Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing

Shelagh Stephenson author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC

Published:10th Nov '16

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing cover

When social theorist Harriet Martineau comes to Tynemouth to convalesce, life changes permanently for a group of women in the town.

What you haven’t realised is that I sew to aid my thought processes. Look – needle stab – stitch – thought. Needle – stab stitch thought. So next time you see a woman demurely sewing a sampler, be very, very wary. God knows what she may be planning. Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a social theorist who is often credited as being the first female sociologist. In Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing, Shelagh Stephenson depicts the great writer in a period of convalescence, living as an invalid by the sea in Tynemouth. Shut off from her usual society, Harriet is visited by women of the locale; Impie, a recent widow who is using her new-found marital freedom to paint murals on the ceilings of her family home; Beulah, the daughter of a woman who’d been sold into slavery and escaped; and Jane, the housemaid, whose unfeted and unexpected gifts lift her out of domestic servitude and could help Harriet out of illness. Harriet Martineau is a play about female self-reliance in a time of patriarchal dominance. Written by Shelagh Stephenson, it premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle, in winter 2016.

ISBN: 9781350011915

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 104g

96 pages