A Memorial to Young Womanhood

A Memorial to Young Womanhood, also known as The Spirit of Youth, is a statue of a young woman that stands alongside the running path on Blackstone Boulevard where it intersects with Clarendon Avenue. It memorializes Constance Witherby, born September 5, 1913, who died at the age of sixteen on August 30, 1929 of an unexpected heart attack while vacationing in the Swiss Alps. As a girl at the Lincoln School, Constance wrote precocious and prolific poetry. In 1939, her mother, Mrs. Dorothy H. W. Hunt, published her poetry in a limitedly printed volume called Sunshine & Stardust. The runners of Blackstone Boulevard and the community members of East Providence have since adopted Constance’s statue, covering her with flower garlands in spring and sitting in front of her on one of two granite benches.
In my examination of this memorial, I wanted to explore the idea that Constance has come to symbolize all young womanhood and youth as the title of the monument suggests. Her tragic story appeals to any child or parent, and her statue speaks intuitively on a level beyond its simple inscription (a phrase from one of Constance’s poems), “The wind roars by I feel it blow, and know that I am free to go.” I wanted to reflect the process of personalization and superposition of self that often occurs during individual and community interactions with a monument. In doing so, I used the titles of Constance’s poems (indicated with italics) to prompt my own reflections on the monument, young womanhood, and the spirit of youth. Additionally, I superimposed layers of self imagery and the outline of womanhood onto a photo of Constance Witherby’s statue. I synthesized these different elements into a small pamphlet, a collection of my own musings as a parallel to Constance’s Sunshine & Stardust.

Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology