlas provided advice on the project They said there's a gap in the market for this type of product there has been a shift over the past three years of local residents wanting to downsize but struggling to find the right accommodation particularly older residents given most options in the area are limited to older homes with stairs or conservatively sized apartments," the submission by Atlas agent John Melville said He said the team has seen a 42 per cent increase in enquiry for clients looking for three bedroom townhomes "We find most people looking to downsize find a three bedroom home as the most suitable option," he said noting that they see this development as an opportunity to fill a gap in the market for townhouses with an internal lift that will have a wide appeal to a range of different buyer dynamics but largely will suit older residents looking for a suitable downsizing option that don’t want to live in an apartment Ray White Lower North Shore Principal Tim Abbott shared the sentiment suggesting the proposal will be highly sought after because of the townhouse configurations with additional family rooms and studies and the generous sizing which ranges from 170 sqm to 173 sqm internally "These sizeable spaces are highly desired and are rare to find," Abbott's submission read and are not yet ready to transition into apartment living." He said much of the existing stock within the market is apartments and does not include high levels of specifications "A low supply of high-quality stock is seeing many locals relocate to neighbouring regions to meet their needs and expectations and this is highlighting a clear gap within the market." PBD said in their Design Verification Statement that the design of the development is focused on creating a cohesive and visually pleasing aesthetic that complements its surroundings "The use of natural materials and incorporation of greenery throughout the development creates a harmonious and inviting atmosphere "The design also takes advantage of the local climate to provide a comfortable and enjoyable living experience for residents They said the overall design ensures that visitors and residents feel welcomed and comfortable within a lush green environment and the design takes into consideration current market demands and living patterns in the local area We're on a mission to radically improve the quality of Urban communities being developed across Australia We aim to showcase every development in Australia to help you find the perfect new home A house in an upmarket suburb near Sydney Harbour was described as 'very ordinary' despite its proximity to the city in a fascinating glimpse into the rise of John Howard using archival ABC footage. The home was used in a 1978 feature on the ABC current affairs show, This Day Tonight. The Wollstonecraft house, on the city's lower north shore, described as 'ordinary' would now be worth millions of dollars.  The profile piece was describing the then 38-year old federal Liberal treasurer John Howard, who went on to become Australia's second longest-serving prime minister. 'Everything about John Howard is low profile: he lives in a very ordinary three-bedroom, suburban house in Sydney's north shore,' it said. 'It's functional, convenient, but hardly a status symbol.' The old ABC footage then cuts to Mr Howard in the kitchen with his wife Janette, with the microphone catching the then treasurer saying the words: 'Sorry about that.' The voiceover continues: 'There's nothing flamboyant about the inside either or the Howard lifestyle if it comes to that.' The journalist also noted Mr Howard drove a late 1960s English-designed Austin 1800 over footage of him reversing out of his driveway. 'No flashy cars for the Howards either,' the voiceover said. 'He's had this rusty, rattling contraption for seven years and it's doubtful whether it's been near a car wash or a panel beater since he first entered Parliament.' The clip was played on the ABC Of special featuring actor David Wenham interviewing Mr Howard, 83, to commemorate the national broadcaster's 90th birthday. In 2022, some 44 years later, Wollstonecraft is far from being 'very ordinary'. The suburb has its own train station and is just 6km from Sydney's city centre, via a train or car ride over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The postcode it falls under, 2065, has a median house price of $4.3million, which is more than triple greater Sydney's mid-point house price of $1.346million.  Mr Howard's ordinariness proved to be a political asset with the Wollstonecraft resident leading the Coalition to a landslide victory in 1996, winning an outer suburban electorate like Lindsay, covering Penrith in Sydney's west, that had previously only been a Labor seat. He was re-elected in 1998, 2001 and 2004, retaining electorates like Longman in Brisbane's outer north, Robertson on the NSW Central Coast, Eden-Monaro on the South Coast, Herbert in Townsville and Leichhardt in Cairns. But as prime minister from 1996 to 2007, the Howards lived at Kirribilli House on Sydney Harbour just 3km away. That was in stark contrast to one of his Liberal successors Malcolm Turnbull, who chose to live at his flashy Point Piper mansion on the other side of Sydney Harbour instead of moving into Kirribilli House. Mr Howard, a former solicitor, married his wife Janette, who was also a member of the Liberal Party, in 1971, and they are parents to daughter Melanie, and sons Tim and Richard. They lived into their Wollstonecraft house when Mr Howard in 1974 became the Liberal member for Bennelong. The electorate then covered Sydney's lower north shore before subsequent redistributions moved the seat further west. When Malcolm Fraser swept to power as PM in 1975, Mr Howard was made consumer affairs minister before becoming Australia's younger treasurer in November 1977.  In the interview with Wenham, Mr Howard admitted that after losing his seat in 2007, to Labor's Maxine McKew as the Coalition was kicked out of office, he and his wife mistakenly sat in the back seat of a car, forgetting they no longer had a driver. 'We used to get in the back a bit together, forgetting, because I was entitled to have a driver for quite a while. 