A suffragist, a spiritualist, a stockbroker, an author, and in 1872, the first woman to run for president of the United States, Victoria Woodhull was a visionary who defied expectations. But her legacy is complicated. Her advocacy of “free love” and willingness to challenge Victorian norms made her infamous in her own time. Her clashes with leading suffragists and her scandalous run ins with the law left her branded as dangerous, even immoral. For decades afterward, she was written out of mainstream histories, remembered more for controversy than for courage.Now, Eden Collinsworth’s new book, The Improbable Victoria Woodhull, offers a fresh take. In today’s episode, we’ll explore Woodhull’s story and how this new biography helps us see her not just as a heroine or a villain, but as a woman whose choices and contradictions still have something to teach us today.Content Warning: The topics covered in this episode may not be suitable for all audience. Listener discretion is advised. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Reading Women Through Portraits
In today’s episode, I’m joined by Gemma Haigh, now known to many as The Plant Parlour (where she champions cultivating lush botanical spaces), but who first made her mark as curator and researcher on the exhibition Georgian Women: Female Portraits by John Russell RA. During that project, she researched 19 female portraits in Guildford Heritage’s acclaimed Russell collection, interrogating how Russell’s pastel portraits of daughters, wives, and social figures both reflected and resisted gendered expectations in Georgian Britain.Gemma guides us through the power dynamics embedded in pastel and paint: how Russell’s art objectified and elevated his sitters; what it says about the male gaze and elite femininity; and how those images gain new meaning when reinterpreted through a feminist lens today. We discuss how modern viewers can learn to read these portraits with fresh eyes and explore what their stories reveal about identity, visibility, and portraiture as a form of social control. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
They were adulterers, murderers, mistresses, religious zealots, thieves, and traitors. They were queens, wives, mothers, young, and old. What binds the women together in this podcast is their legacies. These are women who were known during their lifetimes or reinvented after their deaths as wicked women. The lenses of history are often gendered, damning women for some of the same actions that men have been lauded for. The nuances surrounding the women in this podcast were removed in exchange for a one-sided portrayal. Within Wicked Women: The Podcast, I do not attempt to excuse or condone the wrongs committed by these women, instead, the podcast looks at their overarching story and examines the origin of their negative legacy. Alongside a brief biographical overview of the woman, I will be incorporating interviews I have held with experts on the subject to provide multiple and diverse perspectives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
South Africa