Anne Lister

The Real Gentlemen Jack

Molly Southward

BA History
mls19htv@bangor.ac.uk

The recent and critically acclaimed BBC series Gentlemen Jack has sparked an interest in the real woman behind the programme. Remarked to be the first ‘modern lesbian’, she had an incredible life that only became public knowledge many decades after her death. 

Anne Lister was born on the 3rd of April 1791 in Halifax, Yorkshire. She was the second child and eldest daughter of Jeremy Lister, a former soldier, and Rebecca Battle. The two were wealthy north of England landowners. She had five other siblings, four of them brothers, but only Anne and her younger sister, Marian, survived.

In 1793, the family moved to Skelfler House in Market Weighton. Anne began her education at home with the vicar of Market Weighton, the Reverend George Skelding. Later, in 1804, she was sent to boarding school in King’s Manor, York. She was expelled following a relationship with another female student, Eliza Raine, who later suffered from mental health issues. Raine was placed in an asylum following the discovery of Anne’s relationships with several other students. Following her issues with school, and the time she spent there as a child, Anne moved in permanently with her Aunt and Uncle at Shibden Hall in 1815. When her Uncle James died in 1826, Anne started to manage and renovate the estate. In 1836, when her Aunt and Father died, she took compete control of the estate.

Due to her inheritance, she became the owner of agricultural tenancies, town properties and a quarrying business which she went on to expand. She was known as being a firm, driven but fair landowner, who made major improvements to the estate. This is partially due to the fact she had been involved with the running of Shibden Hall from a young age. She was known by local people as ‘Gentlemen Jack’ and would often be seen wearing dark coloured men’s clothes. This led to her getting heckled and stopped in the street as well as being the target of abusive letters from local people.

Historians have argued that the prejudice she received from the people around her fuelled her desire to escape from the constraints of home in order to live her life as freely as possible. Because of this, she spent a lot of her adult life away from Yorkshire, travelling whilst using her income from the Hall to fund herself. Much to her family and business partners’ annoyance, she often only returned home when she ran out of funds or was forced to attend to urgent business.

She made her first trip to continental Europe in 1819, a two-month trip to France. In 1824, she returned to Paris and stayed until the following year. In 1826, she was back in Paris and began a tour of northern Italy and Switzerland, returning in 1828. In 1829, with Paris as her base, she visited Belgium and Germany before heading south to the Pyrenees and Spain. She also made the first ascent of Mount Perdu in the Pyrenees in 1830, before summiting Mount Vignemale in France in 1838. Her last trip began in 1839. It took her through France, Denmark, Sweden and Russia where she arrived in St Petersburg before travelling to Moscow. Travelling so extensively, taking part in such hard, traditionally ‘masculine’ physical activities, and all of this without a male chaperone, was unheard of for women of her class at this time.

There were two main loves of Anne’s life. The first was Mariana Belcombe, who she met aged 23. She was referred to as ‘M’ in Anne’s journals. However, Anne suffered from heartbreak following Mariana’s marriage to an older man in 1815 so that she could gain financial stability. Their relationship was ended and the heartbreak was said to have impacted Anne for the rest of her life. It is seen as one of the main reasons for her extensive travelling, using it as an attempt to escape from the memories.

 Her most retold and well-known relationship was with the heiress Ann Walker. The two women had been casual acquaintances throughout the 1820s, but they were first properly introduced when they became neighbours in 1832. Miss Walker had moved in with her Aunt and Uncle to recover from being of ‘unsound of mind’. Historians believe she may have been suffering with anxiety and depression. They began an intense and whirlwind romance in the following months.

The two were married on March 30^th, 1834 in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York. The marriage took place under the cover of night using church blessings and the lighting of candles to consolidate their love and commitment to one another. This has been viewed as the first lesbian marriage in Britain. They later visited France and Switzerland for their honeymoon. The couple then moved in together at Shibden Hall and combined their landowning interests.

They both lived and travelled together until Anne Lister died aged 49 on September 22^nd, 1840 in Georgia. She had contracted a fever while travelling with Ann. Her body was embalmed and brought to the parish church in Halifax to be buried by her lover on the 29th of April 1841. It remains there to this day. Her partner gained Anne’s estate from her will, and died in 1854 from ‘congestion of the brain’.

The reason historians know so much about Anne Lister’s life is that, starting in 1806, she wrote a partially encoded 26 volume-long diary. Linking to her love of education and literature, the code was made from a blend of algebra, ancient Greek mathematical symbols, punctuation and the Western zodiac. It has been dubbed ‘Anne’s Crypthand’. Anne believed that her code was unbreakable and no key was ever left for posterity. However, in the 1890s, the code was cracked by John Lister, the new owner of Shibden Hall, and his friend Arthur Burrell. They discovered that the code was used to cover up her sexual encounters. Sections with Xs and Qs were used to denote different sexual acts. The diary also included her notes on her seduction techniques, a skill on which she prided herself.  

In order to preserve the diaries, avert scandal and prevent their destruction, the diaries were hidden behind wall panelling in the Hall until John Lister’s death in 1933. When the ownership of the Hall was passed to Calderdale Council, the site became a museum. The journals were found and Anne Lister’s incredible and trailblazing life was brought back into public knowledge.

The Golden Lotus

A History of Foot Binding in China

Tom Wilkinson-Gamble
BA Modern and Contemporary History
tmw19yjh@bangor.ac.uk

Foot binding, despite its fall from regular practice, still remains one of the most famous traditions of classical Chinese culture. Though the exact origins of the practice remain unknown, it is thought to have started in either the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) or the subsequent Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD). Throughout the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties foot binding was normally reserved for the upper classes and the aristocracy. By the Qing dynasty, however, the practice had spread to other social classes. 

The actual process of foot binding was typically carried out by the oldest female member of the family. First, the big toe would be broken and forced under the foot. Then, bandages would be wound tightly around the foot. The force of the bandages would distort the growth of the bones and cause the foot to grow into the shape of a distorted heel with an extremely high arch. For the bones to grow in the desired way, foot binding was normally started when the girl was between 5 and 10 years old. Bound feet were known as ‘lotus feet’ and the specially designed shoes they wore were appropriately named ‘lotus shoes’. Because of the disfigurement of the foot, women were forced to walk very carefully and daintily. This was considered attractive, even erotic, in classical Chinese culture.

After the republican government came to power in 1911, foot binding was declared illegal and its prevalence declined. However, in the more rural areas of the country, where the government’s control was far weaker, the practice continued in secret. By the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, the practice is all but dead. In 1999, the last factory producing specially designed ‘lotus shoes’ closed down. As of the 2010s, only a handful of women are known to have bound feet.

Margaret Beaufort

A Female Force to be Reckoned With

Leah Jepson

MA History

hiu87a@bangor.ac.uk

Margaret Beaufort; a woman of great historical significance, yet also strangely lacking in academic appreciation. A woman who pursued and achieved her own ends, yet is overlooked as an illustration of female agency within a society where women were typically, and erroneously, assumed to have had none. A woman who is probably better known for her role in historical fiction than in historical reality, more for her intense piety than her role as one of the most prominent players of the turbulent fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 

Margaret was a woman who, during her long life, was a first-hand witness to the tumultuous years of the Wars of the Roses. Through her efforts, she helped establish the infamous Tudor dynasty in the name of her son, who would become Henry VII of England. Married at twelve to Edmund Tudor, both widow and mother at thirteen, Margaret was a woman who refused to remain idle. She negotiated, integrated, and plotted herself towards success. She risked her life and reputation in her son’s cause, though it is impossible to fully distinguish between it and her own. However, she was also a woman who achieved these things without stepping outside the lines of her accepted sphere as a woman. She was no Margaret of Anjou, ‘interfering’ in matters of government and stomping on the toes of powerful men. She remained, for the most part, behind the scenes, yet also often in plain sight.