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ABC described house in rich Sydney Habour suburb as 'very ordinary''Commenting on this article has endedNewest{{#isModerationStatus}}{{moderationStatus}} If you had an account with Verso prior to April 2023 you will need to register here to access your account Would you like to switch to our site to see prices and shipping options for your current location On this day in 1759, pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft was born in Spitalfield's, London. In this extract from her introduction to Wollstonecraft's groundbreaking work A Vindication of the Rights of Women historian Sheila Rowbotham charts the radical milieu into which she was born and the enduring influence of her work.I first came across Mary Wollstonecraft in 1957 I happened to buy a second-hand copy of Rosalie Glynn Grylls’s William Godwin and his World (1953) and found myself enteringthe intense circles of British Dissenters and radicals who faced accusations of treason on account of their support for the French Revolution I would think of her walking over to Dalston Lane from the school she ran at Newington Green I read the first edition of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman when I was writing Women Resistance and Revolution (1972) in the British Museum Reading Room and was amazed at the immediacy of her style and the depth of her perception like many other feminists I have been delighted life and ideas of Mary Wollstonecraft – such an extreme woman living in such extreme times she was imbued with the spirit of the Enlightenment As a woman of reason and a woman of nature she personified the complex tensions and fissures of the Enlightenment Balancing on the cusp of the Age of Reason and the first flush of Romanticism Wollstonecraft struggled to reconcile sense and sensibility in her life and in her writings She was at once a rather prim educator and a tortured soul seeking fulfillment in defiance of convention The endearing contradictions of the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman were not simply theoretical she discovered passionate sensuous enjoyment with an American breaking the hypocritical rules of discretion when he distanced himself from her and their relationship disintegrated An idealistic supporter of the French Revolution in 1789 she was nonetheless painfully aware of the gap between external change and inner spiritual transformation In 1793 she observed as the Terror unfolded: ‘I can look beyond the evils of the moment and do not expect muddied water to come clear before it has time to stand; yet to see men vicious without warmth.’ Personally and politically she wrestled over principles and experience; a bruised Wollstonecraft would eventually acknowledge that ‘conscious rectitude’ could not ‘calm an injured heart’ it seemed that at last she had found domestic harmony and love first in a free union and then marriage with the radical philosopher William Godwin the enlightened mother approached the birth of her second child by collecting books and papers to read while awaiting the onset of labour Her intention was for the mind to govern the body; instead she suffered the terrible pains of puerperal fever after giving birth The quintessentially female dangers of childbirth finally defeated the woman who had rebelled so profoundly against the constrained destinies of her sex Her defiant legacy was to be her writings; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman the French socialist and feminist Flora Tristan declared it to be ‘une oeuvre imperissable!’ because it linked human happiness with women’s cause Regarded warily by many nineteenth-century feminists semi-underground text which was rediscovered and cherished by radical women in the twentieth century A man has fallen to his death while reportedly forcing his way into a North Sydney unit where police had arrested him over a “domestic incident” A police probe into the chain of events that saw the 41-year-old detained released and ultimately dying in his driveway has now begun Shirley Road in Wollstonecraft where a man fell to his death after being arrested and released by NSW Police following a domestic incident.Credit: Google Maps NSW Police were called to Shirley Road in Wollstonecraft at about 11pm on Friday following reports of a domestic incident Officers from North Shore area command spoke to the man and woman who lived in the unit The man was taken to Chatswood police station before being released while the investigation continued police were called back to the same unit after being told a man was attempting to “gain entry” When officers arrived they found the man laying injured in the driveway below the unit and rushed to give him first aid Paramedics arrived and took the man to Royal North Shore clinging to life The man died in hospital just after 11pm on Saturday NSW Police have declared a critical incident and appointed officers from neighbouring Ku-ring-gai Area Command to investigate what happened before the man’s death The investigation will be independently reviewed and handed to the NSW Coroner The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here police had arrested him over a \\u201Cdomestic incident\\u201D police were called back to the same unit after being told a man was attempting to \\u201Cgain entry\\u201D NSW Police have declared a critical incident and appointed officers from neighbouring Ku-ring-gai Area Command to investigate what happened before the man\\u2019s death The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day\\u2019s most important and interesting stories ‘Mother of feminism’ commemorated by Maggi Hambling sculpture in north London It shows a silvery naked everywoman figure emerging free and defiantly from a swirling mingle of female forms and is the world’s only memorial sculpture to a woman known as the “mother of feminism” “It will definitely start a conversation,” said the writer Bee Rowlatt, who has led the campaign to get a sculpture celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft in Newington Green, north London “It will definitely promote comment and debate and that’s good A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft has been made by one of Britain’s most important and sometimes controversial artists, Maggi Hambling and is a clear contrast to the countless sculptures of stuffy men placed on lofty pedestals The unveiling on Tuesday follows 10 years of trying to raise the £143,000 required to achieve it “We’re volunteers doing it in our spare time … It has been a community effort.” Mary Wollstonecraft’s reputation was ‘annihilated’ by misogyny Photograph: Print Collector/Getty ImagesThe campaign was launched in 2010 by volunteers keen to have Wollstonecraft’s legacy remembered close to where she lived and worked setting up a girl’s boarding school in Newington Green Rowlatt recalled a decade ago becoming “fixated” on why Wollstonecraft wasn’t better known and what could be done to make her place in the canon more secure “People haven’t heard of Mary Wollstonecraft and when you discover more about her Wollstonecraft was an important philosopher and educationalist best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman But her reputation was “annihilated” by misogyny “Her enemies took aspects of her life and turned them against her … so the fact that she had a child out of wedlock They used this to