Author: Julie Sutherland

Dame Harriet Walter has an impressive resumé. Especially known for portraying intelligent, authoritative women, she is widely regarded as one of England’s greatest classical stage actresses while also building an impressive screen career. You may remember her, if you’re reaching for a face to put to the name, as Clementine Churchill in The Crown or Fanny Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility.

For those with more darkly comedic tastes, you might recall her as Dasha in Killing Eve or Lady Caroline in Succession. Dame Harriet’s definitive stage role is as Brutus in Julius Caesar. But, it is to her role as the clever, complex heroine, Portia, in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice that I now turn.

In this early Jacobean play, Portia disguises herself as a man so she can enter the Venetian court, where women are not allowed to practise law. In disguise, she outwits Shylock by using her legal knowledge to save her lover’s beloved friend, Antonio, while ensuring justice is upheld.

Of this part, Dame Harriet says:

Few acting roles for women let loose this opportunity to command, to match the great weight of Shylock and control the rhythm, timing, thoughts and feelings of audience and courtroom alike. I learnt that I could do it. I enjoyed it, ... felt jealous of my male counterparts that they so often got a go at it. Like Portia I had a moment’s insight into what it was to be a man. (p.35)

Like many of Shakespeare’s heroines, Portia is only taken seriously when she masquerades as the opposite sex. The brilliance she exhibits while in male clothes is unequivocally her own, but no one listens to her until they think she is a man.

Why? Because for millennia, women have been commanded to be silent and obedient. In 1 Timothy—a letter in the second major part of the Bible, and according to many conservatives the only part worth reading (until they want to condemn homosexuality)—the writer exhorts his friend and disciple to:

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.
For Adam was first formed, then Eve.
And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. (Ch. 2:11-14, KJV)

Notwithstanding women’s several important speaking roles in the Bible, by the time Shakespeare wrote The Merchant of Venice, the Church of England's expectations on women to be silent, retiring, and submissive were taken for granted. Shakespeare’s heroines repeatedly defy this convention and, to his credit, he rarely punishes them for doing so (even if their fathers or husbands do).

Contemporary conduct writers, by contrast, reinforced the prevailing ideal of female silence and passivity (housework was OK). For example, the popular poet and writer, Gervase Markham (1568-1637), called on good housewives to be ‘wise in discourse but not frequent therein, sharp and quick of speech, but not bitter or talkative, secret in her affairs’ (first published in Markham’s Country Contentments, 1615, as cited in Hull, p. 46).

Markham’s advice reflected a broader culture that increasingly restrained women. The injunction in 1 Timothy that women should be silent had, by the English Renaissance, become deeply embedded in social expectations. These attitudes had consequences that extended well beyond etiquette.

Take the example of traditional female healers. Research traces a direct connection between the suppression of women’s healing practices, the persecution of many of these women as witches, and the emergence of male-controlled medical professions. Men came to dominate roles as apothecaries, physicians, and surgeons, occupations that were eventually professionalized through the Physicians’ and Surgeons’ guilds. Women were excluded from these professions because they were barred from obtaining the university education required for admission to the guilds (Gregory, p. 173).

Against this backdrop, Portia’s decision to disguise herself as a male lawyer is not just a theatrical device: it is a direct challenge to the social conventions that denied women a public voice and strove to keep them predominantly in the home.

Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance were subject to countless forms of torture and humiliation for taking up too much space. The threat of being publicly labelled, humiliated, or disciplined as a “scold” helps explain why female speech could be—and can be—treated as a form of social disorder rather than merely an expression of opinion.

Disciplinary penalties included fines and penances as well as humiliating and traumatizing forms of public humiliation, such as the cucking stool, the ducking stool, and the infamous scold’s bridle:

To this day, women are frequently condemned for being too loud and taking up too much space. One commonly cited example is Kamala Harris who, during the 2020 vice-presidential debate, was criticized for interrupting her opponents, despite assertions by political analysts that male politicians interrupt as much or more frequently.

Another is Greta Thunberg, who has repeatedly been dismissed as hysterical because of her unflinching style of advocacy. Experts note that such criticisms are disproportionately applied to outspoken women (e.g., Rudman & Glick).

Now, I have no desire to take up more space than anyone else. But the exhortation to take up as little space as possible does not dovetail with my understanding of equality—an inherent right that is also constitutionally enshrined in around 85% of the world’s constitutions (Heymann et al.), which explicitly guarantee equality or prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex and/or gender.

I didn’t learn about my inherent right to equal opportunity in political science classes, nor did I place much stock in religious commands to be silent and obedient. As always, it was art that inspired me—in this case, to take up more space.

Which female figures in art saw through the flimsy sham of the limits imposed on them, instead blazing trails that shaped the way I move through the world? The examples are abundant, spanning every art form. Here, I consider just a few.

Unsurprisingly, Eve—that great temptress—is among them. It was through the English Renaissance poet Amelia Lanyer’s retelling of the story of Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden that I came to see the female pursuit of knowledge as both dangerous and profoundly noble. In Lanyer’s telling, it is Eve—not Adam—who is the bearer of knowledge:

Yet Men will boast of Knowledge, which he tooke
From Eves fair hand, as from a learned Booke. (lines 807-808)

Other poems also revealed the perilous yet, however paradoxically, life-giving quality of agency. The Lady of Shallot, as Tennyson portrays her, helped me understand that the silent isle sheltering this isolated woman is not a protective sanctuary.

The Lady of Shallot's true curse is not what happens if she leaves, but what fails to happen if she stays. What does she lose by remaining? The freedom to choose. Her choice to leave results in her death, but it is death on her own terms.

She left the web, she left the loom,
She made three paces thro' the room,
She saw the water-lily bloom,
She saw the helmet and the plume,
She look’d down to Camelot.
Out flew the web and floated wide;
The mirror crack’d from side to side

While poetry and novels have always been the art forms that shaped me most, at least two literary figures became inspirations through their film and television adaptations.

Little Women's Jo March, and in particular Winona Ryder’s inhabitation of her character in the 1994 cinematic production (dir. Gillian Armstrong), illuminated the way towards courage, joyful living in spite of hardship—oh, and a wild love of theatricals.

Jo's imagination and ambition to be the best version of herself fired my own: ‘Late at night my mind would come alive with voices and stories and friends as dear to me as any in the real world. I gave myself up to it, longing for transformation.’

Similarly, it was Megan Follows as the precocious dreamer Anne of Green Gables in the 1985 television miniseries (dir. Kevin Sullivan) who inspired me to break slates over boys’ heads—not literally of course, but because her defiant gesture expressed her fierce sense of self.

I was only nine when that miniseries was released, and while I read and re-read Lucy Maud Montgomery’s books soon thereafter, my introduction to the dazzlingly clever (if not angelically good) red-headed orphan was through television. (I should add that Anne also introduced me to the rebellious Lady of Shalott).

Love her or loathe her (I do both), that ‘slut-shamed’ mistress of ennui, Mrs. Robinson, in Mike Nichols' 1967 film, The Graduate, also impressed upon me as a teenager that, while preying on the young is a violation of their youth, living the life of a bored, neglected housewife is deadly. So, warts and all, ‘Here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson.'

From the moment I saw my first live theatre performance, I knew the stage was a magical place for space-taking. SIX of its recent powerhouses are the wives who made Henry VIII go down in herstory, in the feminist revisionist musical about the 'Queens'—each of whom is 'sorry/not sorry' for taking up too much space.

Visual art is also an inspiration. The ‘Fearless Girl’ statue in New York, sculpted by Kristen Visbal, stands in defiance of Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull.' Since its installation in 2017, the artwork has drawn millions of admirers, many of whom adopt the same brave stance as they pause for a photo.

I have never posed alongside the Fearless Girl (however ironically or significantly, I have been too shy), but the courageous child nevertheless reminds me that I must not let my spirit be cowed when the heavyweights enter the ring.

From the twenty-first century to the Classics, women have been raising hell. Ancient examples include the defiant Antigone, the wily Cleopatra, the clever Helen of Troy, the shrewd Penelope and so on. As Charlotte Higgins says in The Guardian, ‘They may have murdered their husbands or their children, or turned men into pigs, but the females of the classical world were fabulous.’

That many of the more outrageous women in art (and life) were punished is not inherently wrong—sometimes their actions were loathsome—but that they were punished, as they so often were, for taking up too much space most definitely is. I'm glad they went down swinging. They were loud because they knew they were worthy.

Cheers to them, and here’s to taking up more space.

Bibliography

Di Novi, D. (Producer), & Armstrong, G. (Director). (1994). Little women [Film]. Columbia Pictures; Di Novi Pictures.

Gregory, P. (2024). Normal women: 900 years of making history. William Collins.

