William Tyler
The Rise of “the New Woman”
William Tyler - The Rise of the New Woman
- Hello everyone and welcome and I’ve just been reminded by Rita that today is Canada Day. So may I say a happy Canada Day to all the Canadians that are listening. And to my professor friend in Toronto, I shall be replying to your email. I haven’t, I’m afraid, have time yet to read what you sent to me, but I will read it and I will reply. And that goes to anyone else that’s emailed me. I will reply. I’ve been a bit under the weather. I’m okay now, but I’ve been a bit under the weather the last few days, so I left my emails rather unopened. Now my talk today is headed the New Woman. The first note that went out to you talked about a different subject about health, which I’m coming to in a fortnight’s time, but the talk today is the New Woman. Now, before anyone suggests that I am an elderly male historian and the phrase New Woman is a spin on Victorian women by me, let me explain where the phrase the New Woman actually comes from. We’ve talked previously about the Victorian Age as an age of great change. And in the case of women’s role in society, it’s exactly the same. Huge changes occurred in the role of women in society. Now, it doesn’t matter which country you are listening to this talk from because it applies equally, shall we say, to Australia, Canada, and America as it does to Britain. We are, in a sense, those four countries and I’ve got folks from other countries as well, but those four countries follow the same route, the same pathway as regards women’s rights and women’s equality. At times one of those four countries may exceed the other. For example, women got to vote in New Zealand before anywhere else, but we’re talking about slow progress over the 19th century and we are marching a sort of in step.
David Cannadine in the book that I put on my, I think my first book list, the “Victoria Century,” I do recommend David Cannadine as a historian. He’s very erudite. He researches extraordinarily well, but he writes very clearly. And this is what he wrote that I thought I would share with you. “There was a growing discussion in a late Victorian England over the concept of the New Woman. The phrase was first coined by an Anglo-Irish writer who went under the pen name Sarah Grand. Her real name was Frances Clarke. She wrote in 1895 to describe and celebrate those of her sex who sought to exercise economic, social, or personal control of their own lives, independent of men, and who protested against the fate of many women trapped in loveless and unequal marriages.” She coined the phrase that we’re using, the New Woman, 1895. Now, if you say, “Well, come on William, that can’t be true because women don’t get the vote until 1918 later in the States. Surely you can’t say that this is the New Woman.” Well remember that she herself, Sarah Grand, was writing in 1895. That’s as she saw it. She doesn’t have the advantage that we have of looking at the changing role of women during the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. She could only see it in the changes from the beginning to the end of the 19th century. And for her, the changes were important. They were important because women like her believed that there was no going back. They believed like all Victorians on the whole concept of progress, society was progressing year by year, day by day, decade by decade, however you want to describe it. They really truly believed in progress, something that today we are more sceptical about. But then they were confident.
So they were confident that having made changes during the reign of Queen Victoria in Britain and the same dates across the States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and so on, they felt that there was no going back, and they were right. Of course they were right. The 20th century proved that they were right. But it is a slow progress. Some of the ladies or women or choose which ever word you want to use, listening to me will say, “Well, it was jolly slow.” In the 20th century, yes it was. That’s absolutely true. Major changes in cultural societies take time. That’s inevitable, I think, whether it’s women’s rights, the rights of Black people, the rights of disabled people, the rights of deaf people, all sorts of things take time. Now, in the Victorian Age, many upper and middle class women were still seen by male Victorian society and indeed by many of the Victorian women in those two classes, the upper and middle classes, as angels in the home. That is fulfilling the right, the role of wife and mother. Nothing else was expected of them. Well, except managing servants if you like, and the running of the home. The running of the home, the role of wife and the role of children, mother, there was nothing else that they should be interested in. This was a society in which the Victorian pater familias, the phrase at the time, the father of the family, was definitely male. The whole concept of single parenthood would’ve been totally alien to Victorians. Now this phrase, angels in the home, originated as the title of a poem. The title of the poem was “Angels in the House.” I prefer to use the phrase angels in the home. It’s the same thing. “Angels in the House” was coined by a British poet, not a particularly good poet, called Coventry Patmore.