completely smear her reputation to the point where she basically vanished for the best part of a century “It was a sustained misogynist attack that went on not just for months but years … poems were circulated about her It got to the point where no-one wanted to defend her legacy.” The suffragist Millicent Fawcett helped restore Wollstonecraft’s reputation a century after her death in 1797 aged just 38 shortly after giving birth to her daughter Mary – the novelist Mary Shelley The unveiling follows a summer of debate about public sculpture and which historical figures deserve commemoration. Given more than 90% of public sculptures in London commemorate men Rowlatt said Wollstonecraft felt particularly timely “To have finally a public work of art that celebrates human rights … it is a very public statement at a time of increasing societal division.” Rowlatt said there was a time-honoured tradition of art by women attracting more criticism than men “encourages a visual conversation with the obstacles Wollstonecraft overcame” and what she made happen … a vital contemporary discourse for all that is still to be achieved.” The Mary on the Green campaign has been supported by the local resident and TV presenter Anita Rani who said Wollstonecraft was finally getting the recognition she deserved The pandemic means there is no physical party for the unveiling but Rowlatt hopes Wollstonecraft fans from around the world will join a livestreamed premier of the launch film at 7pm on Tuesday, details of which are available online on Facebook and Twitter Theatre news and reviews from across the north of England Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a moral and political philosopher whose A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is widely regarded as the founding document of modern feminism Mary and the Hyenas tries to capture the spirit and resilience of the pioneer who defied the conventions of her time and kept going when many wanted to bring her down Writer Maureen Lennon said: “I've been obsessed with Mary's story since I was a teenager; getting to share her voice with the young women of today is such a privilege "She's an icon who blazed ahead of her time; she has so much to say to us now - stuff about bravery and passion and how you muster the courage to change the world It feels like we all need some of that fire right now.” Songwriter Billy Nomates (Tor Maries) said: “I didn't know about Mary Wollstonecraft but her story is a compelling one; she was a true trailblazer but also a human being "I wanted to bring the music into a contemporary place but not wholly defined by now; an attitude and feeling that resonates across the ages.” Director Esther Richardson added: “I’ve long been curious about how to give Mary Wollstonecraft a fitting tribute in a theatre production When Maureen brought us the idea for this play a vision for how to create the show was galvanised.” More info and tickets here owned by a famous north shore family for more than 50 years Wollstonecraft was developed by high-profile political figure Sir John Cramer in the early 1960s MORE: Where to find a house in Sydney for under $500k $6.2m beach house you can own for $5 Sir John was elected Lord Mayor of North Sydney in 1939 and a decade later joined the House of Representatives as the member for Bennelong then Australian Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies appointed Sir John Minister for the Army He and his wife Dame Mary Cramer were prominent social figures The latter was awarded the title of Dame in recognition of her many years dedicated to charity and community work The Cramer family has held on to the 1457sqm Morton St property since it was built but have now listed it with Guillaume Volz and Henry Burke They are selling the prime property by an international expressions of interest campaign They have not released a price guide for the unique property However industry sources predict it will likely sell for more than $15m national director of Colliers National Developments “An opportunity to access a site like this in Wollstonecraft has not come onto the market for many years,” he says “This property offers a secure investment with income as well as an exceptional development opportunity This is a highly valued and desirable location within an environment that has limited future supply.” Whether a secure investment and income stream the agents expect pate significant interest An aerial view showing the location of 5 Morton St Mr Volz said the Colliers’ development sites team has transacted over $385m in development sites across the north shore in the past 12 months alone demonstrating the high demand from developers for access to boutique SIGN UP HERE FOR THE NSW REAL ESTATE NEWSLETTER Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker David Gouldstone and Claire Tomalin on Maggi Hambling’s recently unveiled sculpture of Wollstonecraft Wonderful to see Maggi Hambling’s soaring, striking, remarkable tribute to Mary Wollstonecraft on Newington Green (Mary Wollstonecraft finally honoured with statue after 200 years Wollstonecraft’s tombstone at St Pancras Old Church is sadly neglected: covered in moss I’ve often thought it would be appropriate to renovate it; perhaps now is the time to honour her memory Mary’s remains were removed to Bournemouth in 1851 to be buried with her daughter But the tombstone stands witness to a life cut tragically short in the graveyard of the church where she and William Godwin married Is anyone else interested?Kathy Graham-HarrisonCombe Horses and helmets are big and interesting Women in clothes are even harder to portray in bronze or stone – skirts look stiff at best Think of the Thatcher statue in the Commons or some of the recent attempts at suffragettes: Emmeline Pankhurst standing on a chair; or Millicent Fawcett holding what looks like her washing presumably an attempt to add life to the solid mass of petticoats Maggi Hambling’s sculpture of Mary Wollstonecraft may or may not be great art rather than her clothes.Linda FairbrotherCambridge Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett explains “Why I hate the Mary Wollstonecraft statue” and asks “would a man be ‘honoured’ with his schlong out?” (11 November) I don’t think I can judge the statue from photographs but to answer the question we need look no further than her son-in-law’s memorial in University College his schlong very much out.David GouldstoneCambridge What a pity the statue of Mary Wollstonecraft was not made from John Opie’s beautiful portrait of her which does her justice.Claire TomalinRichmond ‘Bronze ceiling’ for author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman should go The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and his deputy, Tom Watson, have teamed up with dozens of men, including