Cusworth, Hannah;
(2024)
Henrietta Howard: mistress, survivor, imperialist?
Women's History Review
, 33
(6)
pp. 874-893.
10.1080/09612025.2024.2382634.
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Abstract
Traditionally, Henrietta Howard has been seen through the lens of her role as George II's mistress and a ‘woman of reason’ who was connected to the leading men of her day. More recently, Henrietta Howard has been reinterpreted as a minor feminist icon: a survivor, who overcame childhood tragedy, an abusive marriage, and the patriarchal system to become a leading cultural patron, living in comfort at the home she built, Marble Hill. This article seeks to situate Henrietta as a beneficiary of, and participant in, imperial activity and exchange. Today these two interpretations - Henrietta as ‘survivor’ and Henrietta as ‘imperialist’;- feel at odds with one another. Present-day attitudes mean that a feel-good, ‘girlboss’; feminist narrative about Henrietta’s life, does not sit easily with the fact that she benefitted from transatlantic slavery. However, I argue the two readings can be reconciled, creating a new interpretation, when we consider that it was through imperial activity that Georgian women such as Henrietta Howard were able to materially benefit, survive and even thrive.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Henrietta Howard: mistress, survivor, imperialist? |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09612025.2024.2382634 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2024.2382634 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Geography |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10205161 |
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