Elizabeth Fraser - Wonderful Woman No. 144

Elizabeth Fraser - Born 1963
British Singer and Songwriter

Added to the album by Sandy, A Wonderful Woman

Elizabeth is one of Britain's finest singers, and not a week goes by without me sticking one or the other Cocteau Twins album on... I have many memories of lying on my bed as a teenager and Liz could always soothe my troubles. And now, still, when I feel low, she can put a smile on my face. A voice of an angel...
Sandy

So many times since I began writing this blog has it been evident that other women are able to soothe us, to transport us to another place, to make us feel that someone else out there feels what we feel, hurts the way we hurt, loves the way we love, there is a woman out there with lyrics and a voice that prove somebody truly understands. Catharsis is a wonderful thing.

In 1981, aged just 17, Elizabeth Fraser became one of the founding members of the band Cocteau Twins. During the 1980s, the band were among the leading recording artists on the alternative music scene. Elizabeth sang lead vocals in soprano style, often using undecipherable lyrics, her own language, words that had to be felt rather than linguistically understood. The band released nine albums between 1982 and 1996, with a great deal of critical acclaim and praise.

Cocteau Twins disbanded in 1998. Though Elizabeth has never released a solo album she has created numerous solo tracks and contributed to film soundtracks. Moreover, she has worked collaboratively with a plethora of artists, such as Peter Gabriel, The Future Sound of London and Massive Attack. She still contiues to do live performances, for instance, at this year's Meltdown Festival.

Like many of our Wonderful Women, Elizbeth has had her share of the hard times, a nervous breakdown, addiction, lost love... she came through them though and her talent never suffered for the moments of woe.

For many, Elizabeth's voice and the music of Cocteau Twins defines the alternative, post-punk sound and feeling in the 1980s, they have been influential to countless other artists such as Prince, Annie Lennox and My Bloody Valentine (to name only a few). And decades later, the voice is still haunting, enchanting and filled with emotion.

Perhaps the word that most springs to mind when I think of Elizabeth is enigmatic... and wonderful, of course.

I made my declaration.
Elizabeth Fraser

Maude Chardin - Wonderful Woman No. 143

Maude Chardin - Played by Ruth Gordon in the 1971 film Harold and Maude
Fictional American Pensioner

Added to the album by Melanie, A Wonderful Woman

A total inspiration... I LOVE her.
Melanie

I must say, it is a little difficult to write about a character in a film you have never seen. That said, in research for writing this blog post, I've read a lot of reviews of Harold and Maude and have spent the last hour watching clips on YouTube... having done so, I have decided that I must watch the whole film very soon.

The film is centred around the relationship between 79 year old Maude and young Harold, who entertains himself by attending funerals (along with some other rather macabre passtimes). The pair meet at a funeral of a man neither of them have ever met and then become close.

Maude is a wild free-spirited woman, full of youth, despite her advanced years. She is a seize-the-day-type of woman, keen to experience new things, take on adventures and live her life to the extreme. There is no mention of her past in the film, other than a Nazi concentration camp tattoo on her arm... all we see is an aging woman, still intent on having new experiences, meeting new people and living (and dying) at her own pace, in her own way and with absolute vigour and joyful abandon.

To have the strength of mind to accept such freedom of mind is definitely a wonderful thing.

A lot of people enjoy being dead. But they are not dead, really. They're just backing away from life. Reach out. Take a chance. Get hurt even. But play as well as you can. Go team, go! Give me an L. Give me an I. Give me a V. Give me an E. L-I-V-E. LIVE!
Maude

Polly Jean Harvey - Wonderful Woman No. 142

Polly Jean Harvey - Born 1969
British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Composer and Actress

Added to the album by Gemma, A Wonderful Woman

I love her cos she's a zeitgeist defying, individual who has the confidence to change her voice, sound, image on her own terms and still sounds (and looks) amazing! She does whatever she wants and I love her for it!
Gemma

I have written many times in this blog about the wonderfulness of being unique, of not yielding to conformity, of remaining true to your own identity. I think Gemma's addition of PJ Harvey is another fine example of a true individual. And, of course, a great talent.

Polly's love of music stemmed from her parents. She began learning to play the saxophone as a teenager and went on to master playing guitar, piano, bass, harmonica and autoharp. Whilst still an adolescent, she played in a number of bands.

From 1988 to 1991, Polly was a member of the band Automatic Dlamini before leaving to form the PJ Harvey Trio (with Rob Ellis and Ian Olliver, also formally of Automatic Dlamini). The band's debut single Dress, released in October 1991, was championed by BBC Radio One's John Peel. The band released two studio albums, which received acceptional critical acclaim and praise from the likes of Kurt Cobain. They disbanded in 1993, shortly before Polly began her career as a solo artist.

She's not, quite honestly, that interested in success. She's not driven in any way by commercial imperatives. Really she's working to satisfy herself.
Paul McGuinness, Manager

Interested in success or not, Polly has released twelve albums and collaborated with some of the world's most respected artists. Her latest album, Let England Shake won this year's Ivor Novello award for best album. She is also twice a Mercury Prize winner and last year received an NME Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.

