This undated handout photo issued by the Mary on the Green campaign shows Maggi Hambling's "A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft," which has been unveiled on Newington Green in London but attracted criticism for featuring a naked female figure.
LONDON — A sculpture celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft as the mother of feminism has attracted criticism even before it was unveiled.
Artist Maggi Hambling said the sculpture in London "celebrates the spirit of Mary Wollstonecraft," the author of the 18th-century treatise "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman." The artwork, cast in silvered bronze, features a small nude female figure emerging from a large abstract mass of female forms.
The sculpture was unveiled Tuesday after a decade of campaigning and fundraising. But many critics took to Twitter to question why it had to feature a naked female figure:
Pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft has been commemorated by a £143,300 statue. British women's' rights activists dressed Mary overnight; echoing the thoughts of many, that a naked, child sized body of a female icon is yet more tedious objectification of women.
— Womens Voices Matter (@Womens_Voices_) November 11, 2020
1/2 pic.twitter.com/GzsVFz8tFA
Love the new #MaryWollstonecraft statue! pic.twitter.com/kAHMLiLoqs
— Harpy. (@harpy_mag) November 10, 2020
Good evening from the AAB NewsDesk. Rather disappointing that a sculpture to commemorate the great #MaryWollstonecraft features
— ArtActivistBarbie (@BarbieReports) November 10, 2020
a nude woman. How many ‘great men’ have been commemorated in the nude? Answers will fit on a stamp. Men are generally fully dressed from head to toe. pic.twitter.com/JiRzoCZIRV
Statues all over London go on strike in protest at the #MaryWollstonecraft statue. pic.twitter.com/Aa92djg2Zt
— Leander Reeves (@LeanderReeves) November 10, 2020
This is a proper feminist statue - Emmeline Pankhurst in Manchester. Clothed and magnificent. #MaryWollstonecraft pic.twitter.com/Oa4aNif3kl
— didsburypensioner (@didsburyoldie) November 10, 2020
This is what a statue to a great feminist pioneer should look like. Rent strike leader and social justice campaigner Mary Barbour in Govan, Glasgow #MaryWollstonecraft pic.twitter.com/oygUdr1eOg
— Joan McAlpine (@JoanMcAlpine) November 10, 2020
Doesn't look anything like Mary Wollstonecraft pic.twitter.com/01moHhCgI0
— Eoin Price (@eoin_price) November 10, 2020
Just realised who the Mary Wollstonecraft statue reminds me of - Folly from "Morph": pic.twitter.com/zdm2H36kjt
— Caitlin Moran (@caitlinmoran) November 10, 2020
First and only statue of Mary Wollstonecraft 💜🤍💚 pic.twitter.com/ZVLAZgSmqc
— I am woman 🇪🇨 💜 🇬🇧 (@Ecuadorian_Mum) November 10, 2020
It is possible to create a statue that honours women without using the nude form...#MaggiHambling #MaryWollstonecraft #r4today pic.twitter.com/vnDlPaGW4T
— Vanessa Saxton (@bobbidog) November 11, 2020
After yesterday’s Mary Wollstonecraft statue, here’s my pitch for a statue in honour of Isaac Newton pic.twitter.com/feDG93Mc1C
— Bethany Black (@BeffernieBlack) November 11, 2020
Oh #MaryWollstonecraft. Trending at last we see 👀
— EastEndWomen'sMuseum (@EEWomensMuseum) November 11, 2020
Our main hot take: when we get to a point where there's hundreds of statues dedicated to women, each one won't have to deliver quite so much... pic.twitter.com/xzXZT4lBIL
Breaking! Mary Wollstonecraft herself responds to the statue unveiled of her: pic.twitter.com/vRNvbH01iK
— M (@hellllenism) November 10, 2020
Writer Caitlin Moran, among others, asked why male intellectuals and historical figures haven't been celebrated with nude statues.
Defending the sculpture, Hambling said that it wasn't meant to be a "historical likeness" and that the figure at the top of the artwork "is open and challenging the world."
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"Clothes define people … As she's Everywoman, I'm not defining her in any particular clothes," she said. "It's not a conventional heroic or heroinic likeness of Mary Wollstonecraft. It's a sculpture about now, in her spirit."
Campaigners have worked for years to celebrate Wollstonecraft in north London, near where she lived and set up a girls' boarding school. The author died aged 38 after the birth of her daughter, the writer Mary Shelley.
11 surprisingly recent women’s rights milestones:
11 surprisingly recent women’s rights milestones
1944-1945: Women’s suffrage in France and Italy
You’d think these two seemingly enlightened Western nations would have come around to the idea of giving women the right to vote long before this, but France dragged its heels until 1944, Italy until 1945. In contrast, Australia gave women voting rights in 1902, Finland in 1906, Canada in 1917, Germany and Russia in 1918, the U.S. in 1920, and Britain and Ireland in 1928.
1965: U.S. women allowed to use contraception
The FDA approved the use of oral contraceptives in 1960, but it wasn’t until 1965, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut, that contraception became legal — but only for married women. (Single women would have to wait until 1972.) Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, successfully challenged the Comstock Law of 1873, which had made contraceptives illegal.
1972: AAU allows women to participate in distance running events
Before reversing its position in 1972, the Amateur Athletic Union refused to sanction female participation in distance running events. The ban stemmed in part from the belief that women wouldn’t be able to withstand the physical rigors of distance running, and that it could jeopardize their fertility. Photos of race director Jock Semple trying to physically remove Kathrine Switzer from the 1967 Boston Marathon helped provoke backlash, and the AAU lifted its archaic ban a few years later.
1974: Fair housing for American women
It wasn’t until this late date that housing discrimination on the basis of sex was made illegal. Congress amended the Fair Housing Act in 1974 to include the prohibition of housing discrimination on the basis of gender.
1974: U.S women given unfettered access to credit
Before the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in 1974, a woman could be denied a credit card unless she brought along her husband to cosign the application.
1977, 1980: Sexual harassment recognized, abolished
Sexual harassment in the workplace was first recognized in a courtroom in 1977, and it wasn’t until 1980 that sexual harassment was officially defined by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
1978: Pregnancy discrimination outlawed
Women could be fired for being pregnant before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed in 1978.
2011: Women allowed to ski-jump competitively
The Olympics have had a ski-jumping competition for men since 1924, but the sport wasn’t opened to women until 2011, and the first Olympic women’s ski-jumping competition was held in 2014. Gian Franco Kasper, the former president of the International Ski Federation, had said in 2005 that he opposed women’s ski-jumping because it “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”
2016: Hillary Clinton becomes first female U.S. presidential nominee of a major political party
We need to make the distinction “of a major political party,” because the first female nominee was actually Victoria Woodhull, a leader of the suffrage movement who ran for the presidency in 1872. Clinton won the Democratic nomination in 2016 but fell short of the presidency, losing the general election to Donald Trump despite winning a majority of the popular vote.
2018: Saudi women allowed to drive
In June, women in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia were finally given the right to drive, following a decree by King Salman in September 2017 that women would be granted driver’s licenses. Saudi Arabia had been the only country in the world to prohibit women from driving.
2020: First Black woman, Asian American woman named to a major party presidential ticket
Fifty years after she was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley’s public schools, Kamala Harris is now the first Black woman and first Asian American woman named to a major party presidential ticket.
