Did you miss these posts when they first uploaded? Well, if so, here they are slices of them for you to sample. Click at the end of each if you want to read the post in entirety. A year on, and with 250 posts now available on Whisperingencouragement.com, you could easily have missed some of our most popular posts at their time of posting.
Did you miss Queen of Mysteries?
She is the queen of mysteries, the best-selling novelist of all times and one of the most prolific writers with 66 detective novels and 14 short story anthologies to her name. She wrote the longest running play, The Mousetrap which has played in London since 1952 and our mystery guest wrote also under the pen name Mary Westmacott. Did you pick up on the clues? Who is she?
Yes, She’s Agatha Christie, the world famous, celebrated detective-story writer. What I love about Agatha, apart from her delicious mysteries, is the woman herself. Having read everything about her and her autobiography countless times, I can tell you that she was a very humble, natural, unpretentious person, unaffected by her worldwide fame.
Read more on the original post here.
Did you miss Daring Coco Chanel?
Daring Coco Chanel re-invented her name as she re-invented herself to be a
daring, free spirit, unencumbered by the usual restrictions of her time. Truly, Coco was ahead of her time, a pioneer in women’s fashion and an inspiration for women worldwide. Coco was like a wave. Single-handedly, she rendered everything current and fashionable out of fashion. Coco was a
trendsetter.
Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel was born in a poorhouse hospice in Samur, France in
1883. Her mother was a laundress and her father a nomadic salesman of clothing.
One could say, she was born into the clothing industry, but certainly at a
level far below the Haute Couture houses that would later bear her name.
Read more about Coco in the original post here.
Did you miss Signs of Abuse?
What are signs of abuse in a relationship? Is it physical violence?
Control? Humiliation? How do you spot abuse early enough to avoid entrapment in a toxic relationship?
Jenny Missed Signs of Abuse
It’s easy to miss the early signs of abuse when all starry-eyed and in
love. Jenny missed it. After twenty years, she finally realised all was not as
it should be. Jenny didn’t know financial abuse was domestic violence until
bankruptcy loomed and it was all too late.
For decades, her husband told her, ‘I’ll take care of finances because
you don’t know about such things.’ Statements like this from a partner are a
put down, an attempt at humiliation. Particularly because Jenny was more
educated than her husband. Such put downs are also controlling. They are
emotional abuse.
For decades, Jenny did not know how much money they had in the bank or
in their super. She received an allowance, and he checked what she bought. For
decades, she signed documents before reading them first. She assumed her
husband had her best interests at heart. But he didn’t. He was on his own solo
ego trip. He was a gambler, a wheeler and dealer of ‘get rich quick schemes.’
Instead, he got poor fast.
Jenny Found Her Voice
You may say, Jenny was a fool to not see these signs of abuse. But she
was a highly educated woman whose relationship eroded her self-esteem, leaving
her with no voice or power in the relationship. When Jenny matured and emerged
from the child-rearing years, she found her voice and the
marriage ended in bankruptcy. Thanks to counselling, Jenny realised her
husband’s control was financial and emotional abuse.
If the tenacious suffragettes had not been just that, tenacious, where would
women be today? Like my terrier who won’t let go of a sock, they held on and
on. For decades, they fought the supreme battle for women’s rights, especially
the right to vote.
Their battle was prolonged and full of suffering. Some died for the cause,
most spent long weeks in prison in dreadful conditions. They endured force
feeding, beatings and solitary confinement, but they succeeded. Here is their
story. Read more here.
Did you miss the History of The Tenacious Suffragettes?
Suffrage (the right to vote) was not granted to all women in a country at
the same time. It mattered whether you were single, widowed or married and if
you were over a certain age. 21 or 30-years being the usual cutoff age. Race
also determined your eligibility. In the usual fickle nature of politics,
governments changed and revoked the rights to vote. Promises were often broken.
Interestingly, the countries first granting suffragettes and women’s rights
are not those you would expect. The history of the process is very interesting and surprising. Read more in the original post here.
Did you miss Of Men and Monsters?
In 1818, Mary Shelley a young woman of amazing talent and possessing a vivid
imagination entered the literary scene by writing the Gothic novel, Frankenstein.
Mary was the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and William Godwin. It is no surprise that a child of such intellectual and well-published parents should be talented herself. But still being a talented woman was difficult in the early nineteenth century when women were severely limited.
Women versus the patriachy
Patriarchy restricted women in every way. Writing was one of the few avenues
a woman could enter. Even then, many women like Mary Ann Evans (aka George
Eliot) wrote under an alias using a masculine name. Mary published Frankenstein
anonymously until the second edition.
The 2017 Hanway’s film version of Mary’s life, which is great, suggests that Percy Shelley wrote a foreword to her novel to enable its publication. Thankfully, he had the grace not to claim Mary’s brilliant story as his own. Publishers showed no
interest in the work of Mary, because of its unconventional content not
befitting her gender. So, why did a young woman born into a good home write of
men and monsters? Read more about Mary here.
I hope you had fun here and enjoyed the posts. Lots more to come in this form if you like this way of doing things. Let us know.
Photo by Microsoft 365 on Unsplash
Joni Scott is an Australian author with three published novels: Whispers through Time and The Last Hotel and Colour Comes to Tangles. Joni also co-hosts a women’s blog; https://whisperingencouragement.com/ and has her own website; https://joniscottauthor.com.
