A statue has appeared on Newington Green since I was last there, which isn't difficult given I hadn't been to that particular part of Stoke Newington for over a year. It's in the northeast corner, not the bit nearest the cafe, and was in fact unveiled in November. It's quite unusual, in part because of how it looks, but also because it depicts a female and there really aren't enough statues of females in London or indeed anywhere.
It commemorates Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist philosopher, author and campaigner who promoted equal rights for women in the late 18th century. She was born in Spitalfields, opened a school off Newington Green, worked in Bath, Ireland and revolutionary Paris, lived for a while in Southwark and moved to Somers Town shortly before dying at the age of 38 as a result of complications following childbirth. That child grew up to be Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein, but it's for her own forward-looking achievements that Mary Wollstonecraft is rightly remembered.
The campaign to install a memorial on Newington Green began in 2010 but it was only in 2018 that the artist Maggi Hambling was commissioned to design and cast a statue, and given full artistic freedom to do so. It's no ordinary statue, indeed it's not of Mary but depicts "the spirit of women" as a small naked silver figure perched on top of a amorphous bronze blob. To say it's split opinion would be an understatement.
Some hate it - how dare the artist represent feminism with a nude - and at one point a special mini t-shirt appeared on the figure to cover up her body. Others adore it - so very much the embodiment of all she stood for - and have relished the debate and conversation the statue has provoked. I found flowers on the plinth but also a misspelt placard underneath reflecting on the importance of female safety. It's a gorgeous piece which appears to have invoked "I don't get it" in many and unnecessary anger in others, as radical as Mary's ideas would have been in their day, very much A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.
