A Lady with Spunk

     

    With the current political climate being anti-woman, I thought it was important to talk about a woman from the past who was born far ahead of her time. Naomi Mitchison, born Naomi Mary Margaret Haldane, was born in Scotland on November 1, 1897, into an upper-middle class family. Her mother was Kathleen (Louisa) Trotter Haldane. Her father, John Scott Haldane, was a prominent physiologist. Naomi had one older brother named J.B.S. (Jack) Haldane who went on to become a well-known scientist and mathematician who was interested in evolutionary biology. In fact, in 1915 Naomi helped her brother with his research on mice and was even listed as a contributor which was very uncommon at the time. While society wasn’t interested in educating young women, John Scott Haldane insisted that his daughter not be held back because of her gender. Naomi attended Oxford Prep school from 1904 to 1911. In 1914 she was accepted into Oxford University, but wasn’t allowed to attend because of the fact she didn’t have a penis between her legs. Instead she studied at home with a tutor. Naomi’s dream was to become a scientist like her father, but World War I would end that dream. Instead, Naomi volunteered with the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD) for a short time before getting scarlet fever and having to quit. 

    In 1916 she married Gilbert Richard “Dick” Mitchison, a family friend, who would go on to become a barrister then a King’s Counsel. Together they had seven children. However, Naomi was content to sit around and be a housewife. She began to focus on her writing, a passion she had all her life. In fact, Dick often performed various roles in the plays she wrote as a child. She always took the time to write throughout the day. Throughout her life, she wrote 90 books. She wrote a variety of genres in her lifetime, including travel writing, historical fiction, poems, memoirs, public commentary, and more. Her first book The Conquered in 1923 and her last novel Sea-Green Ribbons was published in 1991. 

Writing wasn’t the only thing Naomi Mitchison was passionate about. She was also very passionate about people and became a human right’s activist and far leftist. In the late 1920s to early 1930s she joined the Fabian Society and travelled to the Soviet Union to see if communism was something the party could get behind. Spoiler, it wasn’t. Naomi was shocked and miffed by what she found there. It inspired her to write one of her most controversial books We Have Been Warned which was published in 1935. The book was censored due to the mentions of rape, abortion and birth control. A couple years later, Naomi Mitchison began traveling to Vienna, Austria to aid leftist/socialist party members being persecuted there. She smuggled paperwork and correspondence in and out of the country by hiding the papers stitched into her clothing or tucked into her underwear. Sometimes, she even helped smuggle families over the border. Her final big activism push was traveling to Alabama, USA, to meet with the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union and speak at a demonstration they were holding in Marked Tree, Alabama, where she witnessed violence and cruelty she had never before seen. 

Not long after that trip, Naomi Mitchison grew tired and weary of the Fabian Society and other leftist/socialist groups because they weren’t actually doing anything. She went back to her farm in a small fishing town in Scotland and endeavored to do all the good she could for her community. She helped preserve historical sites, fund schools, and tell all of London about the rich folklore and poetry of her town. Sadly, the locals never took a liking to Naomi. She was loud, opinionated, and stubborn. Not to mention she was a woman who, it was rumored, had various sexual relationships with other men and women. Yes, Naomi and Dick had an open marriage and she was polyamorous. 

Choosing to go back to her writing and traveling to Africa regularly with her husband, Dick. On one of those visits, she met some elders from the Bakgatla tribe in Botswana, who invited her to visit. She was thrilled to do so and became enchanted with the village after seeing all the community support and tribal traditions. And so she decided to support this village in any way that she could financially so they could build schools and plant crops. Though I feel it should be noted that Naomi Mitchison was a huge proponent of birth control, so the first thing she did when she decided to help the village was talk to all the young women about it. In fact, a lot of her written work at the time was centered on this tribe who later adopted her as a member. However, there is a white-savior-complex here that is hard for me to ignore. Naomi Mitchison lived to be 101 years old.