Gallus Glasgow V: Victoria
Twelve statues stand in George Square in the centre of Glasgow. Only one is of a woman – Queen Victoria. I imagine most British cities have a statue of her. At least ours is a youngish, lively Victoria, sitting side-saddle on her horse, and not the unamused elderly widow (although you can see a version of her on the façade of the Royal Infirmary).
But only one statue of a woman in George Square? Shocking! Not only that, there are only three in the whole city, and of those just one is a native Glaswegian. Isabella Elder sits in Elder Park, which she donated to the people of Govan, and Spanish Civil War heroine La Pasionaria (Dolores Ibárruri) raises her arms by the Clyde.
Perhaps this will change soon. There is a campaign to raise a statue to Mary Barbour, heroine of the 1915 rent strikes, which could take our total to four. It’s progress.
A Queen today – in W tomorrow, we meet a Duke.
The Glasgow Gallivanter 
I hope Mary Barbour gets her statue. There are so many women worldwide who deserve to be honored. I know there is at least one statue of a woman in Vermont, Molly Stark in Wilmington, from the U. S. Revolutionary War.
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM43BG_Molly_Stark_Wilmington_VT
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I’ll check that out later. I’ve just got on a train. Answering all your comments has been a nice way to pass the wait for it to arrive!
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Oh, good. I didn’t want all the comments to be overwhelming.
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There are so few statues of women – it’s pathetic! Offhand I can’t think of any near where I live. (Of course, we don’t have a lot of statues in general.) Love the statue of the Spanish Civil War heroine – such a different style!
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Definitely a balance needs to be redressed.
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When I was young I was fascinated by the statues in George Sq. My aunt used to tell me stories about them and I now know she made most of them up.
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But I bet they kept you entertained!
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This reminds me of when they tried to remove women (other than the current queen) from bank notes, do you remember? There was a petition and now we have Jane Austen. It’s quite shocking really! I hope they add another statue of a woman some time soon…
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Yes, I do and I remember the abuse the woman who organised the banknote petition got too. Sir Alex Ferguson has just donated £5000 to the Mary Barbour statue fund so that should help – he comes from Govan in Glasgow, as she did.
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I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never really paid much attention to the statues on George Square. I’ll have to actually look up next time I’m there!
Cait @ Click’s Clan
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Victoria is on the Queen Street side.
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In my city (Verona – Italy) there are two statues of women in one of the main squres (Piazza Erbe)… but they are unnamed women…
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That often happens – idealised forms.
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That looks great Anabel. And i guess it is like that in many countries- few statues of women
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Far too few! Slowly being rectified – very slowly.
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I wonder how many statues of Queen Victoria exist. We were surprised to see one when we were in Malta. At least Glasgow has statues of real women. The only statues of a women I know of in Minneapolis are the statue of Mary Richards (fictional character – from the Mary Tyler Moore show) downtown and the statue of Hiawatha carrying Minnehaha (based on the poem) in Minnehaha Park. I almost forgot, there’s at least a couple of the 105 commissioned 5 foot tall statues of Lucy Van Pelt (from the Peanuts comic strip) around town.
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Oh well, it sounds as if we are enlightened in comparison!
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Glad Victoria looks so young and regal and not her usual “We are not amused” look. Men always decided the statues so I am not surprised but hopefully women will be noticed as they should be
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Me too!
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Great post, as per! I absolutely adore that statue of Queen Victoria.
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Thanks Fee! She is rather dashing.
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I love that you have la pasionaria statue. I features it and other Glasgow shots in a blog a long time ago (when my tagging was even worse than it is now – ie nonexistent !)
Have a great weekend.
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You too! Still good weather here – amazing!
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Women sometimes get lost to history because their lives aren’t honored, even when they have made achievements that would cause men to be honored. (If that makes any sense.) Some years ago, when I returned to school and was writing a paper, discovered, some horrific sexism in the field of cosmology. The great work of women was routinely being ignored, minimized, or credited to a guy.
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That makes total sense, and is why I love volunteering with Glasgow Women’s Library so much. They are bringing the hidden histories out from the shadows.
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I live in a state where our capital has a woman standing atop it (and, come to think of it, went to Notre Dame for law school, where a woman stands atop a building and looks out over the whole campus!). While there are more statues of men, we do have a few prominent ones that aren’t!
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Is she a named woman? We have quite a few on public buildings which are idealised classical statues, the kind that represent Justice etc, but only the 3 “real” women.
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She is one of the representatives – Miss Forward (actually, I think she has some other name or isn’t named, but that’s what everyone calls her).
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That is a very small amount of women statues… but I think that may be true the world over. I know Kyoto only has a couple. One for an author, one for the inventor of Kabuki (yeah, it started as an all-female art!), and one for a poet.
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It’s shameful! There is a project in Scotland called Mapping Memorials which is tracing monuments to women.
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