high-profile actors, comedians and trade union leaders, to call for one of Britain’s earliest feminists to be memorialised. Read moreThe politicians are among over 40 men signing a letter to the Guardian saying the time has come to break the “bronze ceiling” and celebrate the extraordinary life of Mary Wollstonecraft Signatories including Andrew Adonis and the Liberal Democrat leader, Sir Vince Cable and the union leaders John Hannett and Tim Roache argue that she was the “first to call for gender equality who has been described as Britain’s first feminist challenged philosophers and politicians at the time when she set out a vision of equality in her book The men are following in the footsteps of more than 80 female politicians academics and public figures who demanded a statue be built to honour the pioneering figure last year A campaign called Mary on the Green has fought to commemorate her at Newington Green in London Corbyn and the other signatories say: “Mary Wollstonecraft was neither privileged nor formally educated but she achieved greatness and became a leader of ideas in her own time which Wollstonecraft attended as a young woman coming into contact with the group of rational dissenters who were to inform and inspire her radical political ideas Wollstonecraft applied the emerging arguments of liberalism which insisted that social status should be determined by individual ability and skill rather than birth eight years after she first came to the chapel argued that since women have equal powers of reason to men a society that violates women's rights to liberty equality and justice was wasting women's skills and abilities "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it," she wrote "and there will be an end to blind obedience." while clearly imbued with 18th-century spirit and a level of moralising that can at times make for uncomfortable reading have a contemporary ring and the work of the former Equal Opportunities Commission – now part of the Equality and Human Rights Commission – is a clear descendant of Wollstonecraft's ideal of absolute sexual equality: equal education So I hope it's more than just a coincidence that Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, introduces her equality bill into parliament on Monday Given the government's reticence to use the f-word I doubt it would admit as much even if its timing were that calculated which are intended to create a "fair society" by "tackl[ing] inequality and root[ing] out discrimination" speak directly to Wollstonecraft's demand for justice for all by outlawing discrimination on the grounds of gender also of tackling intersecting and multiple discriminations among them.) Yet, as Anne Perkins writes it is incredibly hard "to work within the complexities of work and women" What political theorist Carole Pateman calls "Wollstonecraft's dilemma" still persists The dilemma is that the two routes towards citizenship that women have pursued are incompatible with what Patemen calls the "patriarchal welfare state" which is of no value for citizenship." While many more women have entered the workforce in recent years in all its forms – are still largely theirs The state has attempted to disrupt this distinction between the sexes by extending more equal rights to paternity leave and introducing the right to flexible working One way I would suggest is to apply Wollstonecraft's argument about women and working to men and caring The idea that men do not have the skills and abilities to raise children is surely as outdated and discriminatory – and wasteful to society at large – as the idea that women do not have the powers of reason to have an education and a career Maybe politicians are less enlightened on this than the public In a debate on women in politics – also part of the Wollstonecraft's celebrations this weekend – Labour MP Emily Thornberry told the story of a council leader who wrote to advise her not to bother running for election as it would be impossible for any woman In response to a question from the audience about how she is received on the doorstop Thornberry went on to say: "My difficulty has been my party taking me seriously Citizenship still excludes many who do not fit the state's conception of an ideal citizen whether you view that as patriarchal or not While making inroads in widening its reach to include the work of women in the private and the public sphere are caught by "Wollstonecraft's dilemma" – so that and stay at home if they want to without being valued any less We must hope that Harman's bill will help to alleviate some of those constraints But it's worth remembering the positive role that men can and do play in the fight for gender equality the mother of Frankenstein and his monster Men can be like women; women can be like men Maybe one day we'll be beyond such dichotomous distinctions The cake baked by men at the Wollstonecraft celebrations this weekend was leaving her widower to publish a warts-and-all memoir of her unconventional lifestyle choices Such was the difficulty faced by Edward Wollstonecraft who fled London and ended up in Sydney in 1819 “Wollstonecraft resented the notoriety of his aunt [A Vindication of the Rights of Woman author Mary Wollstonecraft] and sought escape and fortune for himself and his sister in travel and trade,” writes M.D Stephen in the Australian Dictionary of Biography The young businessman did indeed find fortune thanks in part to a sizeable grant of land on the lower North Shore Today, the suburb of Wollstonecraft is known for its quiet atmosphere “I lived in the suburb for 17 years,” says Marriot Lane Real Estate agent Stuart Howard “The real beauty is that it has the feel of the upper north shore but it’s actually located on the lower north shore.” About four kilometres north of the Sydney CBD Wollstonecraft offers easy access to the area’s elite schools and a relatively smooth commute to the city Construction has begun on a new metro station on the other side of the Pacific Highway at Crows Nest, the nearest shopping and dining hub. According to latest estimates by 2024 the new service will deliver commuters to Martin Place in seven minutes and to Central in 11 minutes “It’s run by an Indonesian couple and they serve really nice coffee Apartments account for 80 per cent of the housing stock The median apartment price climbed steadily between 2007 ($520,000) and 2017 ($1.15 million) only slipping back to $1.05 million in the past year or so There are about 250 freestanding houses – many of these grand Federation-era homes on large blocks – and 500 semis or terraces and semis are fetching from about $2.6 million but there are only a handful sold each year,” Howard says Recent rentals include a renovated two-bedroom unit near the station for $620 a week and a furnished two-bedroom unit near