I Remember Mama . . .

I have to run and do other things but I'm throwing Eleanor of Aquitaine's name out. Will be back to elaborate.

PS The original name of Delaware was Christiana, after Queen Christina.

t'anks fer the tid-bit about Delware, dinn know that . . .

Elizabeth Cady Stanton for the work she did in liberating women from the bondage of non status in the United States. She was a leader in the suffrage movement and the anti-slavery movement but not a popular as some less assertive women of that era. She recognized how the insanity of strict adherence to fashion and promoted changes in the way women dressed by campaigning to do away with corsets that actually caused internal injuries to women. In her own words:

THE NEW DRESS

Why do not the women put it on? All the reasons given can be summed up under two heads.

1st. It is not the Fashion!! To hear people talk of the fashions, one would think they were fixed as the laws of the Medes and Persians[A]--that they were all got up by some sovereign power, with peculiar reference to the comfort and beauty of the race; when the fact is, they are ever varying--the device, generally, of an individual, to conceal some special deformity, or set off some peculiar charm. There is great tyranny in this idea of a universal dress. Only look at the difference in the face, form and manners of those around you, and is it not fair to infer that a different style of dress would become each? Why should I, a short woman, with a short plump arm, destroy the proportions of my figure by wearing a great flowing sleeve, and a bag of an undersleeve, because some tall thin woman, with an endless arm must resort to some such conceit, to break up the monotomy of its length? Why should I cover my ears with my hair, because the Duchess of R. slit her's down by wearing heavy ear-rings, and must cover them to hide the deformity? Why must I wear a tournour, a thing so vulgar in fact, and in idea, because my Lady V. wears one to conceal a great wen, growing in the centre of her back?--Why should I trail my clothes upon the ground because royal fools, having no true dignity or nobility in themselves, impose upon an ignorant populance by the show of it, with their lofty plumes, jewelled crowns, and trails of rich brocade.--Suppose we should hear of some Chinese mother, who being convinced of the folly and cruelty of compressing her daughter's feet, had suffered them to grow, and left them to use their powers of locomotion naturally and freely, in the Celestial Empire, in spite of ridicule and odium. If in reply to the question, "why do you make yourself ridiculous by such a course? why not do as others do? if all the women would let their feet grow, why then, of course it would be a great blessing to them, but it is absurd for one to stand up alone to change a long established fashion. It seems to me you wear the crown of martyrdom for a very small matter. I do not see but the women get on very well with the small feet. A large foot is a masculine appendage, pray do not ape the men"--suppose the Chinese mother should say, "this fashion is cruel, wicked and unnatural, that so cramps the energies of woman, and trammels all her movements, has already existed long enough. Shall my country women always suffer this outrage, because no one has the heroism to stand up alone, and say this shall not be? Evils can never be remedied by a supine endurance of them. Shall I who see the truth neither proclaim it, nor live it, because the mass are not ready to go with me? No; I am willing to encounter a life long of ridicule and rebuke, if the blessing of free powers of locomotion can be gained thereby, for those who come after me--for my children, who are dearer to me than my own case and comfort--yea, than life itself." Who would not admire the noble independence, the lofty self-sacrifice, the straight forward common sense of the Chinese mother? And why should we not ourselves be, what we so much admire in story and in song? Are there no evils from which American mothers would fain shield their daughters? Shall we through fear of ridicule, sail on with the multitude, doing no good work for those who come after us, whilst we are in the full enjoyment of blessings won for us by the heroes of the past?

2d. The long dress and bodice is most graceful. Let us see. Do you mean the woman moves with more grace with her vital organs all pinched into the smallest possible compass, with her legs and feet bound together in triple mail of cotton wool and silk? Does she walk, run, climb, get in and out of carriage, go up and down stairs with more grace? Certainly not. Two elements essential to grace are wanting in all her movements, namely, ease and freedom. It is not the woman, but the drapery that strikes you as more graceful. A long, full, flowing skirt, certainly hangs more gracefully than a short one; but does woman crave no higher destiny than to be a mere frame work on which to hang rich fabrics to show them off to the best advantage?---Are not the free easy motions of the woman herself, more beautiful than the flowing of her drapery? Just veil the exquisitely harmonious motions of yonder danseuse, in drapery of the softest folds and richest shades, and tell me, in the mazes of that mystic dance is she as beautiful as when her limbs were free?

