From Virginia Woolf to Mary Clarke: Campaigners fight for more female statues

From Virginia Woolf to Mary Clarke: Campaigners fight for more female statues

From the first suffragette to give her life for the cause to an early pioneer of palaeontology, campaign groups around the UK have been fighting to redress the nation’s statue gender imbalance.

In Dorset, a mother-daughter duo has helped raise more than £100,000 to erect a statue to fossil hunter and scientist Mary Anning.

The campaign group behind the statue said in Dorset, where Mary Anning was born, there are more statues of animals than there are of women.

13-year-old Evie Swire campaigned alongside her mum for a statue of Mary Anning (Anya Pearson)

Anya Pearson said the “catalyst” for the movement happened when she came to the beach with her daughter four years ago.

Evie Swire, 13, asked her mother if they could go see Mary Anning’s statue, after studying her in school.

Ms Pearson told PA: “I had to explain to her that she was a woman, and she was working class, and those kinds of people don’t get statues to them, unfortunately.

Anya Pearson said she and her daughter got ‘really annoyed’ there wasn’t already a statue to the palaeontologist (Anya Pearson)

“Her neck went really red, and I thought, you know what I am annoyed, my daughter’s annoyed and we said, ‘right let’s do something about this’.”

The campaign is hoping to unveil the statue, which shows Ms Anning walking to the beach with her dog, on what would be her 223rd birthday, next May.

In Brighton, plans to erect a statue of the first woman to die in the name of female suffrage already have the backing of historians and the local MP.

Jean Calder, chair of trustees of the Mary Clarke statue appeal said they are about a quarter of the way to its goal.

She said: “Mary Clarke seems to have been an extraordinarily good and courageous woman who was cut down in her prime. She experienced domestic violence in her marriage and she managed, unusually for the time, to extricate herself from it.”

Mary Clarke died on Christmas day after being beaten on black Friday while protesting votes for women.

Ms Calder said: “There’s an issue I think about female bravery and heroism and courage and recognising that and that it really hasn’t been recognised, because those acts of courage where women do sometimes lose their life certainly or are injured, they tend not to be in uniform.”

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What the Virgina Woolf statue could look like (Laury Dizengremel)

Campaigners have raised more than £33,000 to put a statue of Virginia Woolf down by the river in Richmond.

The first full-sized statue of the English writer, famous for works including Mrs Dalloway and Orlando, will be placed in the heart of the town where she lived for 10 years.

Award-winning sculptor Laury Dizengremel was commissioned to make the artwork.

She said: “It’s about celebration, and I think it’s about redressing the imbalance.

“How about we put the pause button on statues of men being made for a while and just focus on redressing the balance and then proceed in an equal manner?”

She told PA it was important that people could be able to interact with the bronze-figure, which will be seated on a bench.

“I love interactive sculpture,” she said. “Sculpture on a plinth is just less accessible.

“Anyone could come and sit next to her and engage with the sculpture. We are in an age of selfies and I don’t think that is going to go anywhere anytime soon.”

The drive for more female statues, she said, “is not about excluding men”: “It’s about just recognising that there’s a long way to go still on gender equality.”

The Matchgirls Memorial charity is due to launch its official campaign to commemorate the matchgirls strike of 1888, a series of industrial action taken by women and teenage girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow, London.

The women went on strike in opposition to their poor working conditions, which included 14-hour workdays, poor pay, excessive fines and health complications from working with white phosphorus.

Sam Johnson (left) became interested in the matchgirls campaign after learning about the role played by her great-grandmother, Sarah Chapman (right) (Sam Johnson)

The campaign, which works with schools and youth groups, hopes to raise around £100,000 to erect a physical memorial to the women.

Sam Johnson grew interested in the campaign after discovering her great-grandmother, Sarah Chapman, was one of the first union delegates.

She said the story had “brilliant resonance” with the modern day, adding: “Young girls and young women can draw strength from these match girls, who apparently had no power or real voice of their own.

“But they stood up and spoke for themselves and they show you are never too small to make a difference. I think it’s a great inspiration.”

‘Her Prose Is Sometimes Poetry’: Why Margaret Jull Costa Loves Virginia Woolf

What are the best books about translation you’ve read?

I haven’t honestly read any. It feels too strange to be reading about something I’ve been doing practically every day for over 30 years. And I know this is heresy, but I’m not sure there’s that much to say. For me, translating is very much something you do, like writing.

Do you count any books as comfort reads, or guilty pleasures?

Almost anything written in the 19th century would count as a comfort read for me. I’m not sure I have any guilty reading pleasures except perhaps avoiding contemporary fiction — and I do feel slightly guilty about that, but it does simplify my reading life.

Has a book ever brought you closer to another person, or come between you?

When I was translating Saramago’s “Death at Intervals,” I happened to meet the Dutch translator, Maartje de Kort, who was working on it too, and we had a lovely time exchanging problems and solutions, and have remained in touch ever since. Also I do a lot of co-translations at the moment, mainly with younger translators whom I’ve mentored, and it’s a real delight to share a book with someone who knows every nook and cranny of it as well as I do. I can’t think of a book that has come between me and someone else. I did disagree quite violently with a friend about Emily Dickinson’s poetry — she thought it too death-obsessed, and I thought it life-affirming — but we’re still friends.

What’s the most interesting thing you learned from a book recently?

