Jane Austen as a choice of woman to be on the £10 bank note would be fine, if we were in the 18th century. I can't help but feel she is the safe, bland, acceptable, middle-class choice. Austen is the woman men don't mind giving us as a representation because she is no threat to the prevailing order whatsoever.
Women do anger. Yes, I know, not that surprising to us, but something that is hardly acknowledged in public life. I'm not talking "passive aggressive drawing-room polite snide à la Austen", but rage and revenge. Here is my list of women fit to represent this:
1. Boudicca (AD 60/61)
The Angry Woman; Queen of the Iceni. When Boudicca herself was beaten, and her sisters and other Iceni women were raped and beaten by the Romans, this woman did not stay home and cower. She got on her horse and led an army of fighters to get their own back.
2. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797)
She wrote, among other things, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792): a highly intelligent, yet clear and sustained, argument for why women needed equal educational opportunities. She didn't just take on any old Tom, Dick, or Harry in arguing this – but the beloved Edmund Burke. She also gave us Frankenstein. OK, the creator of Frankenstein – Mary Shelley Wollstonecraft.
3. Mary Seacole (1805-1881)
The woman Michael Gove wanted to shove off our national syllabus. The Jamaican nurse, of Scottish and Creole descent, who risked her own life and health in going to the Crimean battleground to care for the injured, was voted the greatest black Briton in 2004.
4. Marie Stopes (1880-1958)
Born of a feminist mother, who was the first woman in Scotland to get a university certificate (she should have got a degree but they refused – degrees were only for men), Stopes represents the coupling of academic rigour and political engagement in order to emancipate women from slavery and empower them with autonomy over their reproductive organs. What's less well known is that Stopes also played a key role in an attempt to stop education authorities from sacking women teachers.
5. Aphra Behn (1640-1689)
The first woman to earn her living by her pen. And, it could be argued, beat Daniel Defoe by about 30 years as creator of the modern novel, by writing Oroonoko, a poignant anti-slavery novel. And she was also a valuable spy for the English court.
6. Emily or Charlotte Brontë (mid-1800s)
I've always believed that there are two types of woman – those who root for Austen, and those who prefer their fiction wild, angry and passionate, as written by the Brontës.
Do you agree with Jane Austen as the choice of our token woman, or do you feel it's too safe – as safe and bland a choice as women are likely to ever be given? Who would you choose, and why?