Heymann, J. et al. (2026). How Constitutional Rights Can Make a Difference. World Policy Center. Accessed July 28, 2026, from https://www.worldpolicycenter.org/events-launches/advancing-equality

Higgins, C. (2010, October 8). Harridans, harlots and heroines: Women of the classical world. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/08/harridans-harlots-heroines-women-classical

Hull, S. W. (1996). Women according to men: The world of Tudor-Stuart women. AltaMira Press.

Lanyer, A. (1611/1993). Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum. In The Poems of Aemelia Lanyer (S. Woods, ed.). Oxford University Press.

Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2008). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations. Guilford Press.

Tennyson, A. (2004). The Lady of Shalott. In C. Ricks (Ed.), The poems of Tennyson (3rd ed., Vol. 2, pp. 233–240). Pearson Longman.

Walter, H. (2016). Brutus and other heroines: Playing Shakespeare’s roles for women. Nick Hern Books.

Modern culture often treats suffering as a problem to be solved and happiness as the ultimate measure of a life well lived. Yet literature, philosophy, music, and art have long suggested a different possibility: that sorrow, loss, melancholy, and even despair may have something important to teach us.

This lecture explores how art helps us confront suffering rather than flee from it. From Greek tragedy to Russian novels, from Romantic theories of the sublime to modern reflections on grief and meaning, we will consider why some of our deepest aesthetic experiences arise not from pleasure but from encounters with sorrow.

Along the way we will examine the philosophical idea of the sublime—those experiences of awe, terror, vastness, and beauty that exceed ordinary happiness and force us to confront the limits of human understanding. We will ask why readers cry over fictional characters who never existed, why sad music can be profoundly satisfying, and how works of art transform private suffering into shared understanding.

Rather than offering happiness, the greatest works of art often offer something more enduring: a way of bearing life’s difficulties with greater clarity, dignity, and compassion. Designed for curious minds, no prior knowledge is required.

Select Pieces

Oedipus Rex (Sophocles)
The Death of Ivan Ilych (Tolstoy)
To the Lighthouse (Woolf)

Lecture Format

Each 90-minute session is delivered online, beginning with a 50-minute lecture followed by a 30-minute Q&A, moderated by an expert facilitator. Attendees’ microphones and cameras remain off during the lecture but are encouraged during the Q&A.

About the Lecturer

Dr. Julie Sutherland is a lecturer and published author with 25 years of experience researching and teaching the humanities and nearly a decade of experience in transformative humanities. She holds an MA and PhD in English Studies and Modern European Languages from the University of Durham (UK), and a BA (Honours) degree in English and Drama. Dr. Sutherland draws on her lived experience at the intersection of oppression and privilege to explore the complex, often overlooked dimensions of ‘reading for well-being’, speaking on the topic internationally. An award-winning educator and entrepreneur, she is also recognized for her contributions to anti-racism initiatives.

About the Moderator

Janet Minichiello is a graduate of Brown University (BA, Visual Arts and Italian Studies) and The George Washington University (MA, Art Therapy). She is a Washington, DC-based art therapist and former bookseller who spends her free time ensconced in various literary clubs and workshops.

Why do we love British cozy crime?

Step into the delightfully deadly world of British mystery in this engaging two-hour virtual workshop exploring Midsomer Murders alongside Agatha Christie’s classic short story, ‘The Tuesday Night Club’. Together we’ll discover why idyllic villages with carefully hidden secrets continue to captivate readers and viewers alike. Through close reading, viewing, and discussion, we’ll unravel the enduring appeal of this much-loved genre.

We’re especially thrilled to welcome Jane Wymark, beloved for her role as Joyce Barnaby in Midsomer Murders, who will share behind-the-scenes insights and join our discussion.

Shortly after your registration, you will be sent a link to Midsomer Murders Season 3 Episode 3—'Judgement Day’—and a digital copy of Agatha Christie’s ‘The Tuesday Night Club.’

“What, though the field be lost?

All is not lost.”

Join Dr. Julie Sutherland in an engaging and rewarding study of Book I of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, the opening movement of a mind-stretching epic that traces Satan’s quest for revenge against the Creator through the temptation of Adam and Eve.

This study follows the twice-sold-out London Literary Salon exploration of the entire epic, after which many participants expressed a desire to linger over every line. By focusing on a single book, we will have the opportunity to do exactly that: slowing down to appreciate the richness, complexity and cinematic beauty of Milton’s verse.

