Not my cup of tea at all. So I was amused when I found that there was a quilt which showed lots of ways of getting rid of her. She is tied to railway tracks, struck by lightning, electrocuted, roasted on a spit, eaten by a snake - you get the idea! Here she's being strangled by a rather angry-looking sunflower!
I didn't realise the motivation behind this quilt. It was made by a group who were concerned that Sue showed a very outdated idea of femininity, where she was dressed modestly (actually, in a very old fashioned style), carrying out traditional female tasks in the house or countryside or just being 'seen and not heard'. They wanted to get rid of this image, and found a very witty way of drawing attention to their ideas. Since then, there have been other incarnations of Sue. There is Bad Sue, where she is shown streaking, pregnant, making rude hand gestures, stripping and even kicking a snowman over! Then there is Sinbonnet Sue, where she is shown depicting the seven deadly sins. Such creativity and imagination.
So, maybe I'm not sorry that I never liked Sunbonnet Sue. She's a goodie goodie who displays all the behaviours which have been encouraged to keep women subservient and compliant. Not the sort of gal I could make a close friend of!
2 comments:
I, too, don't care for Sunbonnet Sue. One year, however, at a quilt show there was a quilt called Sunbonnet Sue Does Hollywood...the Lost Screen Test. It was an amazing quilt with Sue depicted in scenes from 33 different movies. The movies weren't named so it was even more fun to look at the quilt and figure them out.
Never liked Sunbonnet Sue. Even as a child.
Over three decades ago, my daughter was delivered via an emergency C-section then whisked to an intensive care unit 30 miles away. So there I am, on pain meds, frightened out of my mind about my baby, and I was put in a room with Sunbonnet Sue and Sam, or whatever the equivalent male is called, wallpaper! For four days I stared at those faceless things.
I quickly scroll by Sunbonnet Sue quilts today, never looked at them long enough to get the traditional female role depiction.
Daughter is fine.
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