This exhibition is very important to me it's a passion project it's something
I've been working on only this year 2018 but has been something I've given a lot
of time to and it is something that's important about thinking about how we
think about sixteenth century women and about modern women and the interaction
between the two and how the past and the present can talk to each other, so I
think it gives a really important new interpretation of Bess and it presents
that through the prism of modern women.
I sort of thought about recreating some kind of like Tudor sort of pose and some
kind of Tudor and backdrop but I really wanted them to sit separately away from
the from the Tudor portraits so that they were there was a bit of a contrast and I
wanted to bring like a modern you know the modern life modern life into this
amazing room because I thought it would look really good.
I think it's amazing it's really lovely too I've spent quite a lot of time on Radio 4 trying to
reclaim kind of "monstered" women as it were Agrippina the younger you know she
the greatest Emperor the Romans never had well maybe yeah actually but you
know the sources that we have obviously tell us that she's a multiple murderer
basically a poisoning serial killer you know
maybe but also maybe just a strong woman with opinions who didn't shut up and
that's exactly how I feel about Bess, I understand there are ways of
construing behaviour that can make somebody seem absolutely monstrous, but
there are other ways of rewriting that and I think this is a really useful
project because generally mouthy women do get derided historically as witches
as bitches as you know crazy women you shut them up in an asylum you burn them
at a stake well you know I think maybe we're done with that.
I began the journey really in the archives as a historian that's what I
enjoy doing so reading Bess of Hardwick's letters, the letters that she wrote and
the letters that were written to her and really I found a fascinating woman, rich
facets of her personality that really surprised me, it wasn't the Bess that I
was familiar with; I had read so many history books that
described her as proud, as furious, as overly masculine and overbearing and the
woman that popped out to me on the page was someone who was resourceful, someone
who was kind, someone who's incredibly smart and shrewd, she had an active
network of female friends at court, she wrote to senior political figures at
court, the Lord Burghly's the Lord Leicester's, she was someone who managed that social
network to to really influence the society in which she lived in.
Just the thought of someone not here anymore but still having that bad
reputation that was just spread from lies, which a lot of women leaving
abusive relationships, lies are spread about them and it's just it's really
empowering and a privilege to be a part of something that is righting a wrong
reputation, it's just great.
The exhibition speaks to themes about how we talk about women and whether
they're believed when they speak, but it also speaks to the parallels and
continuities of women's experiences over time, and it was really important to us
to include in this exhibition both household names, but also people from the
local Derbyshire community; there are women pictured here who have lost
children, or who have suffered domestic abuse and there are parallels with
Bess' story in there too, so we wanted to make sure that we were connecting
with Bess' story on multiple levels and that an encounter with her through
these women would be something that was moving and important.
I was in an abusive for six years and didn't go for help anywhere and it had a huge
effect on my life really and the way I lived and I just started speaking out
one day; when you open up about something, it unlocks other people to open up and I
just ended up with all these women come in with their stories and something needed
to be done.
The story of Bess you know and what she achieved in a time when women, you know,
were not landowners, they weren't wealthy, is amazing and it's extraordinary and I
think you know as somebody who comes from a group which is normally quite
sort of underprivileged, it was it there's so many lessons that I can take
from it and I think especially we've seen in recent years, you know, with
the MeToo movement and the Times Up movement we've seen women are sort of pushing
back they're taking back the narrative and in particular you know I work with
many Muslim women who feel that Muslim women so often are portrayed in
very binary terms, as either a threat stereotype or as either being oppressed,
so I work with them to get their authentic voices heard, so that people
can see that you know Muslim women are just like any other women; they're human
beings and it's complex and everyday but what lessons I've taken from Bess is
that, you know, the struggle to kind of get your voice heard as a woman and to
have a narrative believed, it you know it cuts across all ethnicities, races, cultures,
religion you know it's a struggle that Bess, you know, had to deal with four
hundred, five hundred years ago and it's a struggle that women are still facing
you know in today's world but Bess shows us that through sheer determination actually,
you can overcome it.