Author Archives: Natalie Bennett

A woman gets to do community ’emotional work’

John Friend, a gentleman commoner at St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford, died of a fever in March 1673. His father, Nathaniel, after arranging his funeral, returned home “on his cousin’s advice” to tell his wife:

“I came neare home mine owne care and sorrow redoubled in relation to my poore wide and how I should acquaint her with soe heavy a Providence, I therefore called upon the Widdow Margaret Holliser acquainting her with my poore sonnes death and entreated her to goe to our house before and by discourse a little prepare my wife for it which shee honestly did, supposing to her the worst, I in the meantime lingered and about a quarter of an houre after (which was neare 9 at night). I came in bringing both to my wife and to my father the heaviest tidings that ever brought them in my life.”

His wife understandably took it “exceeding heavily”, “the presence and company of my loving Neighbour stood us in good stead.”

I can’t but wonder how recent a widow Margaret Holliser was. Did she not suffer too from her close involvement in the tragic scene, so like one she had herself endured?

(Quoted in A. Brady, English Funerary Elegy in the Seventeenth Century: Laws in Mourning, Palgrave, Macmillan, 2006, p. 33.)

Friday Femmes Fatales No 66

Ten great posts from 10 new (to me) women bloggers.

And I’m aiming to be celebratory this week: first up a brilliant idea and a brilliant blog. I’ve often thought of how unhealthy the changing rooms of my all-girl school were – everyone used to engage in astonishing contortions to avoid showing one inch of skin while removing and replacing clothing, which meant no one every really got a sense of the variety of shapes and sizes of their compatriots’ bodies – relying instead on those airbrushed magazine ideals.

And how much worse it is for women after giving birth – but on The Shape of A Mother women are invited to send in their stories and pictures of their post-natal bodies. I’ve pointed to the whole blog; it seemed unfair to single out any particular post.

Then, on Skanky Jane’s Ruses of Pleasure, the artist reports on her first solo exhibition. To explain:

“…In the Big Rock Candy Mountains all the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth and the hens lay soft boiled eggs…”

Well OK, perhaps that doesn’t explain very much – you’ll just have to go to see for yourself.

Staying with the artistic theme, Lauren on She Sees Red raves about a new multi-artist show in Melbourne. I loved the escalator.

Turning the celebration to the culinary, J in Singapore on Kuidaore explains how to cook the perfect gyoza (Japanese dumpling). I love, love gyoza, although I’d prefer someone to do all those fiddly steps for me…

Then for dessert, Kathy on My Little Kitchen takes us step by step through a ginger peach cake. Hey, it contains fruit; got to be healthy, right?

OK, to leaven the mix a little politics – Jessa on Zombie was at a university tutorial discussing George Bush’s public speaking “skills”. Then the fireworks started.

And a bit of anthropology – on Baraita, Naomi muses on the Jewish communities in the South of the United States.

Jenny on The Shifted Librarian offers a roundup of blog posts on culture change in libraries. Is it possible?

Finally, a celebration of nature. On Just Shelley there are pictures of butterflies, herons, lizards, and more.

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If you missed the last edition, it is here. (If you’d like to see all of them as a list, click on the category “Friday Femmes Fatales” in the righthand sidebar. That will take you to a collection of 650, and counting, women bloggers.)

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Please: In the next week if you read, or write, a post by a woman blogger and think “that deserves a wider audience” (particularly someone who doesn’t yet get many hits), drop a comment. It really does make my life easier. Or don’t be shy – nominate yourself!

A vision of Camden

I’ve visited the site before, but A Vision of Britain, which collects data by region for the past couple of hundred years, has come along in leaps and bounds. I’ve just been looking at the London borough of Camden.

Some facts, some surprising:
* in 1951 45 per cent of households didn’t have their own WC

* Population density was highest in 1900, dipped to its lowest this century in about 1980, and then started to rise again.

* In 2001 more than 45 per cent of Camden residents (percentage of adults presumpably) had university degrees (which must I suspect be among the highest in the country).

You can do the same calculations for any area of the UK on the site.

Eating in a warzone

By far from the worst aspect, but once you hit week three of pitta and hummus it must get to be just one more misery of life… an interesting piece about the food provided for emergency aid.

A modest proposal…

… as a replacement for the airport panic – speed limits of 15mph – guaranteed to save 3,500 or so lives a year.

I’ve up now over on Commentis Free. (Although the fact that my original headline, as above, got changed, did mean that it lost some of its intended impact.)

Titus Andronicus revived

The Guardian’s “history” piece today is the review from 1957 of Titus Andronicus, “given performance tonight for the first time in Stratford-on-Avon’s history”.

Peter Brook, who is responsible for sound, for stage pictures and for direction, has produced the play with dazzling simplicity out of a terrifying tawny darkness. The horrors were not laid on crudely. There was little running gore, and only the lopping of Titus’s hand is really sickening.
But the murderous spirit of the piece is marvellously caught with the shadows and the harsh shapes. Sir Laurence Olivier begins the much-wronged Titus on an almost jovial note, then rising like an Elizabethan Oedipus to the scene where, confronted with his lopped and ravished daughter Lavinia, he has his own hand amputated, and going on superbly through the scenes of feigned madness to the final Feast.

I struggle to see Olivier as Titus, but perhaps that is a failure of my imagination.

(My review of the recent Globe show.)