And he wrote a poem extolling the role of women as wives and as mothers and as the person that looked after the home, homemakers. It was published, the poem, between 1854 and 1862. It was in various parts as it came out. It gained popularity, interestingly not in Britain first, but in the States. And having gained popularity in the States, it, as it were, returned to Britain popular. Remember that links globally are not just modern. In the 19th century, they were there instinctively between the English, what Churchill would’ve called the English speaking peoples, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and America. I’m not including South Africa for obvious reasons ‘cause the story is different in South Africa. But in those four countries, the story is the same. And the fact that Coventry Patmore’s poem took off in the States is an example of poetry, in this case, books in general, being published both in Britain and the states, or if you like, in the States and in Britain. Think of Fenimore Cooper, books in America being printed in Britain. There is an interchange of ideas. Think of Dickens, tours of America pushing his books. It was a sales tour. Today the equivalent would be, I suppose, pop singers moving between two countries. This poem was really an important one. Well, a quotation from Coventry Patmore says this. “The woman is the man’s glory and she naturally delights in the praises which are assurances that she is fulfilling her function. And she gives herself to him who succeeds in convincing her that she of all others is best able to discharge it for him.
A woman without this is a monster.” Monster. That’s an extreme view of the role and place of women in Victorian society. He later said, “A woman is a foreign land.” We would find such views today totally unacceptable. And it shows what distance we have travelled in 170 years in all our societies. So that that strikes us today as not only nonsense, but objectionable nonsense. In the 20th century, this view was of course challenged and it was challenged by the writer Virginia Woolf who made fun of it, and she wrote this. “The perfect wife was intensely sympathetic. She was immensely charming. She was utterly unselfish. She excelled in the difficult arts of family life. She sacrificed daily. If there was a chicken, she took the leg. If there was a draught, she sat in it. Above all, she was pure.” Well, it’s well recorded that in working class Victorian Britain, when food was short, and that applies of course across English-speaking world. When food was short, it was the mother and the wife who went hungry. She fed the children and the husband first. Well, she fed the husband first. The reason being that their whole existence depended upon the husband being fit enough to work. Then she fed the children and lastly she fed herself. Again, we find all of this very distressing, but that is the reality of Victorian Age. So against this concept of the New Woman, we have to place how many women accepted this role. And there were others who had, that is to say working class women, had no choice about the matter but to accept it. But things were indeed changing because alongside this concept of the New Woman, a new word entered the English language. It entered the language from French, interestingly enough, and the word is feminism. It was first recorded in France and in the Netherlands in 1872. It’s recorded in Britain in the 1890s, and it’s recorded in the States in 1910. The Oxford English Dictionary says it was first specifically used in 1895.
That’s the same year as the phrase New Woman. New Woman and feminism came in the same year in Britain, 1895. In addition to those men and even women who bought into the angel in the home narrative, which is labelled by social historians as the argument or the notion of the separate spheres, it was that notion of the separate spheres that was challenged by the concept of the New Woman and by the concept of feminism. You may find in reading about this period, the phrase separate spheres. It’s pretty obvious what it means. The man, the husband operated in one sphere of life, the woman or wife operated in another. David Cannadine writes this, and it’s a simple way for me to be able to express it. “The man went out into the worldly public domain of politics, government, business, the professions or labouring work, while the woman remained at home, bearing and bringing up the children, overseeing the domestic arrangements, and creating a warm and nurturing environment.” Yes, for middle class and upper class women, but not for working class women. There was a vast underclass in the Victorian Age of working class women. By the 1850s and 1860s in the mid-century, it’s been estimated that a third of the workforce in Britain was female. And of these, the largest number were working class women. There were some professional women by the 1850s and 1860s. But in the main, the huge majority of that third of the workforce, which was female, were working class women. Working class women on the land and working class women in the cities. On the land, the women worked the land alongside the men. In the cities of the north in particular and in London, they worked in factories, in the textile mills of Lancashire and Yorkshire in the north and in things like matchstick factories in London. The matchstick factories in London is important because that was the first major female strike, the matchgirls’ strike.
