Historical memory is a fickle thing. Look at London. The Roman city has always loomed large, but Anglo-Saxon London – or rather Lundenwic (c. 600-886) – was forgotten. For centuries, scholars scoffed at Bede’s description of a thriving trading centre. It has only been in the past two decades that archaeologists have found what he described, a large, rich settlement in the area that is now Soho and Charing Cross.

It is thus apt that the Museum of London should decide to revamp its medieval gallery now, when some sense has been made of the glorious finds. The new display – which contrary to its name covers more than a thousand years, nearly half the city’s history – was opened last week, and was worth the wait.

The Museum is well known for its accessible presentations, and the new gallery fits the mould, although with fewer reconstructions than its justly celebrated Roman displays. In presenting the newly rediscovered Ludenwic in particular, for which there is so little other information, the history has to be “read” from the objects found. These might have been what were once called the “Dark Ages”, but beautiful things were still celebrated and sought after.

Some would have belonged to the aristocrats of the age, such as the still stunning brooch of gold and gold wire, set with garnets, that was buried in a woman’s grave in what is now Covent Garden in the mid-600s. Read more

My 19th-century “blogger”, Frances Williams Wynn, is today setting out her views on the great Shakespearean actors of her age. She’s definitely a partisan of Kean, but thinks little of Kemble. I think our modern tastes might have agreed, if this article is anything to go by:

By the standards of the time, he was unsuited to the great tragic roles. The style then in vogue was artificial, declamatory, and statuesque, and its leading exponent, John Philip Kemble, was an actor of classic good looks, imposing figure, and vocal eloquence. Though Kean had handsome features, notably unusually expressive eyes, he was small, with a voice that was harsh, forceful, and commanding rather than melodious. He could never have hoped to compete with Kemble on Kemble’s terms, so he had to become an innovator as well as a virtuoso. On Jan. 26, 1814, when he made his Drury Lane debut as Shylock in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the measure of his triumph was not to outshine Kemble but to outmode him.

I was going to write an extensive post on this, but it is so depressing I couldn’t face it. From the Unicef press site:

An estimated three million girls in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East undergo genital mutilation/cutting every year, according to a UNICEF report released today.
Yet the study says that with adequate commitment and support, this millennium-long custom could be eliminated within a single generation.

It will be on The Happy Feminist on December 7 – deadline for submissions is December 5.

And due to popular request a theme – or suggestion for posting topic – is added:

This theme is optional, and I fully intend to include a variety of posts that do not relate to this theme. If you have already submitted a post to me, there is no need to submit a new post.

What I am most interested in hearing about is how you first came to identify yourself as a feminist. What made you adopt that designation for yourself? Was it a slow process or a Eureka moment? When did you realize that you were a feminist? I am especially interested in hearing from people who grew up in communities where feminism was a rarity.

See the full call here or send submissions direct to veryhappyfeminist AT yahoo DOT com.

The England of The Libertine has been a on 15-year-long binge – a binge of drinking, and fucking* and every other kind of debauchery that its brightest and best could dream up. Suddenly, however, the “hair of the dog” has become ineffective and through the lens of director, Laurence Dunmore, you see a society abruptly awakened.

It is opening its eyes to a grim, grey and desperate land; even the gaudy decorations of the theatre are fading, peeling, corroding. But John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester (Johnny Depp), the man who has always shone above the rest, is not prepared to turn his path towards righteous, restrained endeavour that fits the new era – will not, and perhaps cannot.

I’ve always thought of Depp as a pretty-boy actor (when I’ve thought of him at all), but he turns in a stunning performance here, book-ending the film with wry, searingly honest monologues in which the twitch of the corner of an eye speaks volumes. And he manages to be both awful, and awfully attractive.

Yet he is almost eclipsed by Samantha Morton, playing his protege, the actress Elizabeth Barry, who, however much she might have to play the whore in the wings, is determined on stage to be her own woman, and secure her own fame. The final scene between her and Rochester is a wonderful portrait of a woman who has fought for and achieved power – for her the power over the fickle, dangerous, but passionately loving London theatre mob.

John Malkovitch is powerful too as the King – the man who’d led the party when he was restored to the throne as a fresh-faced youngster, but who’s now an ageing roue, seeking, like any leader on his way out, to secure his legacy. He, as much as a king can, loves his subject Rochester, and he wants him to deliver for himself, but like any father, knows deep down that the Earl will always go too far.

But the star above all here is the camera – the way it peers through the murk to focus on a greasy strand of hair, a goosebumped arm, a bottomless pool of mud. You can almost smell and taste this rough, barbarian world – yet it is a world that values culture, wit and learning, a world the dissects and analyses every catch in Ophelia’s voice, inspects every line of a new play to find the one that rings true.

And the language of the film – the words of the earthy, blunt 17th-century street, of the rapier-fast wit of the aristocratic fop, and the orutund flow of the formal stage – is brilliant. (It is based on the play by Stephen Jeffreys, and it shows in a classiness and complexity seen in few movie scripts.)

There was really only one scene I thought didn’t work – the orgy in St James’s Park, or at least the orgy that Rochester imagines. It is far too tame, too Vaseline-lensed an affair for the imagination of Rochester, but then again the director had to get at least an 18-certificate for it.

That’s a reminder that for all the claims of the moralists, ours is an age far more uptight and hung-up than later 17th-century England. And in fact overall The Libertine is by no means an explicit film. A great many sexual things are suggested, but it never – thankfully – gets anatomical; it doesn’t need to.

The only other negative is the handheld camera work – spinning around a character in a slow circle is rather overdone, and the first-time director should immediately put away the technique of moving two characters in and out of focus as each speaks – very year-one film school.

Nevertheless, as a portrait of an age, and of a brilliant man who’s bent on sticking his hand in ever fire so that the pain can tell him he is alive, this film would be hard to beat.

I seldom go to the cinema, but my recommendation would be that even if you only go to one film a year, go to this one.

*I use the basic Anglo-Saxon here because it seems appropriate in the context of this film. (If it offends you here, you really don’t want to see it.) The film itself has very few of today’s “obvious” taboo words, but it might well revive a few of the old ones.

“Condoms”, “anal sex”, all sorts of previously banned terms are regularly bandied about by the mainstream media with scarcely a wince to be seen. Yet how often do you see the word “menstruation”? Nothing (necessarily) to do with the sexual act, so, you’d think, less likely to be taboo, but somehow it is still seen as something not to be mentioned in polite company, or “family newspapers”.

I’ve been reflecting on this after reading Menstruation: A Cultural History, edited by Andrew Shail and Gillian Howie, which provides a historical framework for understanding the strength of the taboo. Also, it makes clear how much beliefs about women contributed to the framing of women as inferior.

It starts, as so often, with Aristotle. For him, there was only one sex, females being merely an inferior form of male. This conclusion arose because as the normal human shape was male, for a woman to be capable of producing a male, menstrual blood must be male, in effect a lesser form of sperm.

When this got picked up by medieval cleric scholars who, theoretically at least, had no contact with women, it only got worse. Menstruation was a cleansing process – uniquely required by the female body – (so emmenagogues – preparations for bring on menstruation – could be seen as pro-natal, rather than abortifacients). Although I wonder how many women really understood what was going on. As a consequence of this belief, menstrual blood and women who were menstruating, could be seen as impure, and dangerous. (The process of churching women after birth certainly had something to do with this – although not according to official theology.)

And it meant that menstruating women would stain mirrors. “If a woman has this flow and looks into a mirror during this time, this mirror becomes like a bloody cloud. And if the mirror is new, one can hardly remove the red staining from the mirror, but if it is old, one can easily remove it,” said the Secreta Mullierum [Secrets of Women, written circa 1300.

Then such a lovely image: “Therefore Avicenna says that the uterus of women is like a toilet that stands in the middle of town and to which people go to defecate, just like all residues of the blood from all over the woman’s body go to the uterus and are cleaned there.” (p. 66)

And a menstruating woman can pollute in all sorts of ways – speaking to one makes a man’s voice hoarse; a baby conceived when a woman is menstruating would become leprous, it could give children the evil eye, and sex with a menstruating woman could give men all manner of diseases.

It is not until the 20th century that you start to get to heroes in this story – usually female doctors and researchers, the “most definitive expression of the approach” was in The Hygiene of Menstruation: AN Authoritative Statement by the Medical Women’s Federation in 1925, which said: “Menstruation is a natural function; it is not an illness, and girls should therefore continue their normal work and play during the period. It should not be and is not normally accompanied by pain or malaise.” (p. 112)

Yet there were still social hangovers. In 1926 Johnson & Johnson printed a “silent purchase coupon” for Modess sanitary napkins, so it “may be obtained in a crowded store without embarrassment or discussion”. But still women complained that the shape of the box was easily identifiable. (p. 250)

(Tampons, by the way, for the historical record, were patented in 1931 and put on sale in 1934.)

What strikes me is that growing up in the early Seventies in Australia I was still affected by many of these attitudes. Mum told me carefully that I had to make sure Dad didn’t see my sanitary pads. (I don’t recall any explanation being given, there was just an air of this being something shameful and dirty.) And this wasn’t surprising when I read the sex education books that she’d had at my age, which still referred to “clearing out impurities” in the body and similar.

I wonder what messages young teens get today. Are they any better?

* An interesting side-point: a 14th-century London cleric wrote that some girls started menstruating “in the eleventh or in the tenth year. And at that point they are capable of conception.” Which certainly doesn’t seem to square with our ideas about medieval nutrition and health. (p. 55)