the Pacific Highway for $820 a week John Brewer has lived in Wollstonecraft for 16 years “I like the convenience of it all,” he says Twice a month, he visits Badangi Reserve as part of a bush-care group looking after the forest of red gums “It’s primarily and environmental thing but it is nice to meet local people.” Near the water on one of Wollstonecraft’s premier streets this strikingly renovated 294-square-metre upper duplex is tipped to catch the eye of downsizers and families and offers filtered bay views from the living area and deck Belle Property Neutral Bay advise on a $2.55 million price guide ahead of the August 11 auction carpets and paint job have given this ground-floor apartment a fresh look It offers a wide balcony with leafy outlook and an internal laundry The block is near Pacific Highway buses and Crows Nest is 10 minutes away by foot It’s headed for an August 11 auction through McGrath Neutral Bay, with a $860,000 price guide. When residents on Sydney's lower north shore heard a man yelling "I'm going to kill you you're dead!" followed by a woman's hysterical screams Numerous police cars rushed to the Wollstonecraft apartment from which the cries were emanating According to an amusing post on the Harbourside Local Area Command Facebook page police received multiple calls about the "violent domestic" last Saturday A female funnel web spider.Credit: Simone De Peak A man was heard yelling "I'm going to kill you die die" and there were sounds of furniture being tossed around the apartment Officers arrived at the home about 2am and began banging on the door A man who was "out of breath and rather flushed" answered Police asked where his wife or girlfriend was Then he was told about the reports of a woman screaming Male: "I don't know what you're talking about I live alone" people clearly heard you yelling you were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit." Police : "What about the women screaming?" The amused officers soon discovered the man was solely responsible for making the racket as he chased a large spider around the unit while armed with a can of Mortein insect spray some laughter and a quick look in the unit to make sure there was no injured party (apart from the spider) we left," Harbourside LAC wrote has gained a popular following for its witty reporting of and commentary around police incidents in Sydney on the back of a decline of funnel-web spiders being caught to produce antivenom specialists appealed to Australians to help out The Australian Reptile Park collects hundreds of funnel-web spiders a year to allow a biopharmaceuticals company to create antivenom for critical hospital vaccines The program is assisted by the spiders people catch and deliver to drop-off zones around the state But those numbers have been on the decline Specialists appealed to Australians to consider capturing the arachnids rather than killing them to help support the antivenom program When residents on Sydney's lower north shore heard a man yelling \\\"I'm going to kill you you're dead!\\\" followed by a woman's hysterical screams police received multiple calls about the \\\"violent domestic\\\" last Saturday A man was heard yelling \\\"I'm going to kill you die die\\\" and there were sounds of furniture being tossed around the apartment A man who was \\\"out of breath and rather flushed\\\" answered Male: \\\"I don't know what you're talking about I live alone\\\" people clearly heard you yelling you were going to kill her and furniture getting thrown around the unit.\\\" Police : \\\"What about the women screaming?\\\" some laughter and a quick look in the unit to make sure there was no injured party (apart from the spider) we left,\\\" Harbourside LAC wrote A collective area of 48 hectares on the northern bank of Sydney Harbour has been listed on the State Heritage Register The site has a rich Aboriginal history with evidence of Gammaraygal occupation and is one of the few remaining natural landscapes in public ownership on Sydney Harbour the heritage listing covers public foreshore parklands and reserves around the Greenwich and Wollstonecraft peninsulas including Berry Island Reserve “This listing recognises the area’s deep links to the Gammaraygal people and the cultural heritage found within the site It also protects public ownership of Sydney Harbour’s foreshore for ecological and recreational purposes the site’s natural and recreational values have made it a popular destination for locals with many renowned painters and photographers choosing to capture this unique place” the government said in a statement “Listing Badangi on the State Heritage Register is an important step in preserving the history and culture of NSW Not only does it protect the significance of the place and its associated stories but it provides a platform for local communities to share and celebrate this cultural heritage into the future,” said Heritage Minister Penny Sharpe Metropolitan LALC said: ” “Metropolitan LALC believes there is great importance of the Berry Island area and in respecting the Gammaraygal who are and always will be the respected cultural leaders of the area It was they who led Yoola Ba Ding annual ceremonies (initiations) on Gadigal Nura (Country).” Maggi Hambling’s north London sculpture aimed to provoke debate – and a survey of passersby shows it has certainly done that “It’s marvellous, I think it is unbelievably beautiful,” said Hilary Everett, a retired social worker, as she walked past one of the most controversial, most debated and most polarising public artworks of 2020 But Michaela Crimmin, a reader in art passing by a few minutes later This is one of the very few public outdoor spaces in our area and to put this there is very brazen I object to the shape of it and I think the actual sculpture looks ridiculous on that plinth.” The “it” is Maggi Hambling’s A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft, which was unveiled last month in Newington Green, north London. Within minutes of the Guardian revealing its existence, social media went bananas Why was the mother of feminism being celebrated with a naked Barbie doll at the top of it meant to be a spirit of womanhood and not Wollstonecraft has been regularly covered by people who felt it sent out the wrong message The statue was unveiled after a 10-year community campaign to raise £143,000 for what is the world’s only memorial statue to Wollstonecraft the philosopher and educationalist who lived and worked in the area and is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman To say it has done that is an understatement “We went headlong in to an international media storm,” said Bee Rowlatt “A lot of the debate was really ill-informed Here we are sitting in this park and the ‘rude bits’ are the last thing you see.” A protester covers the