Foreverly Wistful

Am I the only one who sees the resemblance between these two lovely ladies?😅🤍🌷

Day Dress

c. 1855

White silk and wool mixed organdy with print; double-tiered skirt with border pattern; pagoda sleeves with fringe.

England

Everyone’s attention is always directed to her inimitable daughter, Mary Shelley (revolutionary and most famously the author of Frankenstein…talk about a genetic goldmine!). But let’s not forget her equally-brilliant, vastly underrated mother, Mary Wollstonecraft.

Born in 1759 to a prosperous, but broken family, she learned moral responsibility and speaking out from a young age when she defended her mother against her drunken, abusive father. Her father had squandered the family wealth with unwise financial decisions (as well as alcohol and gambling), causing financial instability and consequently forcing them to move frequently. Incensed at the lack of educational opportunities she had compared to her brother, Ned, she strove on her own, working as an educator and a governess, inspiring her later works as a writer.

She most famously wrote “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” in 1792. She demanded that women be treated and viewed equally to men, and advocated for the rights of the poor, the enslaved, and staunchly called for abolition. She also excoriated the French Revolution for its bloodshed and brutality, on top of its continuation to deny women their deserved rights.

She tragically passed away in 1797 at 38 years old from childbed fever, ten days after giving birth to her namesake second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who would continue her mother’s absolute badass legacy.

Mary’s life absolutely scandalized the public when her grieving widower, William Godwin, published a biographical memoir of her the year after her death, from her almost anachronistic views on women’s place in society to the daughter she had borne out of wedlock (Fanny Imlay), to her multiple suicide attempts. It wasn’t until the First Wave Feminist Movement more than a century later that Wollstonecraft became truly recognized as a pioneer and trailblazer for feminism and equality. And even then, only by the suffragists themselves. Opponents made her legacy a double-edged sword, striking back with the “scandals” such a radical had stirred.

Let us also give her the recognition and appreciation she deserves. No joke, one time in my human development class, we were supposed to choose a theorist to write an essay about, and one of my peers said she wanted to write about Wollstonecraft. My professor said she’d never heard of this theorist, and asked my friend to clarify who “he” was. HE!!!!!!!!! How fuming Mary would be…

I wrote this post while at a bookstore lol

Sources:

House of Worth Evening Dress, French, 1898-1900

Zelda Fitzgerald (1920s, location unknown).

When by today’s standards, they’d all be unbelievably classy, modest, and overdressed!

As a child, one of my favorite poems was "The Baby Uggs Are Hatching," by Jack Prelutsky. Today it occurred to me that Budgett's Frogs (Wednesday frog) are, in fact, real life Baby Uggs.

Tumblr seems like the only place that might potentially appreciate this knowledge. So here are the Uggs, as illustrated by James Stevenson, next to some images of Budgett's Frogs I found online.

This gorgeous painting of two elegant ladies, one Black and one white, seemingly in equal standing, is so incredibly rare and extraordinary and progressive for the 17th century, right? Not really, when you actually look into it.

This painting is titled “Allegorical Painting of Two Ladies” by an unknown English artist, c. 1650. As the title suggests, these two women were not actual friends. In fact, they didn’t exist at all. They are imaginary figures, essentially fictional characters, wearing the fashionable facial patches (mouches, “flies” in French) amongst the aristocracy during the 17th and 18th centuries. This painting was basically a political cartoon of its day, denouncing the wearers of these mouches as being vain and immoral (per the inscription above, "I black with white bespott you white with blacke this evil proceeds from thy proud hart then take her, Devill."

Furthermore, despite the two ladies of different skin colors of equal height and adornment, this painting very much spews the unabashedly racist, xenophobic, Eurocentric, and misogynistic attitudes which were rampant in that era. It is meant to display the European woman on the right being essentially “dragged down” and "tainted" by the “sinful” African woman on the left. Many associated these patches with traditional body art of Indians, whom the Europeans viewed as “barbarous,” so seeing a wealthy European lady donning them was scandalous to them. This sort of moral panic and fear of foreign influence was exacerbated from the turmoil of the English Civil War from around this time.

Sources:

Another of my two historical faves of all time. They absolutely won the genetic lottery and completely annihilate both the stupid, harmful “beautiful but dumb” and “ugly nerd” archetypes.

Queen Marie Antoinette, Known as the Rose Queen (1755-1793)

Artist: Louise-Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun (French, 1755-1842)

Date: 1783

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: Palace of Versailles, Paris, France

Marie Antoinette

Marie Antoinette (1755 – 1793) was Queen of France from 1774 until the fall of the monarchy in 1792 and her subsequent execution during the French Revolution.