The most you can say of the long skirt is, it conceals ugly feet, crooked legs, and awkward attitudes. But we look upon these things as diseases, unnatural conditions. It is the violation of some law that makes people crooked and ugly, and some false state of mind that makes them awkward. She made it a point to fall in and out of a carriage, seemed to walk with a painful consciousness of insecurity, a dread uncertainty as to where her next step would lead her. Her legs seemingly refused to make any compromises with her petticoats, hence she was continually assuming the horizontal position when the perpendicular would have been much more becoming. Now her whole appearance is really graceful. She walks off with a dignified, majestic step, apparently as joyous and free as some poor captive who has just cast off his ball and chain. E.C.S.

Was she not also the woman who toured THE SOUTH to preach against slavery in pre-war America?

Oh - how did I miss this thread?

I have to be awfully boring and think first about Elizabeth I of England!

Such a smart, learned, pecocious little girl - caught in the perilous politics and marital politics of her father's court - and all such larger than life figures.

A young woman again treading a perilous path in the reigns of both her siblings - and then acceding to the throne in a time of such political/religious turmoil - and constant threat to her country and her reign.

Such a clever, passionate, eloquent ruler - human and smart- and choosing good advisers - mean and extravagant, wise and flighty, rational and emotional.

Such a long reign - such a flowering of art and music and, of course, writing! I love the literature of that period - and, while I know she didn't write it - though she could write well - she did provide the condotions under which the English Renaissance reached its full flowering.....

What a lovely bunch of womanly thoughts...first to come to my mind is Mary Queen of Scotts.
I also have a soft spot for Christina.
Have to think on it a bit though really..interesting.

Favorite woman in history: Madam Marie Curie

My other favorite woman was Dr. Rosaland Franklin, who discovered the helical nature of DNA. Dr. Franklin should have won the Noble prize, instead of Watson & Crick.

Well, Russian history also has a lady that can be compared to these appearing in other members' responses: this was empress Catherine the Great.

The woman I think of first is my mother, coz I was born in WW2 and because of her survived the bombs falling on london every day and the streets being straffed by machine guns.
Only my wife and daughter come close.

France is full of powerful women, some of them French by marriage.

During the reign of Charlemagne, a woman named Dhoudha was married into the family of the first Provencal poet, William. Dhoudha was almost an exile on her husband's estate in Uzes, a town near Avignon, while her husband partied at court. Her son was a sort of prisoner of war and she wrote a book for him, in the genre known as the Mirror for Princes, the most famous of which comes from Shakespeare's Hamlet (Polonius' speech, "Never a borrower nor a lender be..."). Like many wives of courtiers, Dhoudha actually ran the estate.

Then there were all the Marguerites at the end of the Renaissance. We sometimes lose sight of the fact that one of the peoples who made the French the French were Celts who were the rulers of Europe in an informal before the Romans became the military power of the ancient world. The Celts would send their children to families either of their social class or the class just above them to be educated. This custom is probably at the foundation of squirehood and continued to be the only form of education for aristocratic girls for centuries. Families capitalized on women's linguistic abilities: their daughters learned other languages and they used the daughters as translators after they returned home. All this is to point to one daughter of an English coutier named Thomas Bolyen (sp?) whose daughter Anne was sent to the court of one of the French Marguerites where she acquired wit, a sophisticated taste in clothing and the French language.

Plainoldme, your facts are just plain old wrong. The Celts were not the rulers of Europe before the Romans. They controlled a very small area. It is like saying the New Englanders are the rulers of America. Preposterous!

larry

That "small area" the Celts controlled, was going to from Britanny to the Balcan:

Wlater Hintler -- Thanks for backing me up with facts!!

The Celts were a widespread people. If you know anything about linguistics, then you know that Common Celtic was the substrate language for the British Isles, France, the Iberian Peninsula. There are sound changes in modern Spanish that have an exact parallel in modern Irish and IndoEuropeanist consider Latin and Common Celtic to have spun off from proto-IndoEuropean at the same time or fairly close together.

See if you can find the foundation legend for the City of Marseilles. Our word for cattle as a species, bovine, is derived from the Common Celtic word bo. The Po Valley in Italy was originally the Valley of Cattle and Bohemians were the Boii, a Celtic Tribe.

Lugh was one of the principal gods of the Celts and his name is still found across Europe. "Dun" was the Celtic word for fortress and "Lugh's Dun" is better known to us as London. The French city of Lyon and the Polish city of Leibnitz both derive their names from this god in a similiar fashion.

There are interesting stories of when the Celts tried to sack Rome before it was the capital of an empire and of their assault on various places in Greece, including Athens and Delphi.

BTW: one of my degrees is in Celtic Studies from Harvard. Wipe the egg off your face.