Well, in Bernardo Atxaga’s novel “Casas y tumbas,” I found out a lot about appendicitis, which was useful since shortly afterward, my grandson in America had to be hospitalized with acute appendicitis, so I felt better informed.

What moves you most in a work of literature?

The sheer pleasure of reading wonderful prose or poetry. As well as descriptions of nature and the everyday and the portrayal of friendship. I recently reread (for probably the third time) Willa Cather’s “My Ántonia,” which is a celebration of friendship over the years. And I get huge pleasure out of Billy Collins’s ability to make poetry out of everything and anything.

What makes for a good translation?

It has to have a convincing voice, so that you, as a reader, have utter confidence in what you’re reading. Yes, it needs to be accurate and faithful (whatever that means), but if you’re translating a masterpiece of prose from Spanish or Portuguese or whatever, then your English translation should be a masterpiece too. Perhaps the biggest compliment I’ve ever had came from a friend who is also an expert on Javier Marías’s work. He said he got as much pleasure from reading my translations of Marías’s novels, as he did from the original Spanish. That’s what I’m aiming for.

How do you organize your books?

In theory, by author and by language, but my bookshelves are rarely tidy, and they’re in nearly every room in the house, which means there are overflows and leakages, with books turning up where they shouldn’t.

“Una stanza tutta per sé”: Virginia Woolf e il perché le donne devono avere uno spazio dedicato

“La vita entra in conflitto con qualcosa che vita non è”. È con questa frase che si racchiude il senso del saggio di Virginia Woolf, che affronta una tematica importante: le donne e il romanzo.

“Se vuole scrivere romanzi una donna deve avere del denaro e una stanza tutta per sé”.

La condizione di povertà letteraria a cui erano esposti gli scritti femminili, viene esaminata dalla Woolf nelle diverse epoche storiche. Si parte dal cinquecento, in cui le donne potevano scrivere solo delle lettere, fino ad Aphra Behn, prima donna che ha ricevuto un compenso economico per i suoi scritti. Tuttavia, si dovrà attendere la fine del settecento, affinché la scrittura al femminile possa divenire una vera e propria attività intellettuale.

Si trattava, però, principalmente di romanzi, nonostante l’impulso originario riguardasse la poesia. Questo perché, come ci fa notare la Woolf, anche le scrittrici più famose non possedevano una stanza tutta per loro, uno spazio esclusivo da dedicare alla scrittura, in quanto costrette a scrivere nel soggiorno comune, dove venivano frequentemente disturbate, motivo per cui erano preclusi i testi che richiedevano maggiore concentrazione, come la poesia: “le donne non hanno mai una mezz’ora di tempo che possono considerare propria”.

La copertina del libro

La Woolf fa emergere come anche Jane Austen fosse costretta a nascondere i suoi manoscritti, coprendoli con un foglio di carta assorbente, per paura che la scrittura risultasse disdicevole agli occhi dei visitatori, poiché l’educazione di una donna doveva riguardare solo la sfera emotiva, le relazioni, l’accudimento. La donna che nasceva col dono della poesia era una donna infelice, in conflitto con se stessa, che desiderava uno spazio tutto per sé, precluso dalle prescrizioni sociali: “A lei il mondo non diceva, come agli uomini: ‘scrivi pure, se vuoi, per me non fa alcuna differenza’. Il mondo, sganasciandosi dalle risate le diceva: ‘Scrivere? E a che ti serve scrivere?”.

La Woolf rimarca come qualsiasi donna, nata nel sedicesimo secolo con il talento per la scrittura, si sarebbe sentita “per metà strega e per metà maga”, in quanto contrastata, ostacolata e derisa dagli altri. La donna con quel determinato talento, ci racconta infatti, che era solita nascondersi dietro il nome di un uomo, dissimulando la sua identità nell’anonimato. Per questo motivo, la Woolf enfatizza l’importanza di un atto creativo congiunto, tra uomo e donna, che abbatta le differenze di genere: “Qualunque cosa scritta con quel consapevole pregiudizio è destinata a morire. Non è più fertile. Per quanto brillante ed efficace […] non può crescere nella mente degli altri. Una qualche forma di collaborazione deve necessariamente aver luogo nella mente, tra la donna e l’uomo, prima che l’arte della creazione possa realizzarsi”.

LA PUBBLICAZIONE - “Una stanza tutta per sé” è un saggio di Virginia Woolf, pubblicato da diverse case editrici, edito da Feltrinelli Editore, nel 5 giugno 2013. Tratto da due conferenze tenutesi, nel 1928, per un pubblico di studentesse, questo saggio che celebra l’importanza di uno spazio per sé e di un’autonomia economica, non è lontano dalla realtà odierna delle tante donne a cui questo spazio manca; perché, come nei recenti lockdown, hanno dovuto fare i conti con uno spazio condiviso o perché non hanno l’indipendenza economica, per poter essere libere di scegliere la propria felicità. È un saggio che richiama alla luce anche quelle donne talentuose, divenute l’ombra dei loro partner, in quanto dipendenti da un’idea di amore fusionale che le rende anonime ai loro stessi occhi. Donne disposte a sacrificare la propria felicità per gli altri, che non si mettono mai al primo posto e non si ricavano quella stanza tutta per sé: uno spazio fisico e metaforico, in cui potersi dedicare ai propri hobby o alle passioni, per conoscersi, ritrovarsi o più semplicemente per imparare ad amarsi.

Un’opportunità e uno spazio che le donne dovrebbero destinare solo a se stesse.