Recently I was in the Leeds Art Gallery, UK, and inside there was a painting of an extremely strong-looking woman representing Brittania with a drawn sword poised to kill an Indian tiger. In the back you can see a distinctly Indian background. Whilst the racial connotations of the painting seemed obvious to me, the gender implications do not. It's clear even without reading an accompanying blurb that the painting depicts the defeat of the Indian sepoy rebellion/struggle for independence in 1857 as the triumph of an explicitly white, 'civilised' (the woman is wearing classical clothing) and militarily dominant (shining steel sword) Britain over a savage and bestial (tiger) India, with golden domes in the background suggestive of the wealth to be found in the subcontinent. For reference here is a web page about the painting, titled 'retribution' by Edward Armitage https://victorianweb.org/painting/armitage/paintings/5.html
What I found harder to understand is why the representation of Britain was specifically female. A bit of searching on the sub and wikis resulted that there is some link with greco-roman goddesses, what I want to dig deeper into is what the choice of female or female-coded gender representation of a nation state meant culturally, socially and even politically. i.e. Armitage could have painting a similarly muscled apollo-esque male fighting the tiger and all the previous connotations about race etc. would still have been just as clear.
In doing my rather cursory search I also came accross the Niederwald monument, which boasts a statue of Germania, a strong female representation of Germany. Furthermore in France I am aware they have Marianne statues that fulfil a similar role. And of course, the statue of Liberty in New York harbour is that of a woman as well.
I am most interested in Britannia, or any wider studies that compare the roles these figures play but niche answers around the statue of liberty, Niderwald and Mariannes would be very interesting as well I am sure!
My main focus is on France, but I can at least partway answer your question. The prominence of female representations of nationalism could at first glance seem to contradict the deeply entrenched patriarchal view of the nation that 19th century theorists held, but its a lot more internally consistent than you might expect. Firstly, its worth pointing out that images of these figures in combat like Retribution or Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People are somewhat unusual; Britannia, Germania, Italia and Marianne were far more likely to be depicted in a sedate, 'respectable' seated manner. Mosse writes, 'if woman was idealised, she was at the same time firmly put in her place' (Nationalism and Sexuality, ch.5) ; for nationalists, woman represented the nation and the home as something to be fought for by men*,* not as active participants in their own right. Its for this reason that women made perfect symbols, as they stood for something outside of history, representing innocence, chastity and purity more than military strength. Even in more martial depictions, artists tended to prefer to equip Britannia and Germania with medieval weapons rather than guns or cannons. The idealisation of women led directly to their de-emancipation as they were associated with nature, the antithesis of reason and of political society.
This manifested differently depending on time and place. Marianne is the outlier, the one representation of nation with a revolutionary tradition... but even then, this depiction varied depending on the purpose of the artist. Maurice Agulhon has noted that the Marianne eventually adopted as the symbol of the Third Republic was a lot less revolutionary, active, and nude than, for example, Delacroix's depiction (sometimes she's called Liberty, sometimes Marianne, it's not especially important). This reflects the anxiety over popular protest and the fear of female militancy after the Paris Commune in 1871, which was mocked by conservatives through the figure of the petroleuse, a sort of satirical arsonist 'anti-Marianne' (google Bertall's La Barricade to see what I mean). By contrast, Germania and Britannia tend to embody quiet strength and bourgeois respectability...
... which makes Retribution all the more interesting. Especially since the painting also pulls on the heartstrings with the heroic dead white mother underneath Britannia. The only explanation I can come up with is the absence of a heroic male embodiment of the British nation, equivalent to the Jacobin French Hercules or the German Hermann. The closest alternative I can come up with is John Bull, who was more of a jovial, comic figure who would look a bit out of place in such a violent and dark painting.
Recommendations: