The Naked Feminist

On his wedding night, the Victorian art critic John Ruskin recoiled from his new bride, the attractive 20-year-old Effie Gray, and found himself unable to consummate the marriage. As Effie later wrote to her father, Ruskin “had imagined women were quite different to what he saw I was.” After six unhappy years, their marriage was annulled because of Ruskin’s “incurable impotency.”

But what, exactly, was the problem? The speculation has always been that what so disgusted Ruskin was that—after a lifetime studying classical statues—he’d had no idea that women had pubic hair.

That delusion will not be shared by anyone who has seen a new commemorative statue for Mary Wollstonecraft in North London. The tiny female silver figure at its apex is lavishly endowed with the stuff. The 21st century might be the era of the would choose to be remembered.)