An adroit Lancastrian, she integrated herself into the Yorkist court, making connections, forming networks, and working towards a greater goal. Her ‘invisibility’ was perhaps one of her greatest assets, allowing her to establish herself surreptitiously before revealing the extent of her efforts in her son’s triumph at Bosworth Field in 1485.

In many ways, it is easy to over-complicate Margaret, primarily because we often find it difficult to reconcile medieval female experience with the non-domestic. The political triumph of her later years has traditionally been in conflict with her intense religiosity, and scholarship has frequently been divided into two camps; those who celebrate her as an exemplar of piety, and those who condemn her excursions into the ‘masculine’ politic.

However, these approaches typically share two common misconceptions. Firstly, that the domestic had no impact outside the privacy of the household, and secondly, that the political was strictly concerned with matters of government. This, it turns out, was far from the case. The households of medieval noble families were often hubs of activity branching off from the wider context of the royal court. Here, factions grew from close family networks, reinforced through marriage alliances, patronage and feudal hierarchy. The domestic was often far from the private, and in a society where the future of the collective typically outweighed that of the individual, the family was a significant source of agency and power available to men and women alike, albeit often in different ways.

Within this context, the political entailed far more than matters of government. It extended to the intimacy of the marriage bed, the raising and education of children, and the creation of kinship networks, all of which would contribute, directly or otherwise, to the political fabric of the nation. The domestic was a socially acceptable context in which female agency could thrive, and it would be where Margaret would establish the foothold which would ultimately enable her to pursue her own ends.

One of the most obvious means available to her was marriage. Within the medieval context in particular, marriage has received a lot of bad press, thanks to persistent focus on what is perceived as female subjugation. Whilst women certainly did not enjoy equal status with their husbands, the over-generalised assumption that all women suffered as a result of arranged matches and masculine abuse has meant that it is typically seen in the negative, rather than as a potential tool which women often readily employed to their own ends. Marriage itself did not typically carry the same connotations as it does today, and within noble and gentry families in particular, it was understood more as a business arrangement than as a result of mutual love and affection. Whilst these things might develop during the marriage, and some did indeed marry for love, they did not constitute the primary factors when considering potential matches.

For Margaret, marriage offered security and a means of advancing both her own interests and those of her son. By the time Henry was born in 1457, she was already a widow, and aged just thirteen, she recognised the need to remarry quickly. Her latter two marriages, first to Henry Stafford, second son to the Duke of Buckingham, and secondly to Thomas Stanley, a prominent member of the Yorkist court, were pursued and arranged by Margaret herself. They provided her with a safe haven and a legitimate means of advancing her cause through interaction and association with other powerful nobles. Her marriage to Stanley in particular allowed her access to the inner circles of the Yorkist regime, and she would spend the twelve years from 1271 to 1483 integrating herself behind enemy lines.

Motherhood too allowed Margaret to operate within the political in a socially acceptable way. For noble and gentry women, children, particularly sons, provided them with a stake in the great game of court politics, and Henry Tudor afforded his mother opportunities for agency long before he acceded to the throne. Through her son, Margaret had a legitimate cause to pursue which would ultimately draw people to their side prior to 1485. Whilst Henry would spend most of the first half of his life either as the ward of another or in exile, his identity as potential, albeit weak, claimant to the throne meant that, should the Yorkist regime fail, or be overturned, Margaret’s son might well be looked on as an attractive alternative.

However, whilst the Yorks remained in power, it was also a dangerous position for Henry.  History does not tell us exactly when Margaret’s ambitions transitioned from bringing her son home from exile to placing him on the throne of England, if they had ever been otherwise. What we can suggest though is that Margaret played the game well, not revealing her hand or overtly stating Henry’s claims. We also know that, at least by the time Richard III seized the throne in 1483, she had begun to plot his downfall with other nobles, most notably the Duke of Buckingham, who also had a claim to the throne, and Elizabeth Woodville, the widow of Edward IV.

Following the disappearance of Edward’s sons in the Tower of London, Margaret and Elizabeth came together to arrange the marriage of their children, Henry Tudor and Elizabeth of York. The plan was that Henry would take the throne and, in order to bolster his shaky claim to it, marry Elizabeth.  In return, her mother, Elizabeth Woodville, would pledge her support to Henry’s cause. Together, the plotting of these two powerful women demonstrated the significance of established networks in promoting female agency.

