ABSTRACT
This chapter considers some elements which have implications for the most notorious part of the text: Ruskin’s statements on the aegis of the female, the scope of a woman’s authority, and the nature of a woman’s power. But in continuing a critical engagement with controversial question of Ruskin and female authority in Sesame and Lilies, it presents a different line from those hitherto explored among Ruskin readers and present a case for a new dimension to the lectures, especially Of Queens’ Gardens. It argues that Sesame and Lilies, a text which, Ruskin later wanted his readers to consider in conjunction with Unto this Last as together comprising the central expression of his social and economic thought, relates not to John James, but partly to Margaret Ruskin, his forceful, strong-minded, and deeply Evangelical mother. Sesame and Lilies also drew on Ruskin’s knowledge of Winnington Hall School, in Cheshire, and his experience there, as he saw it, of well-directed female powers.