statue with a T-shirt Photograph: Paul Childs/ReutersMany of the most trenchant bruising voices against the statue were from high-profile feminists “There wasn’t a huge amount of sisterhood in some of the comments,” said Rowlatt as patron saint of freelance women writers would have said ‘well at least everyone got a gig out of it’ and I didn’t want to engage because it’s the ancient spectacle of the feminist catfight I have learned that a lot of people feel they own Mary Wollstonecraft The reaction did affect Rowlatt emotionally, but she said there were no regrets. “I think Maggi Hambling is an exceptional artist I have total faith in her and I’m proud to have defended her work If anything I like it more now … I’ve come out with a fiercer love for it.” misty December morning that the Guardian visited almost nobody could walk past the statue without stopping It will transform Newington Green, said Lizzy Bassham, owner of the cafe Lizzy’s on the Green people are discussing it while they are getting a coffee Mary Wollstonecraft was a radical woman and I think she would have loved the stir it has caused.” The Mary Wollstonecraft work is meant to personify a spirit the naked everywoman emerging from a swirl of female forms To put clothes on her would have given her an identity The naked figure appears to be the biggest problem for most passersby stopped by the Guardian “I like it visually … I think it’s cool,” said Celia Marr I don’t understand why it was necessary for her to include a naked female form for a feminist icon.” “I don’t really get the lady at the top if it’s all about women and empowering women … I don’t get why she’s naked.” it was great that Wollstonecraft was being commemorated in the area he lives Liverpool John Moores University provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK Over 90% of London’s monuments celebrate men This statue is one of just a few commemorating women around the capital and the statue also opens up some interesting debates about public monument culture and the embrace of more abstract works that are informed by a community rather than the ideas of one artist Public sculpture has the potential to lose its resonance quickly. Consider the representational statues of Victorian politicians in waistcoats and pocket watches are largely unknown and their true-to-likeness statues have become “street furniture” with barely any public acknowledgement or recognition sculptors need to “future-proof” their representations There are more successful methods of commemorating an individual an event or an emotional response than by reproducing them with a sense of fidelity Sculptors who want to depict the individuality of the likes of Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf (whose imminent sculpture is now a hot topic) or respond to the Black Lives Matter movement should involve communities in the creation process There is then the opportunity to work with collective memory – the shared memories of a community – rather than one person’s vision When groups feel the urge to remove sculptures, like those of Edward Colston in Bristol or Robert Milligan in London Docklands, this is because collective ideology is changing. There is an “iconoclash” which is where an image – in this case sculpture – is contested or destroyed based on the belief that what it represents is wrong Ideas about statues change as society changes different groups contest the meanings behind the sculptures leading to disagreement about whether they should be kept or taken down communities retain their collective memories about something Representational sculptures (those that strive for realism) pin memories to the particular person depicted and their values the image of Colston reminds us of his slave trading The sculptures become representative not of the individual but of collective memory a feeling or moment and are then able to eschew the connection with personal values As David Lowenthal, historian and author of The Past Is a Foreign Country (1985) memories suffuse human experience … Whether it is celebrated or rejected If the collective experience is incorporated into the creation and construction process of commemorative sculpture then the resulting work will have an internal life of relevance to the community Jaume Plensa’s Dream(2009) in St. Helens, Merseyside is a successful example of this process. The sculpture was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial for Contemporary Art and St. Helen’s Council in 2007 as part of the Channel 4 television participatory public art initiative, The Big Art Project Commemorating the industrial history of the area, Dream sits on the site of the former Sutton Manor Colliery. The project evolved with deep involvement from the miners who had worked on the coalfield as well as schoolchildren and other community groups As a result of working with the community, Plensa discovered that miners carried tallies – identity discs which they held to be very significant – and that they dreamt of light when working below the surface These key issues led to the design of a luminous white head based on a plinth referencing tallies The ex-miners involved in the design process rejected a more literal sculpture The stylised dolomite stone and concrete angel aims not to represent anyone but everyone It does not revive the past by focusing on the specifics of mining After some initial surprise and backlash, the public received the sculpture well. Former miner and member of the Dream focus group, Gary Conley, said: “We’ve got an iconic sculpture done by a world-class artist that other major towns and cities would absolutely revere.” Similarly, Maggi Hambling aimed for universality in her tribute to Wollstonecraft. “She is Everywoman … by elevating an idea, personifying the spirit, rather than depicting the individual.” The commissioning team sought for it to be “a source of debate … a tangible way to share Wollstonecraft’s vision and ideas”. The statue’s rejection of Wollstonecraft’s features enhances its universality. It reflects all women, their achievements and power. It is a memorial to equality and therefore a compelling monument for us all. Future acts of public commemoration could learn a thing or two from it. