Frances LarsonUndreamed Shores: The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology

Abstract

BOOKS IN REVIEW Frances Larson Undreamed Shores:The Hidden Heroines of British Anthropology London. Granta. 2020. 352 pages. FRANCES LARSON IS AN anthropologist at the University of Durham and the author of three books on anthropologists, collectors of artifacts, and beheadings. Undreamed Shores is her latest addition to this list. It traces the lives of Britain’s first female anthropologists—a group of five women, all educated at Oxford in the early twentieth century. However diverse their backgrounds, all were confronted with the severe limitations to which English society subjugated their gender. While their brothers, male friends, and colleagues were privately educated and able to pursue university degrees and research positions, “most women were educated [to] become good wives and mothers.” We not only learn of the lives of these extraordinary women, the cultures they studied, and the times they lived in, but we also see the field of anthropology establish and define itself, as Larson’s heroines struggle to survive in a world both hostile to their gender and their field. To Larson, the slowly growing emancipation of women in England in the early twentieth century did not merely coincide with the birth of modern anthropology but was a necessary contribution to it. A woman’s perspective is an essential part to the study of any society and particularly valuable in the study of subjects such as the societal role of women, family structures, childbirth, and sexuality. In the context of field research specifically, female researchers may be perceived as a lesser threat than their male counterparts and may thus be more tolerated by certain subject groups. And finally, Larson’s anthropologists were less likely than some of their male colleagues to put tales of their own bravery before the content of their work. Their books were “modest and attentive . True to their data and its limitations . . . their work was respected without being celebrated.” Katherine Routledge, born 1866, sailed to Easter Island to study its Polynesian culture and past. Winifred Blackman, born 1872, lived with agricultural peasants of Upper Egypt for nineteen seasons. Barbara Freire-Marreco, born 1879, lived and worked in the pueblos of New Mexico and Arizona. Maria Czaplicka, born 1884, was a Polish citizen and traveled northern Siberia throughout the winter. Lastly, Beatrice Blackwood, born 1889, traveled to New Guinea twice and, for decades, held a leading role with the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, contributing more than two thousand objects herself. Braving all odds, these women made their way to Oxford at a time when there were only three university posts in anthroAugust 21 and September 19, 1939, in the Politeama Theater in his newfound hometown , coinciding with the outbreak of the war. Despite the imminent demise of world peace, Heinz is enveloped by a fatal infatuation with tomboy Sonja Graf, real-life German American chess master and dominatrix . Unlike the chess players who traveled to Buenos Aires, Heinz is not part of the “intellectual fraternity” that comes with being a master or connoisseur (or, more precisely victim) of the game; his preferred cerebral enigma is the enchanting woman who antagonizes him so profusely, refusing outright his attempts at courtship. Ultimately, Heinz gives up on the idea of love and takes on a new, more arduous task. In his long-winded soliloquies scattered throughout otherwise mundane diary entries, Heinz argues that the political boundaries between nations are “unnatural ,” similar to the checkered squares on the chessboard that were introduced to the blank expanse of the board in the tenth century. Heinz eventually transitions from a reserved pacifist into a full-blown anarchist. Determined to prevent the Germans from corrupting the most classical of ancient pastimes, Heinz, with the help of the Palestinian , French, and Polish teams, attempts to thwart the only remaining conquerable enterprise for the Germans: the world of chess. Ariel Magnus uses the sixty-four-square board as a canvas for the German domination of the “checkerboard of Europe”; the international chess competition that the Germans so effortlessly conquer symbolizes their eventual belligerent conquest of Europe. Chess with my Grandfather is laden with what seem to be long-winded bouts of inspiration that can be likened to a diver’s parlous journey into...