Whilst initial attempts to unseat Richard were unsuccessful, Henry Tudor would go on to secure his infamous victory at Bosworth Field in 1485, taking the throne as Henry VII, the first monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Following this, her ultimate triumph, Margaret became an active and prominent figure at her son’s court. She was referred to as ‘My Lady the King’s Mother’, and would come to enjoy legal and social independence which most other married women could not. Henry’s first parliament recognised her right to hold property independently of her husband, and towards the end of his reign, she was given a special commission to administer justice in the north of England. Following Henry’s marriage to Elizabeth of York, she was reluctant to accept a lower status, and wore robes of the same quality as her daughter-in-law, walking only half a pace behind her on official occasions. She would sign her name Margaret R., perhaps to signify her royal authority, with R. standing potentially for regina – the Latin word for queen customarily employed by female monarchs.

Margaret’s story not only demonstrates the potential for agency available to women, but also raises questions as to how these women have been recorded and studied. That Margaret receives little attention within the primary documentation prior to her son’s reign might suggest to some that she had little involvement in the politics of her day. I however would challenge this approach by suggesting that she had little direct involvement in matters of government. Historians have since come to appreciate that the political went far beyond the governance of the nation i.e. the type of politics that primarily left its mark on written documents. Today, we can suggest that Margaret’s relative obscurity was more a result of her operating behind the scenes than of her absence from the political landscape. That she pursued and achieved her ambitions is testament not only to female opportunity, but also to how far a woman could and would go.

However, Margaret is far from being a unique case. Whilst her ultimate triumph draws more attention to her experience than many other individuals, her story is also an entreaty for adopting a similar approach to the study of other noblewomen in the past, women who had comparable access to similar modes of agency. Furthermore, it demands a reconsideration of approaches to medieval marriage and motherhood, and a redefinition of the domestic. Whilst Margaret was indeed a pious woman and a learned scholar, she also operated on a similar level to so many other women. Marriage and motherhood should no longer be understood solely through the lens of female subjugation, but also through those of female opportunity.

Margaret’s participation in the great political game as both wife and mother enabled her to establish herself as the matriarch of one of the most infamous royal dynasties in history. It is therefore strange that she has not received much attention in scholarship. However, as history, and women’s history in particular, continues to develop and to reshape approaches to the past, it can be hoped that she will finally get the recognition she deserves as one of the most successful political players England has fostered.

A Letter to Women Kind

Dear mothers, sisters, grandmothers, wives, partners, girlfriends, friends, daughters…

We write to you to bring to bear with big hearts and care an issue that has been neglected, one that needs addressing in a format as intimate as a letter. It is an intimate topic: after all, affairs of the heart often are. A more structured outlook would only detract from the message we hope to give you, one which very much runs counter to the general opinion found on university campuses and, too often, in wider society.

The issue is a simple one.  You have lost faith in us, men.  Without detracting from the real difficulties women face - and we know that there are real injustices against women - we beg you for your patience as we remind you that you are loved. We are your fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sons and friends, and it is certainly a warped reflection on society that we have to ask the people who brought us into this world not to fear us. The issue is fear in a world where we men, especially heterosexual men, have been vilified.  This is not a whiny, unnecessary statement, but a sad truth. It is despairing that the people who held us close to them at birth often look at their creations in terror.

We will put the grand sentiment of emotive sentences aside.  We can add statistics that show such fears are justified.  1 in 4 women suffer domestic abuse in the UK from a male partner (W-Fowler, 2020).  This is a tragedy and greatly unsettling. We understand why such a figure is horrifying, but when we consider such crimes, it would also be unfair to define domestic violence as a crime which is exclusively perpetrated by males.  According to Stonewall, 1 in 4 women who are in a lesbian partnership are also victims of domestic abuse (Stonewall, 2020). This, of course, does not detract from men being instigators of domestic violence, but it does challenge the dominant societal and academic impression of male masculinity being the sole driver of such horrors.

