Suffragist Invades All-Male Domain of London's Parliament Square
In DepthLondon has finally added a woman—suffragist Millicent Fawcett—to the collection of leaders commemorated with statues in Parliament Square, and the unveiling was today. She looks extremely done with everybody’s shit.
reported that Fawcett joins 11 men, painting the picture:
With her hair swept back in a bun and cloaked in an unassuming coat, Ms. Fawcett contrasted with some of her male counterparts on the square, past prime ministers like Benjamin Disraeli and David Lloyd George, who are presented with outstretched hands or flowing robes. The square also features the hunching figure of Winston Churchill, as well as Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Its first statue, of George Canning, another prime minister, was unveiled in 1832.
It only took 200 years!
Caroline Criado-Perez, whose popular online petition ultimately got London to install the statue, “said it was important for Fawcett to be depicted at 50, an age when she became the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies,” explaining, “I wanted her to be standing there not at all sexualized, but statesmanlike.” A nice way to mark a century of women’s suffrage in Great Britain.
Weird that Theresa May appears to have worn a costume from The Handmaid’s Tale, though.