Monuments and Maidens
The Allegory of the Female Form
Why Justice, Liberty and Victory are all women, and what it costs actual women that they are.
Justice, Liberty, Victory and Britannia are all female, and Warner asks what it means that the figures a culture makes into monuments are women while the people it monumentalises are men. The book ranges across statues, coins, allegory and advertising to argue that such figures carry meanings that exclude actual women.
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Helen Castor
So the figures of justice, victory and liberty, for example, are all female. And Marina Warner comments in her conclusion that, “Meanings of all kinds flow through the figures of women, and they often do not include who she herself is.” In other words, the difficulty for women is agency; it’s doing something and being an actor in the narrative.
Interview · August 2011
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