Her musical style continues to evolve and change, not with fashion but with her own life's passage of time.

Ever the artist, Polly has worked on numerous other projects away from the music charts. In 2009, she made her mark as a composer, creating the music for a theatre production Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler. She has also appeared as an actress in a number of films.

PJ Harvey is a true creative artist, an individual and a real musician with a real passion for music. She is into the fourth decade of her career but showing no signs of sitting back on her back-catalogue... she is almost certain to be someone who continues to create, every single day of her life. A raw talent, an individual, a Wonderful Woman.

Making me into a role model is placing too much importance on what I see as a work in progress.
P J Harvey

Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze - Wonderful Woman No. 141

Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze - 1758–1836
French Chemist

Added to the album by Kieran, A Wonderful Man

If it wasn't for her, we probably wouldn't be where we are today as soon as we were.
Kieran

Researching and writing about the women of science who are added to the Wonderful Women album is always a particular joy. Firstly, it is a subject I am fascinated by, but also, so often it is astounding how much these women have endured, overcome and achieved. Marie-Anne Pierette Paulze is another fine example of this.

Married at thirteen years old, Marie-Anne became the laboratory assistant of her husband, celebrated French nobleman and scientist Antoine Lavoisier - "The Father of Modern Science", who named both oxygen (1778) and hydrogen(1783) and predicted silicon, as well as creating the first extensive periodic table of elements. During her time working in her husband's laboratory, her passion for chemistry evolved, she received formal training and, over time, came to work side-by-side on research in the laboratory rather than simply assisting. She was trained also by an artist in order for her to create detailed illustrations of experiments and apparatus, her sketches are said to be some of the greatest in existence and are helpful in dating scientific equipment and techniques. Furthermore, she translated scientific reports from English to French (she was fluent in English and Latin, as well as her native French), a task which proved pivitol for the couple's discoveries and allowed them to disprove many of the theories in print and ultimately to discover oxygen gas.

In 1794, Antoine Lavoisier was beheaded by French revolutionaries. Following his death, Marie-Anne retrieved their laboratory notes (which has been seized during his arrest) and published the final documentation of his work Mémoires de Chimi, a memoir which demonstrated new principles in chemistry. Without her husband, Marie-Anne ran her own scientific laboratory and continued to dedicate her life to science.

All those years ago, Marie-Anne's contribution was little acknowledged, she was known only as the wife of the great scientist. Now though, it is clear that she was an equal in contributing to some of chemistry's most important discoveries, it doesn't get more wonderful than that.

Minds have no sex and that if the minds of women were cultivated like those of men, and that if as much time and energy were used to instruct the minds of the former, they would equal those of the latter. The life of Marie-Anne Lavoisier proves this statement to be true.
Marie Meurdrac, Chemist

Shelagh Delaney - Wonderful Woman No. 140

Shelagh Delaney - 1938-2011
British Playwright and Screen Writer

Added to the album by Esme, A Wonderful Woman

She wrote 'A Taste Of Honey' when she was only 18... amazing play, amazing woman.
Esme

When I was still in high school, I was among a group of avid theatre-goers who, on at least a monthly basis would, go with our drama teachers to various theatres in and around Manchester. One of these trips was to see A Taste of Honey by Shelagh Delaney at The Octagon Theatre in Bolton. Though that evening is something in the region of twenty years ago, I still remember the performance vividly. It was unlike a lot of the productions we went to see, for a start it was set in Salford, very close to where we went to school and the characters were so realistic to us, well, because they were just like the people all around us. I don't remember if I identified that the female roles were so strong at the time but I do remember thinking one day, when I became an actress I'd love to play Jo (sadly, this was one ambition that I never did fulfil).

Shelagh came from humble beginings, born and raised in Salford in the north of England. She wrote her most famous work, A Taste of Honey, while just 18, it opened in London at the Theatre Royal East in 1958 and was an instant success.

A Taste of Honey showed working-class women from a working-class woman's point of view, had a gay man as a central and sympathetic figure, and a black character who was neither idealised nor a racial stereotype.
Dennis Barker, The Guardian

The play was turned into a film in 1961. The film was also a great success winning four Bafta awards, including best British screenplay and best British film.

Shelagh wrote a number of other plays after A Taste of Honey, though none matched it's success. In 1963, she published a book of short stories, Sweetly Sings the Donkey. Over time, she began to write more for radio and television than for theatre. She was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1985.

Her style of writing continued, throughout her career, to be filled with harsh realism, social protest and strong female characters. She has been, and remains to be, an enormous influence on other creatives, her champions include Morrissey of The Smiths who says many of his lyrics would not exist were it not for Shelagh. Jeanette Winterson - Wonderful Woman 98, also remarks on her influence, saying Shelagh was "the first working-class woman playwright".

It may not seem so unusual now, a female writer having huge success at an early age but at the time A Taste of Honey was released, this could only be described as groundbreaking. In some way, Shelagh's success knocked down some of the boundaries faced by women of the lower-classes of the time, opened up the idea that theatre, literature and even, more generally speaking, education were things that could be accessible to all - for these reasons she well-deserves her Wonderful Woman title.

Women never have young minds. They were born three thousand years old.
Shelagh Delaney