They also worked as domestic servants. The Victorian Age is the age of domestic servants. Even the lower middle class shopkeeper would have a girl living in as a domestic servant. I lived with my parents in my grandparents’ house, which was a terrace house, two-floor terrace house. When they moved into it before the First World War, it was a very select area. It’s anything but today, but then it was a select area. And it always puzzled me that in the bathroom, for example, there was a bell. I always wanted to push it as a child. But you pushed it, nothing happened. Well, nothing happened because it’d been disconnected. But when they first moved into the house, they had a young girl as a domestic servant living in that house in one room and the bells where you could call them at any time of the day or night. It seems incredible to us. We’re not talking about grand houses. We’re not talking about aristocracy. We’re talking about the middle class. So we have these divisions in Victorian society between male and female. The man is still the pater familias, and between class, working class and middle class women. It was the middle class women, rather than the upper class, rather than the working class, it’s the middle class women that helped this breakthrough of the New Woman and feminism in the 1890s. It’s this golden thread of change and progress that makes us follow in the Victorian Age the story of middle class women, the proponents of the new women, for they are the ones that start the revolution. Okay, there are some 18th century examples, but it’s really in the 19th century where they start the revolution in the status of women. One glaring exception to that, I will come to later. This revolution was a top-down revolution, not a bottom-up revolution. It was the middle class women who were concerned about working class women in the end and their ideas filtered down to the working class.
So you could say that this was not revolution but evolution. And if you were writing me a university essay, I might ask you to talk about it in terms of revolution or evolution. What was it? Well, I think it was evolution that because it was top-down and not bottom-up. So let me now turn to the actual changes that occurred in the Victorian Age. But before we do so, let’s acknowledge one enormous irony. The irony is the queen herself. Victoria is the head of state. A woman at the head of state. Albert was very put out when he first married her to find that he was well, you remember, she proposed marriage to him. Victoria is the exception to the role of women in the 19th century. And did she make a difference? No, she did not. When they were introducing legislation on homosexuality, they were going to, and the queen had to sign it, no one was prepared. None of the men were prepared to explain to Victoria what lesbianism was. She had no idea and no one would explain, so lesbianism was missed out of the legislation. This is Queen Victoria herself speaking. “I am most anxious,” she wrote, “to enlist everyone who can speak or right to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of women’s rights with all its attendant horrors on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety. Feminists ought to get a good whipping.” Wow. And this is a woman at the head of society. It’s interesting, isn’t it? You can take politicians, and not just female politicians. You can take all sorts of different politicians and say, when in power, did they ever do anything about people that came from the same background? If they were a black politician, if they were a Muslim politician, if they were a Hindu politician, if they were working class politician, or do they accept or wish for to be incorporated into a wider middle class of society? That’s a question you must answer for yourselves.
But Queen Victoria’s statement here is absolutely, I think, incredible. “I’m most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of women’s rights with all its attendant horrors on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feelings and propriety.” Propriety was something the Victorian took very seriously. “Feminists ought to get a good whipping.” Now, one of the major changes in society, and again, it’s across all of the societies I’ve talked about, but we’re talking about Britain, first of all is the Matrimonial Causes Act, C-A-U-S-E-S, Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857. This required a husband to prove his wife’s adultery if he wanted a divorce. He couldn’t say, “I’m just going to divorce you.” In the past, you could actually do so at a market. You could say, “I divorce this woman,” and it was a legal thing to do. But now, the 1857 act says a man must prove his wife’s adultery. A wife had to prove her husband’s adultery if she wanted a divorce. But there’s different conditions for the wife and the husband. All the husband has to do is to prove his wife’s adultery. That, of course, is quite easy to do. You’ve got money. You can pay a man to say it. A wife had to prove her husband’s adultery, and in addition also, that he’d either treated her with cruelty, and that’s not easy to prove in Victorian Britain, or that he deserted her, or had committed incest or bigamy. There were a number of cases of bigamy, I must admit, in Victorian legal cases. But in other words, there’s a quite different set of criteria for women than for men. Again, it’s this division in society between men and women. Society is male-oriented. It’s men who make the legislation after all. There are no women in parliament, and women can’t vote for members of parliament either, not until 1918.
