Feminine Power: She who must be obeyed

In the dedicatory poem of his essay on poetic myth The White Goddess, first published in 1948, Robert Graves writes of a magnificent, but cruel, divine being with a brow as ‘white as any leper’s’, blue eyes, ‘rowan-berry lips’, and ‘hair curled honey-coloured to white hips’. Not all goddesses are, of course, white, and Graves’ iconic poem may seem at first sight to be somewhat passé, pointless, and politically incorrect, but hidden in it are references to many of the different aspects of female power that are graphically and diversely celebrated in a fascinating exhibition at the British Museum. Feminine Power: the divine to the demonic is the first of its kind there to focu