The Statue of Liberty

I was listening to a programme on Radio 4 this morning about the history of the Statue of Liberty. The idea for it was conceived at a dinner in Paris is 1865 by the French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi who was inspired by the colossi at Thebes and whose plans to sculpt a colossus overlooking the Suez Canal had been scuppered. It took 10 years for his American idea to take off and another 10 years to build, by which time the enthusiasm for it had somewhat dampened. The French had agreed to fund the statue and the Americans were supposed to pay for its base but when the time came French-American relations were somewhat strained and nobody in America wanted to pay up for what was seen to be something for New York rather than for the whole country. Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnate, came to the rescue. He organised fund-raising from the American people via his newspaper, saying that anybody who made a donation, even a schoolchild giving 50 cents, would have their name published in his paper (a cunning ploy to boost his sales). Bartholdi modelled the face of the statue on his mother and its body on his wife. There was some discussion on the radio about why Liberty, Britannia etc are always depicted as women rather than men. The answer, to my mind, is that the ideas of freedom and patriotism are dear to men's hearts and things which they are naturally inclined to look after, just like the fairer sex.