And then that’s followed in 1870 and again in 1882 by two married women’s property acts. Now, these were important. This allowed any money which a woman earned to be treated as her own property and not her husband’s. In other words, women could have their own bank accounts, if you like, and the husband couldn’t touch them. In 1882, it was over all women’s property. So property inherited, property they brought into the marriage, all their property. So if I have a daughter and she’s my only child, and I leave my house to my daughter who’s married, from 1882, that is her property. Prior to 1882, it’s her husband’s property. This was a major step forward. I’m interested as a historian that this attack on women’s property rights was an attack made right back in 1066 when the Normans arrived. In Anglo-Saxon times, women could own their own property, married women. The Normans had none of it. I told you, it’s the French who are to blame. Don’t blame the union. The Saxons allowed women to have property. The Normans did not. It went to the husband, a much more male-oriented society than that of Saxon England. Of course, women got rounded. I’m from the city of Bristol and the merchant ventures in Bristol were a very powerful group. And sometimes a man, a merchant venturer died and he had no sons and his daughter inherited the business. Now, she wasn’t allowed to become a member of the guild, so she sent her foreman instead. And as for her personal life, well, there were many accounts of, as it were, the milkman who stayed overnight. But as long as she didn’t marry, her property remained with her. If she married the foreman, it’s gone. If she married the milkman, it’s gone. So they remained widows and they kept the money.
All of this changes with the acts in 1870s and the 1880s. And those are really important pieces of legislation. There’s an interesting act in 1864 called the Contagious Diseases Act. And this caused much consternation by those, can I use the word feminists? I think I will. Because this act was very much against women and pro men. I’m using Simon Heffer’s book, “High Minds,” which I’ve mentioned before. “The 1864 Contagious Diseases Act was a prime example of the sort of law that could be passed when no woman had an input into politics. It was put on the statute book without debate in either house of the Parliament.” No debate. “It followed an investigation by a civil service committee in 1862 into the high incidence of venereal disease in the armed forces. It empowered the police in 11 garrison towns and dockyard towns in England to apply to a magistrate to have medically examined any woman suspected of being a prostitute and carrying venereal disease. If a woman were found to have the disease, she could be detained,” imprisoned, “for up to three months. The 1864 Act was of limited duration and was replaced by a new one in 1866.” And again, only a cursory debate in the House of Commons. “This act enabled women to be medically examined over a period of 12 months, and now to be detained for up to six months in prison. In 1868, there were attempts to extend the acts and more garrison towns were added.” There’s a movement, a campaign by women which is anti this legislation. And as Heffer goes on, “The debate raised for years and caused a new bill to be introduced by Gladstone in February 1872 aimed not just at containing contagious diseases, but also at protecting women. The bill would apply to the whole country and not just garrison and dockyard towns. And it said that a woman could be arrested for prostitution, and if found after her conviction to be diseased, could be detained for up to nine months.”
