The Churchill statue is vigorous; he’s striding forward with purpose and wearing a generic coat which would have been normal attire anytime in the last 400 years. So not definec by his clothes.
And Darwin has his tackle modestly covered, while being allowed the dignity of an ageing human body. And nudity, for Darwin, nods to those pictures we’ve all seen, of the progression of human bodies in evolution. There is a point there.
But poor Mary. Apart from anything else, desirable 18th century bodies for women are not the toned and perky ones of 2020 Instagram, so she’s been displaced from her own history.
She emerges, tiny, passively, from a blob, gazing vacantly around with her bits on show. Her breasts are almost bigger than her head. No books or pen or article of clothing to suggest an individual who shook up the world.
When you think about it; it’s a pretty good representation of how the world thinks about women. So the sculpture tells us nothing about Mary Wollstonecroft, but captures the zeitgeist of attitudes toward women in 2020 with fair accuracy.