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2023 PlayLoading... When asked to name her role model, Nicaraguan beauty Sheynnis Palacios declared it was British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft – an answer that won her the Miss Universe 2023 crown.The question posed by judges at the pageant on Sunday was: “If you could live one year in another woman’s shoes, who would you choose and why?” She was a British writer, philosopher and advocate of women’s rights, who lived from 1759 to 1797. She is best known for her groundbreaking “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” – a 1792 feminist classic that is considered to be the foundation of feminist thought. In the book, Wollstonecraft argued that women are not naturally inferior to men, but are perceived that way solely due to their lack of education and opportunity. She called for women to be given equal access to education and be granted the same rights and freedoms as men. In addition to her work on women's rights, Wollstonecraft also wrote novels, essays, and travelogues. She was a passionate and outspoken writer, and her work continues to be read and studied today. Her daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, wrote the seminal science-fiction novel “Frankenstein”. “I would choose Malala Yousafzai because I know the struggles that she had to deal with in order to get to where she is today. She had to fight for women’s education and fight for all women to be able to stand strong and be the change and lead by example. If I could choose anyone, that would be her.” Thai Schools Gear Up for Term Start with Safety Checks and Tablet Rollout Tawee visits Narathiwat, pledges to tighten security for Buddhist communities Trump orders 100% tariff on foreign-made movies to save 'dying' Hollywood Ratchada Night Market Shuts Doors Suddenly, Leaving Businesses in the Lurch Chadchart confident search for 14 missing workers will be completed in four days as the child of two radical freethinkers (her father was the political philosopher William Godwin) who disapproved of marriage the younger Mary was almost duty-bound to elope at a young age only reconciling with her when Shelley’s wife killed herself and the couple could be respectably married Harriet is one of several female casualties who litter these pages (Fanny Wollstonecraft’s daughter by her lover Gilbert Imlay the Romantic project of free love being strewn with troublesome contradictions possessive love affair with Imlay contrasted agonisingly with her belief that women should never be dependent on a man (to say nothing of her contempt for commerce for Imlay was a get-rich-quick merchant on the lookout for new trade opportunities in post-revolutionary France) spent much of the years of her life with Shelley in a state of depressive anxiety as to his faithfulness – particularly regarding his attachment to her stepsister Claire Clairmont Both Marys were left to bring up their children largely alone – and Gordon details exhaustively the domestic drudgery of trailing round Europe with babies Gordon is too enamoured of her broad-brush idea of the “romantic outlaw” to subject it to much scrutiny it is difficult not to conclude that death disillusion and desertion haunt these accounts of everyday life in the Byron and Shelley set come at the end of the book and deal with what happened to the reputations of Wollstonecraft and Shelley after their deaths Godwin published a hasty memoir of his wife in which he included her correspondence with Imlay – therefore consigning her for years to be characterised chiefly as a clingy hysteric having established her husband’s posthumous reputation with her discreetly edited collection of his poems was scrubbed up for posterity (largely at the hands of her respectable daughter-in-law) as a model Victorian literary lady Romantic Outlaws does a creditable job of binding mother and daughter together again Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley by Charlotte Gordon (Hutchinson, £25). To order a copy for £20, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846 Claudine van Hensbergen currently receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council She has received previous funding from this body as well as from the following: Arts Council England; British Academy; Chawton House Library; School of Advanced Study University of London; University of Oxford She is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a member of the University and College Union Northumbria University, Newcastle provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK A small naked female figure in silvered bronze emerges out of a swirling mass of organic matter. There is something excitingly unexpected about it all. Although not everyone shares this opinion of the recently unveiled memorial in north London to the feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) by the artist Maggi Hambling CBE The statue is a project ten years in the making – but centuries overdue Wollstonecraft was one of the most defiant and intelligent voices in the period of our nation’s history which is often termed the Enlightenment (1715 – 1789) The arguments she advanced for women’s equality feel familiar today Wollstonecraft paid a high personal cost for making her voice heard. Vilified in society as an adulteress and for conceiving a child out of wedlock her unorthodoxy was condemned by the very society she worked to improve But her political writings are extraordinary documents including letters in close dialogue with the leading thinkers and events of the day In her new monument, Hambling does not give us a figure of Wollstonecraft, but a vision of “everywoman”. The work feels more of an intervention in debates about monuments The sculpture rejects a male tradition of public sculpture in which the likeness of celebrated men is cast in bronze or carved in marble A statement on behalf of the campaign to raise the statue, which took a decade to source the necessary £143,300, described the work’s design: As opposed to traditional male heroic statuary the freestanding woman has evolved organically from campaigned and sacrificed themselves for women’s emancipation Hambling should be praised for her attempt to break with this tradition but whether this statue is a fitting tribute to Wollstonecraft can be questioned Hambling’s more abstract and representative form perhaps tries to do too much: to celebrate the life and contribution of one woman whilst celebrating the life and possibilities of all women perhaps the statue stands testament to the impossibility of such a task The statue’s unveiling saw a swift response of female commentators who question the decision to present womankind, and Wollstonecraft’s contribution to our history, through an idealised naked form. Novelist Jojo Moyes said: I think it would have been nice to commemorate Mary Wollstonecraft with her clothes on […] You don’t see a lot of statues commemorating male political figures without their pants on Fellow writer Imogen Hermes Gowar also rejected the “sexy toned female” figure nude and conventionally attractive is the only way women have ever been acceptable in public sculpture While such assessments misconstrue Hambling’s intention for her design the statue is – in this early moment of its life – too provocative to please every woman the same was true of Wollstonecraft’s