The bill was never enacted because the women’s campaign had succeeded in turning male public opinion. And indeed, by 1886, the government is forced to repeal all of that legislation. So that is important. Why? Because it says, first of all, how male dominating legislation was, but secondly, how legislation could be affected from outside Parliament by women who could not be members of Parliament or who could not elect members of Parliament, but could nevertheless be affected, as indeed they had been in terms of anti-slavery movement and as they were to be in the female suffrage movement. So it’s not true, that popular misconception that Victorian women had no political voice or vote. They did. But there’s other things that are very important that get forgotten about. In 1870, the first proper Education Act is passed in Britain, which allowed girls as well as boys to attend primary school. But they set it up with school boards. And school boards were elected across various, numerous districts across England. And so these school boards, the members of the boards were elected by ratepayers. And this is a really important move. Why? Well, let me read. First of all, just a piece about the act. “The 1870 Education Act allowed women to vote for the school board if they were ratepayers. Women were also granted the right to be candidates to serve on the school boards. Several feminists saw this as an opportunity to show they were capable of public administration. In 1874 women, Flora Stevenson, Lydia Becker, Emily Davis and the wonderful Elizabeth Garrett were elected to local school boards. Elizabeth Garrett was elected for the Marylebone District in London, and she gained more votes than anybody else in the country.” More votes than any single man. Well, she was already a professional woman. She was a local doctor in Marylebone.
And so the women who could vote would vote for her. And undoubtedly, many women persuaded their husbands to vote for her as well. I remember when I was the adult educator in the filed area of Lancashire long, long time ago now, in the 1970s, there were threats to cut adult education classes in villages. And I had to go and tell people that we were required to close their class. And in one village I went, the women said, “Oh no, we won’t allow the class to be closed.” They marched to the door, the front door of the woman in the village who was a county counsellor. They knocked on the door, she opened it, smiled nice, “Oh yes, what can I do for you, ladies?” To which they replied, “None of us are going to vote in the next local elections for you, and neither will our husbands vote for you.” In the end, she was the only member of her political party to vote against cuts in adult education. Women can have an enormous voice in terms of voluntary movements. In fact, I had another example when I was in Warwickshire, I was called in by a very agitated chief education officer. And this was in Warwickshire, not in Lancashire. In Warwickshire, I was called in by the chief education officer who was in a terrible state and said, “William, what have you been doing around the women’s institutes in the county?” And I said, “I’m sorry. I don’t understand what you’re saying.” “But you’ve been telling them about the cuts in adult education.” I said, “Of course I have, because they’re going to have classes closed.” She said, “Well, I had the chair of the county council on the line, and he says, how can I put this delicately to you? He says his wife has redrawn her private services to him in the bedroom, and she’s encouraging all of the WI Committee in Warwickshire to do the same to their husbands. You’ve got to do something about it.”
I said, “No, I haven’t. You’ve got to do something about it. He’s got to do something about it. You’ve got to cut the cuts on adult,” and we won. We had some of the cuts removed. Women have enormous power and we tend to forget that when it comes to Victorian England. Elizabeth Garrett wrote a letter explaining why she became a candidate for a school board. She wrote, “This morning, I had a deputation from the Workingmen’s Association. I dare say when it has to be done, I can do it. And it’s no use asking for women to be taken into public work and yet to wish them to avoid publicity. Still, I’m very sorry it is necessary, especially as I can’t think of anything to say. The first of these trials is to be next week. It is a tough and toilsome business,” but she did it. And later she became the first woman mayor of a town in Britain, that was after First World War, in Aldeburgh. She was also the first doctor to qualify in England, and you probably know her better as Dr. Elizabeth Garrett, husband’s name, Anderson. Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. What an incredible woman she was. Ms. Flora Stevenson was elected to a school board in Edinburgh and she served for 33 years on the school board, and she wrote this. “In the first school board election, which took place in London in November 1870, Ms. Elizabeth Garrett and Ms. Emily Davies were returned as members. Ms. Garrett was at the head of the poll in her constituency. She polled more than 47,000 votes, the largest number it was said at the time, which had ever been bestowed upon any candidate in any election in England. In Manchester, Ms. Becker was elected as a member of the first school board and was continuously reelected for 20 years until her death in 1890.” They had broken through, but not only on school boards in 1870. Five years later in 1875, women could serve as Poor Law Commissioners. Basically meant that they were on the governing body of workhouses. Gertrude Wilson writing in Leeds wrote this in the 1880s. “Let no one be deceived into imagining being a Poor Law Guardian is a dilettante occupation or a harmless hobby for a few hours of leisure.” That’s how some of the men described.