This immersive study is structured as a shared reading experience, where participants will read every line of the fascinating book aloud, pausing regularly for discussion. Along the way, we will explore Milton’s portrayal of Satan and the fallen angels, the epic’s opening vision of Hell, and some of the poem’s central themes, including freedom, rebellion, authority and ambition.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Three-meeting study led by Dr Julie Sutherland live on Zoom
• Tuesdays 22 and 29 September and 6 October, 6.00-8.00 pm (UK time)
• £120.00 for three meetings
• We will use the Penguin Classics edition: Paradise Lost by John Milton, edited by John Leonard (ISBN-10: ‎ 9780140424393)

i held an atlas in my lap
ran my fingers across the whole world
and whispered
where does it hurt?

it answered
everywhere
everywhere
everywhere.

Warsan Shire, from What They Did Yesterday Afternoon

To live is to love, in all its many forms. Myriad entities become the subjects of our love: human and non-human animals, the land and water and sky. Because we love, we must suffer its corollary—loss. But how do we process the many losses we face, personal and collective, over a lifetime? Experts say that in the West our mourning rituals have diminished, even while we are confronted with increasing reasons to feel grief. Today, the world feels deeply damaged. Everywhere, it and we are hurting. In the last decade alone, we have been confronted with calamitous political violences, climate disasters, a global pandemic, and the breakdown of human rights. In these unsettling times, every flash of breaking news is enough to crack the human heart. And while we bear these, we continue to sustain personal devastation.

Can poetry help us process our grief? Can it be part of a grieving practice to help us make sense of our feelings? Can it invite us into a community of mourners who find strength in each other’s stories? In this workshop, we will examine three poems exploring different kinds of grief: collective, private and ecological. Join Julie Sutherland in a study of poems by Heid E. Erdrich (Public Grief), Jackie Kay (Darling), and Pamela Mordecai (My Sister Cries the Sea). We will close the session with a reading of Mary Oliver’s In Blackwater Woods.

Please note: This workshop is rooted in the belief that poetry has the power to heal emotional wounds, shift public attitudes towards divisive topics and improve social connectedness during times of global distress. To allow participants extra time to experience the poetry contemplatively as well as intellectually, the single session runs for 2.5 hours.

Poems and resources will be sent to participants in advance of the session.

Communal Grief: Heid E. Erdrich – Public Grief

Private Grief: Jackie Kay – Darling

Ecological Grief (Eco-Grief): Pamela Mordecai – My Sister Cries the Sea

Conclusion – Practising the Bittersweet Art of Letting Go: Mary Oliver – In Blackwater Woods

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single 2.5 hour meeting live on Zoom, led by Julie Sutherland
• Thursday, 22 October, 5.00-7.30 pm (UK time)
• £50 for single meeting, to include notes and resources

Discover the urgency and power of Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night in this 2-hour arts-for-wellness workshop at Bright & Brine Fine Art Gallery in downtown Moncton, presented by Julie Sutherland of Art & Humanity Literary Services and Consulting.

Through guided reflection, lively discussion, and a hands-on art activity to take home with you, you’ll discover how approaching poetry through creativity can deepen your connection to the poem and invite new perspectives on perseverance, mortality, and living with intention.

We hope you will leave feeling inspired and connected. No prior experience needed!

Fee: $65 + HST. All art supplies included. Complimentary beverages and snacks will be served.

Dr. Julie Sutherland is an award-winning educator and entrepreneur with an MA and PhD in English Literature and Modern European Languages (Durham University). She harnesses her expertise in the arts and humanities to advance social justice and personal transformation. Julie founded Art & Humanity Literary Services and Consulting in 2025, a company which exists at the intersection of language, creativity, and community wellness.

Bright & Brine Fine Art Gallery is a contemporary, community-first gallery located in the heart of Greater Moncton. Founded in 2024, the gallery showcases bold, thoughtful work by emerging and established artists from New Brunswick and beyond, with a focus on artist equity, public engagement, and regional cultural development.

Come early and enjoy the gallery! Entry is free.

Lift your spirits and spark your creativity in this 2-hour arts-for-wellness in-person workshop celebrating Maya Angelou’s transformative poem, ‘Still I Rise’. Through reflection, lively discussion, and a hands-on art activity for you to take home, you’ll explore themes of strength, resilience, and empowerment. We hope you will leave feeling inspired and connected.

After reading and discussing Still I Rise, you will engage in a “found poetry” technique to create your own poem-within-a-poem, using markers, stickers, and other decorative materials to circle the words you find most striking and artistically obscure the rest. No prior artistic experience is needed. Just bring your curiosity and creativity!

