This week I read Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train to understand the fuss about popular books with ‘Girl’ in the title (forgive me but I haven’t completed the survey with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet.) I enjoyed them. Gone Girl in particular has a pleasingly unreliable narrative stance and its … Continue reading The Women on the Train: From Art to Politics, Feminism is a Doing Word.
During the last leg of 2016’s highest budget theatrical production – the Presidential Election campaign – Bryan Cranston made a peculiar statement about Donald Trump. He told BBC Newsnight it was “not real” to him that Trump could win. Cranston expanded: “he’s saying nothing, he has no ideas”, no solutions. So far, so quotidian. What … Continue reading Breaking Bard: Exploring Bryan Cranston’s Shakespearean Trump
Last week I found myself enjoying the pleasing pain of discussing my friend’s latest rosé-fuelled rambles amongst fuckboys. And what is a fuckboy? Urban dictionary has many amusing definitions, including “the fuckiest of the fucks, a ‘fuckboy’ is the lowest possible form of the vile, degenerate waste pouring from the proverbial asshole of society”. The … Continue reading Austen and Writing Fuckboys
"The soft and shadowy tint, that overspread the scene, the waves, undulating in the moon-light, and their low and measured murmurs on the beach, were circumstances that united to elevate the unaccustomed mind of Blanche to enthusiasm… ‘I have been shut in a cloister from the view of these beautiful appearances, which were designed to … Continue reading Rose-Tinted Dawn: Sublime Romantics to Instagram Antics
PISANIO: “You must forget to be a woman; change Command into obedience, fear and niceness The handmaids of all women, or more truly Woman it pretty self – into a waggish courage, Ready in gibes, quick-answered, saucy and As quarrelous as the weasel.” Cymbeline, King of Britain: Act 3.4 I was recently told that the … Continue reading The Gendered Voice of Power: Lessons from Shakespeare’s Women
The Litique 