own reception with her contemporaries It is impossible to know what Wollstonecraft would have made of the statue that the establishment would view her as a fitting subject for such a thing Hambling’s silvery creation is certainly a far cry from John Opie’s portrait of Wollstonecraft that hangs on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery in London A woman of elegant simplicity, you would barely believe you were looking at one of Britain’s most radical writers. Painted when Wollstonecraft was pregnant with her second daughter, Mary, the portrait is a poignant reminder of tragedy around the corner. Wollstonecraft died of septicaemia following the birth. Her daughter would grow up to become a formidable figure in her own right Wollstonecraft was not “every woman”. She was far more outspoken, more rebellious and braver than the average woman of her day. Upon her death, Wollstonecraft’s grieving husband, the author William Godwin that “there does not exist her equal in the world” Hugely individual and brilliantly intellectual that we are still in need of a statue to capture this Critics of Hambling’s monument should be reminded that this does not need to be our only statue for Wollstonecraft But Wollstonecraft is a shining beacon in British women’s history – a figure due many statues and acts of remembrance Hambling’s statue should remind us rather than distract from the fact that Wollstonecraft made her own final monument in the form of her writings So, too, are new statistics emerging from the nation’s newfound interest in its public sculpture. Women make up more than 50% of the UK’s population but are the subject of only 10% of the statues on London’s streets Imogen West-KnightsOpinion13 November 2020artreview.com a statue commemorating Mary Wollstonecraft one of the eighteenth century’s most prominent feminist thinkers was finally unveiled on Newington Green in North London where she established a boarding school for girls an undulating silver column that peaks with a small figure of a naked woman has already sparked numerous disappointed comment pieces Though this is hardly Hambling’s first memorial sculpture to provoke strong feelings (her 1998 tribute to Oscar Wilde featuring the writer’s haunted sinewy face melting into a granite sarcophagus was exactly as unpopular as you could expect such an object to be) This week’s outpouring of feeling is the kind of response that can only be prompted by a public piece of art Public statuary invites commentary simply by virtue of it occupying our shared space and because it is so difficult to get right needing to somehow represent the interests of the artist the subject themselves and ‘the general public’ Lockdown-related boredom has probably meant that more people than usual are agitated by this one it feels unlikely that I could have visited Newington Green at 2:30 in the afternoon and found a crowd of about fifty people enraged about a new commemorative statue The opinion on the ground was unilaterally negative People I spoke to described the statue as disappointing I overheard one person describing it as ‘fascist’ but they walked off before I could ask them to expand people were just nonplussed by the fact that a slim was supposed to represent a tribute to one very particular woman in a particular historical context While nothing like as numerous as their male equivalents I can still think of plenty of statues recognising great women that are not creepy little nudes that Swedish statue of the woman whacking Nazis with her handbag: lots of lifelike So you can see why Hambling wanted to do something a little more daring and accept that a naked woman stood atop a spume of “organic matter” was the right way to go The silvery material has an oddly cheap look to it off-centre positioning on the Green lends it the air of a re-coagulating-Terminator-as-scarecrow and it’s not clear what that weirdness serves I don’t think it constitutes an offence to feminism that the statue includes a naked figure and giving that figure its modesty back by covering it with some duct tape and a face mask The nudity just doesn’t feel especially appropriate It invites the viewer to consider Mary Wollstonecraft and the mons pubis in the same thought and it would be difficult to argue that this is an unalloyed good just something inherently funny about a sour-faced sprite with her boobs out And so I wonder whether those who were involved in the long campaign to create a monument to Wollstonecraft feel sadness that an influential feminist thinker is now associated with a joke I would like to live in a world in which attempts at originality in public statuary are made if we think that public statues are even required at all Part of that will involve people getting it wrong and alienating at least some of the general public that the statue is supposed to be for seem avoidable to get it wrong quite this badly Kadish MorrisOpinion ArtReviewNewsartreview.com02 May 2025 The painting, worth €50 million, has sustained visible scratches The 10 Exhibitions to See in May 2025ArtReviewPreviewsartreview.com02 May 2025 Our editors on the exhibitions they’re looking forward to this month, from the Venice Architecture Biennale to Gallery Weekends in Berlin and Beijing AdvertisementHow the Museum Became a WeaponWilliam ShokiOpinionartreview.com02 May 2025 In apartheid South Africa, museums glorified white settlement and erased Black history; in the US today, they are again being captured under the guise of neutrality Vyjayanthi Rao to curate 2026 Sharjah Architecture TriennialMia SternNewsartreview.com02 May 2025 She will be joined by Tau Tavengwa as associate curator Ari Emanuel buys Frieze from EndeavorArtReviewNewsartreview.com01 May 2025 The entertainment company’s own former chief executive has acquired Frieze for a reported $200m Inaugural Annie Leibowitz prize awarded to photographer of migrant experiencesArtReviewNewsartreview.com01 May 2025 Zélie Hallosserie to receive $10,000 for her documentary work in Calais Helmut Lang Has Always Been ProvocativeClaudia RossReviewsArtReview01 May 2025 Lang’s newest artwork, like his clothing, explores the uncanny ways that industrial refuse can interact with and even evoke human flesh IKOB Feminist Art Prize announces winnersArtReviewNewsartreview.com01 May 2025 Matt Copson: Never Grow UpMartin HerbertReviewsArtReview30 April 2025 “What’s living with no hope?” asks the artist’s big animated baby at KW, Berlin. One thing is certain: we can’t stop watching Disability Is Not a Separate Category of PersonhoodAlice HattrickOpinionartreview.com30 April 2025 The disabled experience is increasingly visible in the artworld yet an ableist political landscape is constantly on the attack. This affects us all We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, revised Privacy.