Mary Martha Sherwood is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones Date Process Result June 3, 2007 Good article nominee Listed June 12, 2007 Peer review Reviewed July 7, 2007 Featured article candidate Promoted Current Status: Featured article

This article is within the scope of multiple WikiProjects. Click [show] for further details.

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page. Biography portal FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ] This article is supported by the Arts and Entertainment work group. This article is part of WikiProject Children's literature, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to children's and young adult literature on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project. Children and Young Adult Literature portal FA This article has been rated as FA-Class on the quality scale. High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale. Article Grading: The article has been rated for quality and/or importance but has no comments yet. If appropriate, please review the article and then leave comments here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article. Tasks you can do: WikiProject Children's Literature Open Tasks Here are some open tasks for WikiProject Children's literature, an attempt to create and standardize articles related to children's literature. Feel free to help with any of the following tasks. Update author biography articles and write about new books written for children Expand articles in the Demonata series by Darren Shan Create new articles relating to children's literature Add this template ( {{Children'sLiteratureWikiProject}} ) to the talk pages of articles relating to Children's Literature. Expand and edit the Children and Young Adult Literature Portal Cooperate with Wikipedians who belong to similar WikiProjects Discuss matters involving children's literature on this WikiProject's talk page Clean up the Philip Ardagh article edit

The following user(s) are actively involved with this article and may be able to help with questions about verification and sources: Awadewit (talk • contribs • email) This in no way implies page "ownership"; all editors are encouraged to contribute.

[edit] GA Review

I have reviewed this article on 7 criteria:

1. Well-written: Pass
2. Factually accurate: Pass
3. Broad: Pass
4. Neutrally written: Pass
5. Stable: Pass
6. Well-referenced: Pass
7. Images: Pass

Congratulations, it passes! It's very long, but not too much, just thorough. Continue to improve this article to get it to FA class! --PresN 16:24, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "to Europe"

The Sherwoods are, I infer, somewhere in or near Worcestershire.

By the 1830s, the Sherwoods had become more prosperous and the family decided to travel to Europe.

Since they operated their schools there, I infer that, too. Awadewit | talk 01:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

SGML comment:

I have been advised not to use "the continent" (Awadewit)

On what grounds? (To me, "to Europe" seems bizarre, considering that they're already in Europe.) -- Hoary 00:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Not everyone knows what "the continent" means and why should "THE continent" refer to Europe? It's Eurocentric. Awadewit | talk 01:01, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Sure it's Eurocentric. "The continent" is standard Britspeak for the European continent. Out of context, it's unclear. Here it has a context, and it's explained immediately afterwards. If people can't be entrusted to wait for one sentence for a clarification, or if it's thought to be offensively Eurocentric, then "the European continent" or similar. Better that than "Europe", which the reader may take as implying that family Sherwood have gone back to India or whatever. -- Hoary 02:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You can change it back, if you want. This is yet another battle I am not going to fight. I just wanted to tell you what has happened to me in the past when I used "the continent" (in context). Awadewit | talk 05:05, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

You don't have to fight it. Refer any would-be battler to me. "Europe" meaning "mainland Europe" seems bizarrely Briticentric, in the geographical-ostrich or Europhobic mode. -- Hoary 06:28, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I have changed it to "the continent." "European continent" just sounds bad. It is redundant anyway. Awadewit | talk 07:12, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Good move there, Awadewit! -- Hoary 08:19, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Just to clear things up, we say 'the continent' the same way people on other islands would say 'the mainland'. Britain is an island, after all. Strdst grl (talk) 16:43, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Postcolonialism

We read:

Using a postcolonial analysis, Nandini Bhattacharya emphasizes the complex relationship between Sherwood's evangelicalism and her colonialism. She argues that Sherwood's evangelical stories demonstrate the deep colonial "mistrust of feminized agency," represented by a dying child in Little Henry and his Bearer. Henry "subvert[s] the colonialist's fantasy of universal identity by generating a subaltern identity that mimics and explodes that fantasy." But, ultimately, Bhattacharya argues, Sherwood creates neither a completely colonialist text nor a subaltern text; the deaths of children such as Henry eliminate any possibility for an alternative consciousnesses to mature.

The article on Postcolonialism starts by saying that it's a set of theories in philosophy, film and literature that grapple with the legacy of colonial rule. However, little in that article ("in need of attention from an expert on the subject") bears out such a claim. Instead, the article seems to suggest that PC is the critical study of colonial rule and its legacy, particularly in or via literature. (And that article nowhere explains the term "subaltern".) So the passage above seems to mean that NB, whose interest is in colonialism, writes about colonialism: the initial phrase thus seems redundant. For this reason, I deleted it; but it has been reinstated.

I've got a vague idea of what NB is on about here, but no more than a vague idea. And sometimes not even that. "Subverts X by generating a Y that mimics and explodes X": look, if you really explode something, this is hardly a means to the end of subverting it: having been exploded, it's no longer there to be subverted. Descriptions of such matters can of course employ figurative language, but that figurative language has to make sense, and here it doesn't. I hope NB is merely being careless (and not obscurantist), and I don't want to ridicule her writing, but until her writing is clear I see no reason to quote it. -- Hoary 00:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

I am not a postcolonial expert. I tried to find one to summarize her article for me, but I couldn't. Unfortunately, the postcolonialism page is not very good (there is not much I can do about that right now - I cannot improve every page I link to; also, it used to explain subaltern). Even more unfortunately, postcolonial criticism uses a very specific jargon and different critics use it differently. I did my best to reduce her argument without mistaking her meaning. I do not want to accuse her of being careless or obscurantist, but hers is a particular style of literary criticism. It is not one that I practice, but it would be quite wrong to eliminate her view from the article because it is some of the most recent and best criticism on Sherwood; moreover, those who do know this kind of criticism will welcome its inclusion (not everything in every article is going to be understandable to everyone - think of the science articles, for example). The fact that I cannot summarize it better is one of the problems. Like I said, I tried to fix that, but was unsuccessful. I have been keeping my eye out for someone to help with this. Awadewit | talk 01:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)