Optional: Stay after the workshop for a pizza picnic, made by our host, Hearth & Hive, in their wood-fired pizza oven. Pizzas from $25, purchased on-site.

Workshop Fee: $65 + HST. All art supplies included. Complimentary beverages and snacks will be served!

Dr. Julie Sutherland is an award-winning educator and entrepreneur with an MA and PhD in English Literature and Modern European Languages (Durham University). She harnesses her expertise in the arts and humanities to advance social justice and personal transformation. Julie founded Art & Humanity Literary Services and Consulting in 2025, a company which exists at the intersection of language, creativity, and community wellness.

Hearth & Hive is a wood-fired micro-bakery on the Fundy coast. Products available Friday-Sunday in our bakery stand at 51 Forestdale Road in lovely Riverside-Albert. ALSO, Pizza Nights in the backyard through the summer! Friday & Saturday 4-8pm, Sunday 1-5pm

The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.

        from Good Bones by Maggie Smith

In 2017, when the poet-sensation Maggie Smith broke the Internet with her poem, “Good Bones,” the world was, according to the poem, in horrible shape. Nine years later, the situation isn’t looking dramatically better. Or better at all. Perhaps I’m looking through the wrong end of a telescope, but from where I stand, the good things are seeming even further away.

“Good Bones” uses the metaphor of a real estate agent “chirping on” optimistically about a “real shithole” to illuminate how urgently we need to sell our children on the world:

This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

While sugar-coating the truth is rarely the right course of action, it’s surely important to give young people reason to feel hopeful despite the dumpster fire we’re living through.

The concept of selling our children the world calls to mind the award-winning film La vita è bella (Life Is Beautiful). Starring Roberto Benigni, who also directed the film, it faced reasonable criticism for sentimentalizing the horrors of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, La vita è bella remains a poignant tragicomedy, revealing the extraordinary lengths to which a father will go to shield his child from the psychological impact of trauma.

How do we show the next generations that we love this place, and our place in it? Despite all the ways we sabotage our planet’s future, I know we want to leave them a healthy, peaceful world. I am struck by the American poet Matthew Olzmann, whose poem “Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now” ruefully claims:

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,
the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations
of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing
but benzene, mercury, the stomachs
of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

Olzmann was writing this in 2017, around the same time “Good Bones” appeared. I am not a mathematician, but when the United Nations Environment Programme estimates that between nineteen and twenty-three million tonnes of plastic waste enter aquatic ecosystems each year, even I know things are grimmer than when Olzmann penned this poem nearly a decade ago.

But, we love this place, Earth. Right? We don’t seem to be a species with much foresight, but surely we love this place. How can art remind me that not all is lost?

So many poets point the way by encouraging readers to spend time in nature, where we can come to know ourselves and our other-than-human kin.

Denise Levertov celebrates

this shimmering
of wind in the blue leaves:

this flood of stillness
widening the lake of sky

        (Levertov, 1984)

***

Wendell Berry invites us to lie down by a still lake,

where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

        (Berry, 1968)

***

Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us of the hope of dawn, and how in nature lives

the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs

        (Hopkins, 1877)

***

There is no shortage of poetry selling us the world by honouring her natural elements. And, it would be absurd for me to say I don’t agree with the poets. These are poems I return to again and again, for their concise and stunning descriptions of nature’s power, mystery, beauty, and endurance.

But, as I think of things I love on a planet that we have brought to the edge of extinction, and though I feel sorrow for the way we have plundered her resources, it isn’t nature that I mourn first. After all, she will reassert herself after we are gone. She has before, as we know.

When Earth suffered a global mass extinction 60 million years ago (give or take a few million years), many forests died, food chains collapsed, and somewhere in the range of three-quarters of the world’s species went extinct. (Or so I’m told; just as I am no mathematician, I am no scientist.)

But slowly—oh so slowly—once the dust settled and the sunlight returned, plants began spreading over the barren earth. Then shrubs and trees. Eventually, mature forests developed once again. Over millions of years, novel ecosystems emerged and paved the way for humans to walk the earth.

If we evolve again, will we reproduce the uniquely creative forms of expression that characterize our species? Below are just some of the artistic and magical things that bring me glimmers of joy and expectation—enough to allow me to sell the world to our children in good conscience.

