The Good Life: Powerful women!
March 8 was International Women’s Day. Protests took place all over the world to highlight inequalities towards women, calling for better pay and working conditions, an end to violence and better access to education. For me, I celebrated by texting the women I am grateful to have in my life.
The day first came about in 1908, when 15,000 women took to the streets of New York to protest for better working conditions and voting rights. A few years later, the idea came about to make the day an international one. The day was celebrated for the first time in Austria, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland on March 19, 1910. Following discussion, it was agreed that the day would be celebrated on March 8. The international day was recognised by the United Nations in 1975.
To mark the day, I wanted to talk about two female writers I have studied. Most recently, I have read Anne Enright’s ‘The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch’ - an interesting read is surely one way to describe it.
Born in Dublin, Enright is a former producer and director at RTÉ. She now works as a professor of creative writing at University College Dublin. The themes of her seven published novels include family, Irish colloquialisms, migration, and the mother, among others.
Set in the 19th century, ‘The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch’ is a work of historical fiction that explores migration. The main character, Eliza, was born and reared in Charleville in County Cork. She came from a higher-class family and escapes the famine to Paris. She first works as an English teacher, then sells her body for sex. She meets Francisco Solano López in 1854, the son of the dictator of Paraguay, and returns with him to South America as his mistress. He later becomes the dictator of Paraguay after his father passes.
Eliza is not very well accepted by the community there, while Lopéz leads Paraguay into the War of the Triple Alliance fought between Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. It was only after reading the novel that I found out Eliza Lynch actually existed and lived from 1833-1886.
The more I read it, the more I am fascinated by historical fiction. In the case of Eliza Lynch, Enright took a character from the past and explored her life through literature. As a reader, I get insight into what it was like to be a woman in the 19th century. The work gives a different perspective on history, one that cannot be found in the history books, bearing in mind that some elements or characters may be dramatised for the sake of the story. I have so many layers of admiration for authors who do this kind of work, the research they carry out and the creative processes used to make the novel relevant today.
I also studied Antje Krog, a South African journalist and poet born in the Free State. I studied her novel, ‘County of My Skull’ (2004), which follows a journalist reporting on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in South Africa. Krog led the radio team that reported the hearings with the South African Broadcast Corporation. The TRC came about after the end of apartheid in South Africa, it was a court-like system that gave people an opportunity to explain their actions. Its purpose was to uncover and make public the truth of the human rights abuses in the years between 1960 to 1994 in an attempt to reconcile the country, which was split into areas for black people and white. Victims and perpetrators came together, families came face to face with those who murdered their loved ones. It is a documentary of Government and failings in humanity, which must not be repeated.
The novel contains anger, forgiveness, guilt, defiance; it is beautifully powerful, but absolutely not an easy read. I have the utmost respect for Krog and the work of writers after studying it.
At times, I read such works and I revel in how far humanity has come. At other times, I make comparisons between times present and past and my heart sinks. On this day we celebrate the influential people we look up to in our lives, but we also think of those who are suffering. The writers I have discussed here show the importance of documentation during these times, to remember and where possible not repeat.
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