{"product_id":"books-harriet-martineau-dreams-of-dancing-by-shelagh-stephenson","title":"Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing","description":"What you haven’t realised is that I sew to aid my thought processes.  Look – needle – stab – stitch – thought. Needle – stab – stitch – thought. So next time you see a woman demurely sewing a sampler, be very, very wary. God knows what she may be planning.  Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) was a social theorist who is often credited as being the first female sociologist. In Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing, Shelagh Stephenson depicts the great writer in a period of convalescence, living as an invalid by the sea in Tynemouth.  Shut off from her usual society, Harriet is visited by women of the locale; Impie, a recent widow who is using her new-found marital freedom to paint murals on the ceilings of her family home; Beulah, the daughter of a woman who’d been sold into slavery and escaped; and Jane, the housemaid, whose unfeted and unexpected gifts lift her out of domestic servitude and could help Harriet out of illness.  Harriet Martineau is a play about female self-reliance in a time of patriarchal dominance. Written by Shelagh Stephenson, it premiered at Live Theatre, Newcastle, in winter 2016.","brand":"World of Books ","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53505548878097,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781350011915.jpg?v=1778098829","url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/products\/books-harriet-martineau-dreams-of-dancing-by-shelagh-stephenson","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}