We will not, however, suggest that just because women can also be abusers that this justifies the initial bold statement in this piece. Let's also put the positive case forward for men.  It is an emotive case, based on the claim that we are not all hard, violent and stone-hearted people: we can show love.  A highly subjective word, love is hard to define, but is also a word which is used confidently here. Love comes in different forms - friendship, romance, familiarity - that cannot be represented in statistics. It is emanated by a father holding his child's hand on the way to school, the man waiting for a friend in the rain after class, or that surprise loving gesture offered by a male partner.  In the face of a tornado American NBC correspondent Brian Williams demonstrated how love could compel a man into acts of heroism (Stevens, 2020). This is not to glorify ‘sacrifice’ or the notion of ‘saving’ women, but it is testimony of how much we care.

We would ask those who are in academia to just step back and count their positive experience of men in the workplace, and gamble on the fact that are many instances of male colleagues offering genuine support, guidance and collegiality. This is not a gambit, or an attack on equality and women's rights. It does not diminish the fact that there are men who are guilty of terrible abuses, nor the fact that there are real structural problems in society posing distinct obstacles for women.  It does however ask women to revaluate their fear of men.

The words of Toni Morrison come to mind: ‘the enemy is not men’ but ‘the concept of patriarchy’ (Morrison and Denard, 2008, p. 35).  Yes engrained patriarchy is a difficulty women face, but I will also admit a blasphemous ‘worriesium’, wondering if patriarchy in itself is solely responsible for the atrocity of domestic violence.  If so, why are women equally as liable to hurt their female partners as males are in heterosexual relationships?  Is this a male problem, is masculinity to blame?  Or, is there a darker force at work that transcends gender?  This is a call to open-up a new frontier: one which starts to look at the struggle faced by women beyond the constraints of gender.

We ask women-kind to look on your children more kindly: you brought us into the world and we haven't stopped loving you.

With love

Author’s Note:  the writing style has been made erratic on purpose and any feedback on how effective it is in engaging you, the reader, would be greatly appreciated. The lack of the trappings of professionalism found in academic writing is also purposely done as a means of testing how best knowledge can be conveyed to you. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I will apologise to the continued challenge to academia:  this is after all merely an attempt at healthy use of falsification principle (Naraniecki, 2010). I hope you will respond. 

References   

Morrison, T. and Denard, C. (2008). Toni Morrison: conversations. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.

Naraniecki, A. (2010). Neo-Positivist or Neo-Kantian? Karl Popper and the Vienna Circle. Philosophy, 85(4), pp.511-530.

Stevens, J. (2020). 'He's my hero': Wife reveals moment husband gave his life to save her during tornado. [online] Mail Online. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1391145/Joplin-MO-tornado-Wife-talks-moment-husband-gave-life-save-her.html [Accessed 2 Feb. 2020].

Stonewall. (2020). Domestic violence. [online] Available at: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/help-advice/criminal-law/domestic-violence [Accessed 2 Feb. 2020].

W-Fowler, A. (2020). Domestic Abuse Statistics | lwa.org.uk. [online] Lwa.org.uk. Available at: https://www.lwa.org.uk/understanding-abuse/statistics.htm [Accessed 2 Feb. 2020].

Drowning Little Girls

A History of Female Infanticide in China

Tom Wilkinson-Gamble

BA Modern and Contemporary History

tmw19yjh@bangor.ac.uk

Female infanticide, along with foot binding, is one of the most infamous and darkest aspects of Chinese culture. The practice is ancient and its exact origins still remain unknown. Though the practice cannot be condoned, there remains some ‘method in the madness’. Up until the early parts of the 20^th century, Chinese society was almost exclusively agrarian. This meant that most people’s livelihoods were dependent upon being able to do farm work, or living with someone who could. Since men, stereotypically, are considered more suitable for manual labour than women, Chinese society developed a preference for male babies. This preference of boys over girls is strongly ingrained in Confucian culture. Since women were not expected to do anywhere near the same amount of work that men did, girls were considered a burden and another ‘mouth to feed’ until they were married off to a, hopefully, well-off family. In ancient Chinese history, this preference manifested itself as the phenomenon of female infanticide that we are familiar with today.

With regards to religion, China’s three primary faiths (Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism) all differ on their stance towards female infanticide. Because Confucian culture is predominantly patriarchal, Confucianists are more tolerant of the practice. They are in direct conflict with the Taoists who are firmly anti-infanticide as they believe that the murder of anyone, including little girls, would be to contradict ‘the way’. The Buddhists, however, are torn, primarily because of their belief in a notion of re-incarnation. On one hand, they believe that the little girl would be re-incarnated elsewhere and so there’s no fear of wasting a life. On the other hand, they also acknowledge that taking a life, innocent or otherwise, would bring them negative karma.

Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in China in the 1500s, knowledge of female infanticide has spread to the West. The early 17^th century Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci witnessed the practice during his time in China and reportedly saw newborn girls drowned in local rivers. Later, in the 19th century, French Jesuit Gabriel Palatre and the Annales de la Sainte-Enfance reported similar sightings across both the south-western and the south-eastern provinces. After the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, both the KMT (Kuomintang) and CCP (Chinese Communist Party) governments have worked to try and reduce the prevalence of the practice.

Despite a considerable decline in the 20th century, a modern incarnation of female infanticide resurfaced in the 1980s with the introduction of the one-child policy. Due to the continued prevalence of male babies being favoured over female ones, the one-child policy sparked a rise in the amount of gender selective abortions. Couples would abort the baby before it went to full term and then try again for a boy. In response to this emerging phenomenon, the policy was reformed in 1984; couples whose first born child was a daughter would be allowed to have a second.

One of the more disturbing ways the one-child policy was enforced was forced abortions. In June of 2012, a woman from Shaanxi province was forced to have an abortion after being unable to pay the ¥40,000 fine for violating the policy. After explaining to the authorities that she and her husband would be unable to pay the fine, Feng Jianmei claims she was forced into signing an agreement to have an abortion. Witnesses claim that she was removed from her home with a pillowcase over her head by four masked men. The next day, Feng was injected with an abortifacient to induce a stillbirth. A week later, Feng’s family posted to the blogging website Sina Weibo an extremely graphic image of Feng in a hospital gown lying next to the stillborn corpse of her daughter. The image rapidly spread across Chinese social and sparked outrage amongst the public. In response to this incident, two officials from the National Population and Family Planning Commission were fired and five others were disciplined. The one-child policy has had a disastrous effect on China’s population statistics; there are between 10 and 15 million ‘missing women’ which has led to an extremely uneven gender ratio in the general population. The lack of women has caused some serious sociological problems in Chinese society. Less women means fewer potential wives, which has fueled a rise in gender-related violence as well as an increase in sex trafficking and prostitution.  This, in turn, increases the risk of HIV and AIDS.

There is a theory, however, that the demographic problems may not actually be as bad as they appear to be. It is possible that, particularly in the rural parts of the country, the births of girls may actually have happened but were not officially recorded in fear of violating the one-child policy. These are the hēiháizi or ‘black child’. These are people who are not registered in the hùkǒu, the system of household registration. This means that those 30-35 million girls do actually exist but exist as hēiháizi and therefore are unknown to the government.

In the last 25 years, a series of documentaries have been produced about female infanticide, the one-child policy and their impact on Chinese society. The Dying Rooms (1995) and its follow-up film Return to the Dying Rooms (1996), both detail the lives of children who were abandoned by their parents as a result of the one-child policy. The filmmakers claim that the unwanted girls were left to die of neglect, allowing the parents another chance at producing a boy. Sixteen months after the first documentary was released, two members of the production team claimed that the film was ‘wholly exaggerated’ and was made ‘almost completely without substance’. Over 15 years later, another documentary titled It's a Girl: The Three Deadliest Words in the World (2012) was still examining the sociological effect of female infanticide in both India and China.