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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2024

Anna McKay
Affiliation:
The Open University, Milton Keynes
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Summary

The poet, when his heart is weighted, writes a sonnet, and the painter paints a picture, and the thinker throws himself into the world of action; but the woman who is only a woman, what has she but her needle? In that torn bit of brown leather brace worked through and through with yellow silk, in that bit of white rag with the invisible stitching, lying among fallen leaves and rubbish that the wind has blown into the gutter or street corner, lies all the passion of some woman's soul finding voiceless expression. Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?

‘We do not want you or your Latin Bible, we are but ignorant women and do nothing but spin and obey.’

When Olive Schreiner (d. 1920) asked the question ‘the woman who is only a woman, what has she but her needle?’ in her posthumously published novel From Man to Man; Or Perhaps Only, she positioned clothwork as the expressive tool of the culturally ostracised and limited. She identified in women's ‘invisible stitching’ the artistic endeavour of those excluded from the male-dominated provinces of poetry, painting, and philosophy: the ‘voiceless expression’ of those prohibited from the masculine prerogative of verbal and linguistic articulation. Schreiner highlighted that in those stitched objects, fabrics, and cloths so overlooked as cultural artefacts, we can find written ‘all the passion of some woman's soul’, the hopes and desires of a womankind that has been systemically marginalised and disregarded, should we learn how to read them. The founder of the Irish Sisters of Charity in 1815, Mary Aikenhead (d. 1858), similarly described female clothwork as the province of the ‘ignorant’ in her writing. Whether the product of internalised misogyny or uttered with a more knowing awareness that a greater spiritual potential might be found in textile work, Aikenhead's statement sets up an opposition between Latin (male-authored) scripture and (female) clothwork as devotional domains and outlets. It illustrates a connection between women's relegation in the working of fabric, their marginalisation in theological discourses, and subjugation to mere obedience within Catholic ecclesiastical culture, as equally defined by androcentrism concerning vocality as the artistic vocations bemoaned by Schreiner.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Introduction
  • Anna McKay, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: Female Devotion and Textile Imagery in Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432494.001
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  • Introduction
  • Anna McKay, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: Female Devotion and Textile Imagery in Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432494.001
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Anna McKay, The Open University, Milton Keynes
  • Book: Female Devotion and Textile Imagery in Medieval English Literature
  • Online publication: 15 May 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781805432494.001
Available formats
×