I’ve just been getting
some potatoes prepared ready for dinner. We’re going spicy tonight with Salmon
Fajitas. I thought a few sauté potatoes
& some sweetcorn would be just the thing to set off all that chilli
spiciness.
While I was doing the
potatoes I half-listened to Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. They were talking about
the first wave of feminism i.e. the suffragette movement. My gran was one.
Throughout my childhood we still had the chains with which she tied herself to
the town hall railings.
Why this segment of
the programme particularly caught my ear is that I’m currently reading a novel
based on the life of Katherine Parr, beginning just before her marriage to
Henry VIII. In this novel Katherine is portrayed as secretly being a supporter
of the Protestant church at a time when the King was tending back towards the old
Catholic religion. Through her secret reading of the Bible &
interpretations of it, she became increasingly aware of a woman’s right to be
something more than just a vessel for the breeding of children. I can’t help
wondering if this isn’t a very 21st century interpretation of
Katherine’s views. Can feminism really trace its roots back to the introduction
of the Bible in English, and everybody’s right to interpret what is written in
their own way, not necessarily according to the strict orthodoxies handed down
from the pulpit? I’m sceptical, but I will admit Tudor history is not a period
I have ever studied in great depth.
But I must accept
being free to think can be a very dangerous thing. You never know where those
thoughts may lead.
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