{"exhibit":{"title":"A Conventional Radical","description":"
Isabel de Giberne Sieveking\u2019s life, as it is outlined through the written fragments and printed ephemera assembled in this exhibit, is marked by numerous complexities and contradictions. They\u00a0both disrupt and further illuminate popular ideas\u00a0and definitions of \"womanhood\" during\u00a0the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Sieveking was a militant radical in rural England who advocated literally burning down the patriarchy (and the homes of government officials if necessary). Yet she was still conventionally eulogized as a devoted mother and a woman who lived an acceptable \u201cLife of Service.\u201d She was a devout Catholic suffragette in a time where members of the\u00a0religious right, the Tory party, strove to keep women legally confined to, and\u00a0incapacitated\u00a0within,\u00a0their \u201cNatural spheres.\u201d Sieveking was also\u00a0(at the very least) the object of passionate lesbian desire during the Victorian period, challenging conventional depictions of Victorianism as prudishly\u00a0traditional, repressed, and heteronormative\u00a0in its views of sexuality. Sieveking, by her very life and existence, thus destabilizes previous narratives that neatly demarcate the Victorian and\u00a0Edwardian\u00a0periods into relentlessly conservative and radically progressive eras. Her example also throws doubt on the familiar desire to\u00a0establish, in any period, the double bind of femininity- to separate the conventional \u201cgood\u201d woman\u00a0and the insurbordinate \u201cbad\u201d woman, the Angel of the House\u00a0and the\u00a0Devil who tries to burn it down.<\/p>\n
All photographs of\u00a0Sieveking Mss. documents taken by Zach Downey, courtesy of the Lilly Library, Bloomington, Indiana.<\/p>","credits":"","featured":0,"public":1,"theme":"minimalist","theme_options":"a:4:{s:6:\"rhythm\";a:6:{s:11:\"style_sheet\";s:4:\"fall\";s:12:\"site_tagline\";s:0:\"\";s:4:\"logo\";N;s:11:\"footer_text\";s:0:\"\";s:24:\"display_footer_copyright\";s:1:\"0\";s:19:\"use_advanced_search\";s:1:\"0\";}s:7:\"seasons\";a:7:{s:11:\"style_sheet\";s:6:\"winter\";s:4:\"logo\";N;s:11:\"footer_text\";s:0:\"\";s:24:\"display_footer_copyright\";s:1:\"0\";s:17:\"item_file_gallery\";s:1:\"0\";s:19:\"use_advanced_search\";s:1:\"1\";s:12:\"exhibits_nav\";s:4:\"side\";}s:7:\"default\";a:5:{s:4:\"logo\";N;s:12:\"header_image\";N;s:11:\"footer_text\";s:0:\"\";s:24:\"display_footer_copyright\";s:1:\"0\";s:19:\"use_advanced_search\";s:1:\"0\";}s:10:\"minimalist\";a:6:{s:4:\"logo\";N;s:11:\"footer_text\";s:0:\"\";s:24:\"display_footer_copyright\";s:1:\"0\";s:17:\"item_file_gallery\";s:1:\"0\";s:19:\"use_advanced_search\";s:1:\"0\";s:12:\"exhibits_nav\";s:4:\"full\";}}","slug":"a-conventional-radical","added":"2017-04-18 12:51:42","modified":"2018-03-24 10:14:09","owner_id":43247,"use_summary_page":1,"cover_image_file_id":75,"id":1},"item":{"item_type_id":1,"collection_id":null,"featured":0,"public":1,"added":"2017-06-18 16:10:26","modified":"2017-06-18 16:10:26","owner_id":43247,"id":26}}