Veronica Franco, and women who inspire

[danaeris]

I love the movie Dangerous Beauty (although I was disappointed to hear that dragon_spirit found it schmaltzy). But moreso, I love the concept of Veronica Franco.

I've always had trouble with any part in ritual that speaks of honored ancestors. But I'm beginning to realize that there are women who do qualify as honored ancestors, even if they may not share my blood.

Veronica Franco, the heroine of Dangerous Beauty, is one of them. Here is a brief biography of her which I found on a website.

Veronica Franco was born in Venice in 1546. At the end of her arranged and loveless marriage at the age of 20, she was to become what was then called piu honorate cortigiane, or what we would today call “whore” (the more congenial English word being courtesan). So skilled was Miss Franco at her chosen profession she was listed in the Il Catalogo di tutte le principale et piu honorate cortigiane di Venezia, which I imagine translates to mean “The Top Sluts of Venice” or something to that effect. In her lifetime, she survived giving birth to six children, three of whom died while still in infancy, managed to escape the bubonic plague when it hit Venice from 1575-77, and even stood before in Inquisition on charges of witchcraft (many of the citizens of the city turned on their once-celebrated poetess, believing the arrival of the plague in Venice to be a divine punishment for their former indulgences). I find her to be one of the more fascinating women of history and a remarkable wordsmith.


And the less freedom we have,
the more our blind desire, which drives us off the path,
will find a way to penetrate our heart;
so that a woman either dies from this
or moves away from the restricted life that we all share
and owing to a small mistake is led far astray.


-Capitolo 22, Terze Rime

What women have inspired you? Please comment.

Comments

[cr0wgrrl.livejournal.com]

• Hypatia, librarian of Alexandria. "He who influences the thoughts of his times, influences all the times that follow. He has made his impress on eternity."
  
• Emma Goldman, anarchist. "The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought." "If I can't dance, it's not my revolution!"
  
• Virginia Woolf, wordsmith. "If we didn't live venturously, plucking the wild goat by the beard, and trembling over precipices, we should never be depressed, I've no doubt; but already should be faded, fatalistic and aged."
  
• Sybil Ludington (http://www.catskill.net/purple/sybil.htm), who did the same thing that Paul Revere did, but with two exceptions: 1) she was only 16; and 2) she didn't get caught.
  
• Amelia Earhart, aviatiator and explorer. "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward."
  
• Rosa Parks, activist and bus rider. "I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear."
  
• Mother Theresa, humanitarian. "There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience."
  
• Sojourner Truth, activist. "If women want any rights more than they's got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it."
  
• Frida Kahlo, artist. "I paint my own reality. The only thing I know is that I paint because I need to, and I paint whatever passes through my head without any other consideration."
  
• Wu Zetian, concubine who later became the only Empress in Chinese history.
  
• Phoolan Devi, the bandit queen.
  
• Elizabeth Cady Stanton, suffragette, whose writings founded the basis for the movement. "Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility."
  
• Eleanor of Aquitane, queen.
  

There are so many more.

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

My great-great-aunt Ruth, who was very good at diffusing the anger and pettiness of tyrants.

[coffeekitty.livejournal.com]

Barbara McClintock (geneticist decades ahead of her time; discovered transposons before it had even been elucidated that DNA is the genetic material; won the Nobel Prize for it. did all this work in an academic environment so hostile to women that when she was president of the most influential geneticists' organization in america at the time, she still couldn't get a university to hire her on account of her sex.)

Gertrude Elion (discovered the first effective anti-leukemia treatment; one of the very few people without a doctorate to win a Nobel)

[dragon-spirit.livejournal.com]

Of all the women who ever lived, Harriet Tubman is the one I admire most, and whom I've found to be the most inspirational. She made dozens of extremely dangerous trips from the South to the North in order to free hundreds of slaves. What you 've probably never heard is that she did all this with narcolepsy, which she got from a traumatic brain injury when she was twelve.

She carried a loaded gun with her on every trip, in case one of the excaping slaves got scared and wanted to go back. That would mean death for the rest of the group, so she couldn't let anyone return. Fortunately, she never had to use the gun.

Later in her life, she was also a nurse in the civil war, as well as a suffragette. Harriet Tubman didn't let the fact that she was a disabled slave, which would have discouraged most people, stop her from escaping. Nor did it hinder her as she led hundreds of other people to freedom. She's my hero.