1. The hush of anticipation the moment before the theatre curtain rises. A collective human body holds its breath, willingly suspends its disbelief, and waits for the magic to begin.
2. The thunderous applause and shouts of wonder as a principal actor walks on stage after a performance to take their first bow.
3. The sound of the first violinist tuning the orchestra. Whether an orchestra perfectly tunes to the concertmaster is not of primary importance to me, a non-musician. I love the ritual, signalling the performance is about to begin.
4. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. A blog on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra website refers to this composition’s “haunting resonance” and “indelible mood,” and I don’t have better words to describe it.
5. Judi Dench’s affecting and plaintive interpretation of “Send in the Clowns,” from Stephen Sondheim’s award-winning musical A Little Night Music.

I could go on and on. I’ve barely touched the surface. What about Cecil Beaton’s portraits? What about Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray? But, I must stop somewhere, and so I draw to a close with a single moment from the 1991 film Thelma and Louise, written by Callie Khouri and directed by Ridley Scott.

When all seems lost for the movie’s intrepid antiheroes, the women don’t give up. With the top down on their 1966 Ford Thunderbird convertible, the women drive towards. Towards what, you ask? Towards agency. Towards freedom. “Let’s keep going,” Thelma says, and Louise smiles in agreement.

Bibliography

Berry, W. (1968). The peace of wild things. In Openings. Harcourt, Brace & World.

Hopkins, G. M. (1877). God’s grandeur. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved July 7, 2026, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur

Levertov, D., & Joubert, J. (1984). Oblique Prayers: New Poems with 14 Translations from Jean Joubert. New Directions.

Olzmann, M. (2017, April 14). Letter to someone living fifty years from now. Academy of American Poets. Retrieved July 7, 2026, from https://poets.org/poem/letter-someone-living-fifty-years-now

Smith, M. (2017). Good bones. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved July 7, 2026, from https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;
Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
from Sonnet 94

Shakespeare’s sonnets have inspired, fascinated and disturbed readers for centuries. Full of mystery and imagination, they dazzle us even as they drive us mad: Who is the fair youth to whom so many of these sonnets are addressed? Who is the dark lady, the complex beloved of so many others? Who is the rival poet and what power does he possess? Are these lyric expressions of tortured love – among other themes – the key to understanding the mysterious life of Shakespeare, or are they not autobiographical at all?

Through close analysis and hands-on interpretive work, we will examine Shakespeare’s kaleidoscopic exploration of his speaker’s romantic and tortured feelings and experiences.

JOINING DETAILS:

• Single two-hour meeting led by Dr Julie Sutherland on Zoom
• Thursday 17 September 2026, 5.00 – 7.00 pm (BST)
• Session #13 – Sonnets 91, 94 & 97
• £30.00 for two-hour study

We are offering these self-contained, individual studies of Shakespeare’s sonnets in a workshop style setting. Over time we will cover a broad selection of the 154 sonnets that comprise Shakespeare’s celebrated sequence. Participants are invited to join as few or many sessions as they please.

Before the session, Julie Sutherland will send links to online versions or attach specific copies for discussion. It is highly recommended that you print these off before joining this hands-on session. If you have a printed edition, please also have it ready so we can consider variations between texts. Have a notebook and pencil on hand as well!

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REDUCED COSTS: we are committed to making our studies as affordable as possible. We have a fund in place to support anyone who would like to register for a study but finds the cost difficult to afford. We can’t promise to help, but please email us at [email protected] in confidence if you would like to request a reduction in the cost of a study.

It is a commonly held notion that there is nothing we cannot buy to make ourselves feel better. From glow-in-the-dark toilet paper (Glow with the flow!) to canned unicorn meat (Tastes like rainbows and stardust!), our dampened spirits need only look to the Internet to realize that the road to happiness, health, and good fortune can be easily purchased and delivered right to our door.

Many skeptics of modern wellness culture—and I count myself among them—tend to look askance at anything marketable that promises to enhance one’s life in any material, physical, or spiritual way. It’s not that we’re scornful about wellness itself. Instead, we tend to question the reliability and authenticity of ‘purchasable health’, whether in the form of biohacking gadgets (‘Fitbits are only fit for landfill!’ the sceptics cry) or influencer-endorsed self-care products (‘Doja Cat can’t make MAC cruelty-free!’ they exclaim).

Our hearts aren’t two sizes too small. To the contrary, cynics like me celebrate evidence-based wellness-enhancing activities that are low-cost or, better yet, free. Volunteering at community events, engaging in lighthearted exercise (nothing too strenuous or expensive, naturally), and taking long, hot showers (please, no thoughts about water waste) all earn our—sometimes reluctant—approval.

My greatest tonic is learning, and there are innumerable free ways to do this, thanks to the World Wide Web—and public libraries, of course. Wellness-culture doubters like me also often embrace engaging with the arts as a legitimate source of pleasure, healing, and emotional growth. Visiting museums (especially free ones), reading novels, and listening to music are just a few examples of meaningful arts-based activities that support well-being.

All that said, there is a special brand of skeptics—and I counted myself among them—who extend their disdain for wellness culture when it trespasses on the hallowed sphere of art. Or rather, Art. When spelled with a capital A, Art comprises those books, films, plays, statues, paintings, and so on that should be taken seriously. Their aesthetic powerdemands that they be approached with reverence and a steely intellectualism.

Forgetting that the self-styled aesthete par excellence,Oscar Wilde, referenced his position in the gutter, these Art-lovers place themselves squarely in the stars. (For those who don’t venerate Oscar Wilde, as I do, I am referencing a quote from his smash-hit play from 1892, Lady Windermere’s Fan, in which Lord Darlington says, ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars’. Sound familiar? You might also know it from the British Rock band, The Pretenders, where Chrissie Hynde belted it out in ‘Message of Love’ in 1981.

Such art devotees are strongly guarded against drawing on the arts to ‘feel better’. Art therapy? [Sneer.] Thank you, no. Protesting the happiness-through-the-arts industry, these cynics reject art for wellness’ sake while dousing themselves in art for art’s sake. 

Not inherently a bad thing to do. The Art for Art’s Sake movement, sometimes called Aestheticism, began in 19th-century France, but this self-consciously styled rebellion against the moral stranglehold on art and wider societal structures soon made its way to England. There, those who embraced Aestheticism roundly rejected the moralism that nailed firmly into place such enduring harms as restrictive gender norms, sexual shame and stigma, the moralization of poverty, and the equation of respectability with virtue.

To aesthetes (I still count myself among them, though with numerous rigorous qualifications and provisos), art (Art) is inherently valuable, independent of its subject matter or moral, political, ethical, or social weight. As my acting professor used to quip, You want to send a message? Call Western Union! In other words, don’t lean on art to do your heavy lifting.

So, what are my qualifications and provisos, you might ask? Chief among them is that art is indeed inherently valuable, but this doesn’t mean it can’t be drawn on for insight, learning, and—dare I say it?—healing. In this way, art exists both for its own sake and for wellness’ sake.

How might those who embrace an ‘art as therapy’ approach spend time with Art in its many forms: written, spoken, sculpted, sung, painted, or danced, to name a few? Here, I invite you to bring to mind a great masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci’s enigmatic Mona Lisa. 

How might I engage with this painting at the level of human emotion? To look at this masterpiece can be unsettling. The Lady Lisa's eyebrows have disappeared over the centuries (if they were ever there at all), and in such a peaceful setting, her mysteriously shifting smile seems almost sinister. What is she smiling at, and where, and at whom? 

I might print (or sketch) a version of the painting and return Mona Lisa's eyebrows to her, creating a backstory to how they were lost. I might add other attributes to her face to give myself a clearer understanding of who the sitter was and what relationship she had with the painter, and now has with the viewer. Or perhaps I could add some colour that makes the background a little less serene. A little funkier. A little more something-that-speaks-to-me. 

In creating a relationship with the prima donna of the art world—in giving visual form to the thoughts and emotions the painting invokes—I have grown to understand the painting’s power, but also something of myself. The choices I make, the stories I invent, and the questions I ask reveal my own ways of seeing. I have learned something about myself by reflecting on how I respond to something external to myself.

And more than that, the act of doing—of clipping papers, choosing stickers, imagining settings and stories, perceiving new landscapes, of being in relationship with great art—may itself be healing. The value lies not only in what I discover but in the process of discovery. Perhaps by exploring the mysteries of the Mona Lisa—and my response to them—I can come to understand myself a little better. I might emerge from the work feeling braver. Bolder. Ready to face the world.  

Heaven forbid! cry le Club d' Art for Art’s Sake. You’ve missed thepoint! The full benefits of the Mona Lisa can only be experienced by the educated elite. (For the thousands of ‘humble' tourists queued up to view this famous lady, just ignore the aesthetes’ wailing. It might get in the way of your pleasure.)

