West of England and South Wales Women's History Network Blog

Leila Easa and Jennifer Stager presented a paper about their project exploring feminist methods of memorialization at the WESWWHN Annual Conference on Gender and Commemoration in October 2021. Fallism: toppling monuments that symbolize patriarchal power and often white supremacy. We – two interdisciplinary collaborators from History of Art and English – would like to share a bit about a project that we’ve developed over the past two years, building on decades of collaborative work, and researched and produced in pandemic time. We presented this project, which explores practices of mourning, memorializing, and monumentalizing the dead, at the West of England and South Wales Women’s History Network 28th Annual Conference in Fall 2021, and this research has developed into an essay appearing in RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 75/76 (2021) and the final chapter of our forthcoming book of essays in feminist criticism and classical receptions, Public Feminism in Times of Crisis: From Sappho

Henrietta Small died on Christmas Day 1877 at her home, 1 New Street, Salisbury. For the daughter and sister of working craftsmen in a provincial city we know a surprising amount of detail because her older brother William wrote four volumes of Cherished Memories and Associations describing his family, employers, work, local politics and religion, the little leisure time he took, his community and natural surroundings.  Henrietta was one of eight siblings, of whom she and three brothers survived to adulthood. She was born in 1828, ‘a very delicate & sensitive child’. (1) Education was clearly important to the family, and William’s writing is particularly valuable for the information it provides about his sisters’ education. Henrietta attended four schools, including Miss Naish’s at the Rose & Crown, Mrs Lucas’s in Exeter Street and Mrs Kingdon’s. ‘After leaving school she went to Mrs Griffins, on the New Canal, to learn the trade of a Milliner & was highly esteemed...sh