Deviant Women

For over 1000 years, poetry has remained one of the most important traditions of Persian culture. So when, in the mid-twentieth century, a young woman emerged with a voice that spoke with a whirlwind of desire, a voice yearning with love, intimacy, and insight well beyond her years, the establishment was shaken. With a tumultuous love life that saw her become one of Iran’s most controversial and scandalous public figures, Farrokhzād suffered under the glaring public eye. But she was also a mother, a filmmaker, and a visionary. Despite her poetry being banned for more than a decade after the Iranian Islamic Revolution, today she is seen as one of Iran’s most revered poets, a woman with the audacity to speak taboos in a revolutionary form.

As Halloween approaches and we near the end of the spooky season, it’s time to delve back into the world of the dark and sinister. And who better to take us there than the queen of mystery, suspense and menace, author Daphne du Maurier.
Du Maurier spent her formative years exploring the windswept coast of Cornwall, and here her imagination was fired by shipwrecks and derelict mansions, with the ever present backdrop of the ocean churning nearby. Du Maurier would go on to spend most of her life along the rugged Cornish coastline, and it was also here that she would choose to set her most enduring work, Rebecca. Published over eighty years ago, Rebecca has never been out of print, and its thrilling and gothic tone still haunts readers today. But Rebecca was only one of a string of successful works for du Maurier, whose short stories and novels have been endlessly dramatised for the big and small screens, continuing to inspire adaptations to this day. But du Maurier herself was also a woman of secrets, and her personal life bled into her fiction, informing the dark and brooding worlds she so often created. So keep a lamp burning in the dark night as we open the pages on the life and work of Daphne du Maurier.

When it comes to fairy tale tellers, most of us think of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, or even Charles Perrault. But the names we less frequently associate with the genre are those of women: the writers and weavers of stories that are so often overshadowed by many of their male contemporaries. During the tail end of the 19th century, one such woman was adding her voice to the world of the Fae, crafting stories of talking animals, witches and wizards, pixies, peasants, princes and princesses – all the ingredients we’ve come to associate with the art of the fairy tale. But Mary de Morgan wasn’t afraid to play with these tropes, and the many and varied influences that shaped her life also helped to shape her stories. From growing up participating in the seances and salons of her Spiritualist mother to moving in a circle of artists that included members of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Arts and Craft Movement, Mary was surrounded by inspiration to fuel her creativity, leading her to publish three volumes of fairy tales in her lifetime and to write many other works besides. But it’s only recently that de Morgan’s stories have come back to the fore, and that she has begun to receive the recognition she so deserves for her contribution to the mystical and magical world of faerie.
Gather round as we cross into fairyland, and discover the life and works of Mary de Morgan.

In 1919, an autobiography appeared that scandalised polite American society. Chronicling the life and times of a sex worker who went by the pseudonym Madeleine Blair, Madeleine: An Autobiography took to task the puritanical forces that condemned her work and her industry, and laid on the table the story of her life as a so called ‘soiled dove’. In her frank and engaging accounts, she outlines the many ups and downs that lead her into the life of a ‘painted lady’, but adamantly refuses to let anyone view her as a victim. From her time in Montana and Chicago, to her work over the border in Canada, Blair traverses many a bawdy-house of ill-repute, always striving to champion the legitimacy of her profession and to shed light on the world of debauchery in which she moved.

Come with us to the plush parlour rooms and smoking dens of the American north, as we delve into the life of this savvy business woman and entrepreneur, Madeleine Blair.

After a childhood spent buried amongst the texts of her grandfather’s library teaching herself Latin and Nahuatl, Greek rhetoric, and philosophy, it’s not surprising that the young Juana was considered a prodigy. So much so that, at just fifteen, she found herself lady-in-waiting to the Vicereine, wife of the Viceroy of New Spain. Court life, however, didn’t appeal to young Juana, who, sick of rich and drunken bachelors and their flirting ways, craved the space and time to dedicate herself to her studies. So, what was she to do? Join the nunnery, of course! Here, she found the scholarly solace she desired. But when the Bishop of Puebla, one of the most influential men of the New World, publically maligned her for daring to think beyond her sphere, Juana penned a manifesto that would become one of the most important proto-feminist texts in the history of the Americas – if not the world.

In 1919, into the heart of the burgeoning Harlem Renaissance – an artistic and cultural movement that would shape the very fabric of the US – Norma Miller was born. As a child, she would watch the likes of Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald play to the hopping crowds of the Savoy Ballroom, the majestic heart of Harlem and the birthplace of swing. At just 12, she was plucked from the street outside its doors and so began a career that would take her around the globe as one of the world’s foremost swing dancers – and all before she turned 18. So put on a record and lace up your dancing shoes, because we’re swinging out from the sprung-wood floors of the Savoy to the slippery decks of British liners and the beaches of Rio as we follow the life of Norma Miller, Queen of Swing.