I know I sound attitudinal, but I am as much in this camp as the other, while eschewing snobbery and elitism. I feel and know about art like I feel and know about wine: I appreciate how a specific terroir shapes each vintage. How a skilled vintner takes pride in balancing vibrant acidity with structured tannins. I understand how to luxuriate in wine’s complex, layered aromas and elegant finish. 

But, I refuse to speak about wine in any of these terms, and I rarely drink it with such seriousness. Instead, my general response to a mouthful of wine is, ‘That was delicious!', sometimes said while the liquid is still running down my gullet, causing a mighty slosh and slush of sound and fury somewhere in the back of my throat and then an inelegant splash of fugitive wine on the countertop or floor (or worse, the host’s white blouse).

This isn’t to say I don’t revere wine, or art. In fact, both have the capacity to move me from the mundane to the sublime. 

What do I mean by the sublime? The sublime is the emotional or spiritual experience of encountering something so vast, powerful, or beautiful that it lifts us beyond the ordinary and fills us with awe, wonder, and sometimes even terror. These feelings would be overwhelming if we physically inhabited the worlds art presents—if we were drowning in Bruegel the Elder's Storm at Sea, for example, or trapped in the uncanny silence and expansive emptiness of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. 

But because we experience them from a position of safety, the terror, desolation, and oppression they evoke become, paradoxically, sources of pleasure.

To consider this further, let’s take Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1834 edition). The ‘story’ isn’t important for this exercise. The imagery on its own brings the reader an experience of the sublime. Below are the lines the Ancient Mariner speaks when he meets a spectral woman who wins his soul. Read them out loud, if you can.

The western wave was all a-flame.
The day was well nigh done!
Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright Sun;
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the Sun.

And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
(Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
As if through a dungeon-grate he peered
With broad and burning face.

Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
How fast she nears and nears!
Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
Like restless gossameres?

Are those her ribs through which the Sun
Did peer, as through a grate?
And is that Woman all her crew?
Is that a DEATH? and are there two?
Is DEATH that woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free,
Her locks were yellow as gold:
Her skin was as white as leprosy,
The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she,
Who thicks man's blood with cold.

My physical self doesn’t want to get anywhere close to that wild sea and otherworldly woman. Yet, from the safe space of my reading chair (named Sybil, for those who want to know), I drown myself in the atmosphere the poetry evokes. I experience again and again the delicious terror of the sailor's ghastly visitor, surrounded by a sea of flame. Reading it does me great good.

What do I mean by ‘does me great good’? Imagine that every work of art came with a nutrition label, much like the ones found on food packaging. Instead of listing calories, protein, or fibre, the label would indicate the emotional and spiritual nourishment the work provides, along with the percentage of our recommended daily allowance (RDA) of various experiences. By way of example, here is what a day spent absorbing Coleridge’s haunting, hallucinatory poem might provide:

Awe: 88% RDA
Terror: 28% RDA
Ecstasy: 64% RDA
Transcendence: 52% RDA
Melancholy: 21% RDA
Mystery: 76% RDA

These are nutritional benefits I can digest. If art stuns me with its greatness, beauty and power; if it lifts me beyond my daily concerns; if it fills me with exhilaration or, conversely, a reflective sadness; or if it leaves me with a sense of itself being beyond comprehension, it has done some great things. Might I even say (ahem), it has contributed to my wellness?

And this is the point I have been aiming to make all along, and the one I want to invite us all to ponder: art, even when appreciated for its inherent value, has a healing power.

I offer a second invitation: Please consider joining one or both of Art & Humanity's September events. The first, on Sept. 13, is a workshop entitled Broken is Beautiful. This event is for those in the ‘Mona Lisa for Wellness’ camp. The second, on Sept. 27, is a lecture—The Poetics of Failure. This lively talk is aimed at those in the ‘art for art's sake’ camp (but be warned: it may still have a healing power). Information about each event and the links to register are at the top of this newsletter, but you can also click on the hot pink text in this paragraph.

I close this reflection not with the roaring sublime of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but rather with the silent, still sublime of Wordsworth’s The Prelude, which describes the speaker's experience while hiking through the Alps:

… when the light of sense
Goes out, but with a flash that has revealed
The invisible world, doth greatness make abode,
There harbours; whether we be young or old,
Our destiny, our being’s heart and home,
Is with infinitude, and only there;
With hope it is, hope that can never die,
Effort, and expectation, and desire,
And something evermore about to be.

See you in September. In the meantime, seek out some art, for wellness' sake!