5 - Experiments in Becoming

Summary

Womens participation in the public sphere was constrained in various ways, even in liberal circles. Anne Thompson (wife of George Thompson), in conjunction with her teenage daughters and African American freedom seekers, engineered an intervention at the Great Exhibition that creatively silenced anti-abolitionists within a social space. After Louisa and Amelia Thompson married and pursued activist and writing careers, they built on such experiences in ways that represent their astute perception of performative dramatugy and ways to strategically intervene in social politics. In Amelia Chessons work life and marriage, this led to a career as the first female performance critic for a British daily newspaper. She honed her ability to describe not only theatre and music performances but also the entire mise-en-scène of complex events. Extensively networked through her own and her familys activist connections, her work as a journalist, political organiser, friend of fellow abolitionists, and matrixed liberal subject reveals a complex reformulation of how the public and private realms have been previously understood.