Inspiring Women - Mary Seacole

To celebrate International Women's Day I drew five postcards for Fuel Theatre Company who are currently running events at the Southbank Women of the World Festival.

If you'd like to contribute your own inspiring woman to their site, click here (see if you can find mine).

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I didn't choose the women on the postcards but Mary Seacole is one I'd like to know more about. 

Contrary to her rather dull schoolbook image, seems she was a consummate high Victorian: a self-publicist, in and out of the debtor's court, whose Crimean 'hotel' (and, some thought, brothel) was run for profit as well as charity; an outrageous character who flaunted her self-awarded medals when she discovered the British state had overlooked her, due to her sex and race. I'm disappointed she never turned up in a Flashman novel.

I know it's confusing to run two giveaways at the same time but I have a set of all five postcards (which I will be posting on this site over the next few days) to give to someone who adds a comment, on any of my postcard posts, about her (or his) most inspiring woman. 

Think carefully about the word 'inspiring'. It doesn't mean someone you admire because she has done 'good' or 'achieved'. An important part of feminism, for me, is throwing out the concept that women must behave correctly in order to be admired. Pick a woman who has had a direct effect on your life or on the way you see or do things - and go for it!

Comments

[sakura]

My mum: she was one of the few women who went to university then abroad to Paris to continue her study in art, married my father, a foreigner, and went to live in Sri Lanka in a time when Japanese women were not supposed to do any of these things. So although I bicker with her over many things, the one thing she instilled in me was that I didn't need to follow other people's life plans and I admire her immensely for that.

[Kelley Swain]

Caroline Herschel - she was incredibly adaptable, going from being a housemaid in Hanover to singing in the high society of Bath to becoming an astronomical assistant & successful astronomer in her own right! I think her adaptability is what I admire most about her.