“For we think back through our mothers, if we are women,” wrote Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own, the book in which she reflected on women as writers and pondered the scarcity of women’s writing in world literary…
Category: Biography
Remembering Naomi Jacob (1884-1964)
Although she was brought up in the Church of England, Jacob converted to Roman Catholicism at around the age of eighteen. But she remained proud of her Jewish heritage. This is most clearly demonstrated in The Gollantz Saga, which she began writing just before the Nazis swept to power in Germany. Beginning in early nineteenth century Vienna, it follow several generations of a Jewish family, as the head of the house establishes a business and life in England, moving among the British upper classes. The series is an engaging and warm exploration of family ties and rivalries, and the principles of honour and loyalty.
Remembering Edith Picton Turbervill (O.B.E. 1872 – 1960)
When I lived in Wellington Shropshire during the 90s I learnt that Edith Pargeter ( better known as Ellis Peters ), had lived in the area. But it was only by chance that I found out about another Edith –…
A CONVENT SCHOOLING – SCHOOL DAYS, ADULT WAYS … Pt II
If we look at the justification offered for the all-male priesthood, we find an example of this circular reasoning. The Catholic Faith Handbook for Youth, which, published in 2007, has the Church’s imprimatur, i.e. official declaration that the document is ‘free from moral or doctrinal error, says this:
The Catholic church ordains only baptised men because Jesus chose men, not women, to be his Apostles…for this reason the church is bound by Jesus’s choice to ordain only men. [3]
By this analogy it might be argued that since Jesus only chose Jews to be his apostles, only Jews can be Catholic priests. But Catholics don’t exclude non-Jews from their priesthood, so why should they exclude non-men?
A CONVENT SCHOOLING – SCHOOL DAYS, ADULT WAYS … Pt I
Some people (it was argued) are obviously not terrorists: newborn babies for example. And nuns. Nuns are mild, gentle people who wouldn’t say boo to a goose, let alone blow up a plane. They can be safely waved through after only the most cursory of searches. That was the view of one of the speakers.
But somebody else thought nuns should be regarded as prime suspects, because what could be more fundamentalist than a nun? Nuns believe so strongly in the truth of their religion that they dedicate their whole lives to it. They live in like-minded communities, and spend many hours in rituals of religious devotion, serving a god who, they believe, has a special mission for them – their vocation. A god who, if they follow their vocation obediently will reward them with eternal bliss, but who, if they don’t, may send them to hell.
Politics & Women’s Voices – Anna Howard Shaw
Shaw embodied women’s expanding opportunities in the 19th and early 20th centuries for education, work and politics, as well as the challenges they faced. An immigrant raised in poverty on a Michigan farm, from an early age Shaw worked to financially support her family, teaching school in addition to her unpaid hard physical farm labor. When she was called to the ministry, her family didn’t approve. She went it alone. She worked her way through college and seminary in the 1870s, fought for ordination, headed two parishes, and earned a medical degree, before giving all of it up to become a freelance lecturer, activist and organizer.
Molly Hadfield – A Radical Warrior Woman Remembered
… when Molly Hadfield was 10, she was told that nursing was not for her – ‘you can’t do the exams’ – but she would be welcome to work in the nurses’ dining room. She took the job. Under the rules lunches were set out on tables for nurses, but sisters and matrons’ meals were kept in the oven. Sisters and matrons sat down to piping hot fare. Cold and cooling meals waited until nurses finished their shifts. The unfairness of the hierarchical system struck Molly Hadfield then and stuck with her, as did the distinction made between kitchen and nursing staff which prevented her from meeting on the premises with cousins and friends who were nurses.
MARY QUAILE – Activist, Agitator, Trade Unionist
Mary Quaile Early in the 1900s, Mary Quaile arrived with her family in Manchester. They had come from Dublin, and Mary became a stalwart in the labour movement in Manchester. She led a café waitresses’ strike, going on to work…
Margaret Rawlings at the National Portrait Gallery
Rawlings (1906 – 1996) … made her stage debut on 21 March 1927 in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘The Doctor’s Dilemma’ at the Grand Theatre, Croydon. During the 1930s, her reputation as a leading tragedy actress gained ground as she starred as Bianca Capello in Clifford Bax’s play ‘The Venetian’ and Oscar Wilde’s ‘Salome’, and she continued to receive praise from critics for her vivid and emotional performances. Rawlings was particularly successful playing the spectacular dual role of Mary Charrington and her husband’s murdered Mistress, Lucy, in Gordon Sherry’s thriller ‘Black Limelight’, which had a long run at the St James Theatre in 1937 … Rawlings gained further recognition following her roles as Eliza Doolittle in Shaw’s ‘Pygmalian’; ‘A House in the Square’ by Diana Morgan, in which she starred with Lillian Braithwaite; and Vittoria Corombona in John Webster’s tale of corruption and deceit ‘The White Devil’.