Good Women depicts five saints – Winfred, Columba, Eluned, Sidwell and Juthwara, each martyred by decapitation and miraculous springs that formed where their heads fell. They are united in defiance, resisting coercion, abuse, and forced marriage, and in choosing principle over submission.

The tapestry is set on the day when Winifred sends a textile gift to the uncle who restored her life. Here it is a comet, both gift and omen, foretelling the violence these women endured.

 

Each figure carries symbolic attributes. Sidwell carries five beakers whilst Juthwara pours water gathered from the stream that signifies mutual sustenance and courage, extending a sixth cup to the viewer. Columba’s folded cloth bears the phrase “I know I was enough,” yet also allows the doubt, “I wasn’t enough.”

 

Their skirts contain narrative scenes of flight, resistance and courage specific to each saint. Winifred flees the would be rapist who enters her home while her parents are at church. Columba flees her monstrous parents who tortured her to get her to marry against her will. Instead she fled guided by an angel until her pursuers caught up with her. Eluned fled from village to village to escape her would her suitor until he found her. No meek creature she called for revenge on the villagers who exiled her and thus she carries a victory wreath. Her posture reflects  the strange graveyard dancing that took place in antiquity in her honour. Sidwell was killed in a wheat field through the jealousy and machinations of a step-parent and strange lights marked the site of her death. The same step- parent engineered the death of Juthwara who mourned the loss of her father and endured lies spoken of her.

 

Also embedded in the skirts is an autobiographical account reflecting my own struggle against familial misogyny and the assertion of selfhood. Influenced by danse macabre imagery, the composition transforms martyrdom into collective strength, binding past and present.