Wednesday 5th March 2025
Venue: Online
7.30-9pm
Join our three literary houses in an evening to celebrate women writers who broke boundaries as we mark International Women’s Day.
Left Image: Lent by the National Portrait Gallery for Mary Robinson: Actress, Mistress, Writer, Radical at Chawton House
Step into the worlds of novelists Anne Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell, and their feminist predecessors Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Robinson. Celebrate how these four writers shook the world and broke the contemporary social constraints on women.
Dr Kim Simpson, Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary
Long remembered only for her relationship with the Prince of Wales, Mary Robinson has been reclaimed as one of the most important late 18th century writers. In 1799, Robinson published her boundary-breaking feminist pamphlet, A Letter to the Women of England. In it, she argues passionately for better educational opportunities for women, and honours her recently-deceased friend, the feminist trailblazer Mary Wollstonecraft, calling for a ‘legion of Wollstonecrafts’ to improve the lot of women. She also intervenes in literary history, powerfully asserting the genius of Britain’s women writers – her predecessors and contemporaries.
Angela Clare, Anne Brontë
The famous Brontë sisters’ novels were noted for their directness and emotional power – 19th-century critics called them ‘coarse’ and ‘brutal’. Gripping plots, enduring characters, and passionate prose ensured the Brontës’ work would stand the test of time but what of Anne Brontë, the lesser-known of the three? In The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Anne Brontë broke boundaries as she bravely addressed a dark underside to the privileged society of the time and explored women’s agency within it.
Dr Diane Duffy, Elizabeth Gaskell
As the respectable wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, Elizabeth Gaskell may be an unlikely place to look for a woman breaking boundaries. Yet novels like North and South and Mary Barton show her willingness to take on supposedly masculine issues such as industrial relations and working-class politics. Her controversial novel Ruth about an unmarried mother saw her heavily criticised for writing about sex. Previously dismissed as the author of ‘domestic’ novels, was Elizabeth really a pioneer taking on the big issues of the day?
Join us online for revealing, intriguing and intimate portraits of four female icons, who continue to inspire and enthuse women around the world today.
Speakers:
Dr Kim Simpson, Deputy Director at Chawton House
Angela Clare, Programme Officer at the Brontë Parsonage Museum
Dr Diane Duffy, Chair of the Gaskell Society and Trustee of Elizabeth Gaskell’s House
A partnership event with Brontë Parsonage Museum, Chawton House and Elizabeth Gaskell’s House.
Tickets: £6
This is an online event. The cut off to purchase tickets is midnight on the day before the event. Ticket holders will be emailed the Zoom link on the day of the event. If you do not receive joining details by midday (UK time) on the day of the event, please email info@chawtonhouse.org with your order number. The event will be recorded and emailed out to ticket holders who cannot join synchronously within 5 days. Access to working internet is required. Please note this event will take place live. All times are UK GMT.
