Neapolitan

The statue looks like it could be any one of her characters (Emma, Fanny, or Marianne) out for a walk during a windy day.

Here is another statue I like. The dress looks futuristic. It'a like Marie Curie step through time presenting to us that she holds the mystery of the atom.

Monument to Maria Sklodowska-Curie


I do not know enough about Mary Woolstonecraft to know for certain how she would feel. I'm just guessing: She might feel honored to see her name in print. However she would probably feel absolutely no connection to the nude figure atop the memorial, and perplexed about the whole thing together.

To me it looks a like a trophy with a marble base, abstract art as a riser, and female figure. The whole thing akin to an Oscar award. Between the figure and the base is a strange bit of abstract art that begs to be interpreted. Is it a burning bush with smoke rising? Perhaps a retelling of the Phoenix where the hatched egg burns and rising out of the smoke comes a female figure? Maybe it is suppose to represent an ovary and the figure stands atop a Fallopian tube? Who knows what was running through the mind of the artist when she made the statue.

The MW memorial figure departs from concepts found in classic art like e.g. Venus De Milo. The figure's hips are less curvaceous, the stance more rigid than Venus DM. There was this sense of combining sensuality and modesty in classic art. Statues and paintings of females usually present women partially bare, with either long hair or clothing obscuring the more revealing parts. The MW memorial is less sensual however more revealing - baring the woo woo for all to see. I guess that is most contravention part of the memorial. One thing to take into consideration is that third wave feminism (maybe not all but some do) take pride and see nudity (stripping, pole dancing etc) as empowering. There is a sort of an irony to that where first wave feminist fought not to be treated like a sex object. The whole things seems more like the artist's ode to feminism more than a memorial honouring MW.

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Lisnaholic

Quite literally, *googles pareidolia*: that's an impressive word to have at your disposal!

One reason we've disscussed the MW statue at such length is that it seems to embody or lead into a bunch of intriguing-for-some questions:-
The history of feminism.
Do female nudes celebrate women, or send a message that they are vulnerable/available?
How do we represent the past?
To what extent should public art, like statues, educate, shock or entertain us?

But as Elph indicates, a lot has been said about just one statue, which is why I'm grateful that Neapolitan noticed the other half of my thread title: Statues of Women, and showed us a couple of others :-

I like this one too, and as you say, there's a timeless quality about it.

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150 years after Mary W, in the 1920s, Margaret Sanger was promoting birth control as a road to freedom and equality for women in the USA and became the founder of the controvertial Planned Parenthood organisation - so controvertial that:
Here's a statue commemorating that brave moment, although it's a museum exhibit rather than a piece of sculpture (I think ) :-

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953