“Oh my dear, it’s just a bit of fun. You know, you can go and have a cup of tea and a cake and make some deal. Oh, the men make the decisions for you.” “Let anyone who will do it, do it well and let her understand that means doing it be by hard, persistent, thorough work, but work which I at least have found practical, honourable, and rewarding.” In 1894 in the same city of Leeds, the local newspaper reported. “While women Guardians were in favour of severe discipline for able-bodied paupers, they would remove the stigma of pauperism from the innocent children by boarding them out. Workhouse children are not even a piece of string they could call their own. Women Guardians should advocate the employment of paid women inspectors for children and lunatics, and they will be able to look into matters quite beyond the province of men. Women as guardians had special qualifications. They bought practical experience to the world. Many of the guardians were tradesmen,” that’s men, “and tried to promote the interests of a clique while women sat supremely apart and judged the case on its own merits. On a board composed exclusively of men, They had spent an hour discussing the matter of buttons versus hooks-and-eyes, which the dressmaker eventually decided for herself.” In other words, women were seen and demonstrated by their actions that they were more suitable for this work than the men who took it on because they were obliged to take it on or because it gave them some standing in society, but they weren’t really interested. The women took it on because they were deeply concerned. We have the same situation and I’m sure it applies in the other countries that are listening tonight. We have the same sort of situation with boards of anything today, school boards and so on. The men do it. “Look, I’ve represented the commercial sector of this town on this board for years now. I’ve had enough. Listen, would one of the other men please now take over?”
But the women do it with a mission. They’re rather evangelistic. And they certainly were, they certainly were in Victorian England because they were the sort of women that took it on. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson was up to there in work, but she still took more on. Why? Because she knew she had to take it on, ‘cause if she didn’t take it on, who would? Another man. And she gained 47,000 votes under the 1870 act to serve on a school board. There’s no going back now. In 1878, sorry, 1894, a local government act is passed. Sometimes it’s called the Parish Councils Act. And that allowed women to vote and to serve on parish rural district and urban councils, the lowest form of local government in Britain, the parish. And women could serve and vote even if they were unmarried. Shocked horror in Victorian England. But this is Victorian legislation in 1894. You can see that we are very, very slowly moving towards female suffrage. But it takes us a long time before we reach the first woman prime minister. And in the States, you are still waiting for the first woman president. Progress is slow. Some people might say progress is glacially slow, but in the end, progress is progress. As for women in the two political parties in Britain, the conservatives and the liberals, in the 1880s, both formed women’s societies, the Women’s Liberal Federation and the conservative Primrose League. Called Primrose because it was believed falsely that primroses were the favourite flower of Disraeli.
When he was ill and dying, in fact, Victoria sent him primroses and he said, well, I won’t repeat what he said, but basically, “Why in the hell in that woman sending me primroses?” But they established these women’s organisations. And why are women’s organisations important to political parties? Even though the women don’t have a vote, they’re important because they raised funds. Exactly as the women had raised funds for the anti-slavery movement, they raised funds for the political parties in the 1880s by the holding of coffee mornings, tea morning, whatever, jumble sales, they raised cash. That’s why the men tolerated them. Not only in the liberal and conservative parties, but in the emerging socialist party where people like Beatrice Webb and Annie Besant were prominent early socialists. Women’s voices were being heard in political circles even though they were not to have the vote until after the First World War. They don’t get the vote until 1918. But the campaigns for women’s suffrage began much earlier. One of the groups that was very keen on women’s suffrage were Quakers. And they equated slavery. Quakers have been very foremost in Britain in the abolition of the slave trade, the abolition of slavery. And they began to say women are slaves, like Black people in the Caribbean are slaves, we are slaves in our own home. We need the vote.
And so there is a transference, which can be looked at in local history terms in England to see how anti-slavery groups, particularly Quaker, turned into female suffrage groups. One example I have in my mind, 'cause it’s near where I used to live, is Chelmsford in Essex, a big Quaker area, and Quakers there moved from anti-slavery, the women from anti-slavery to women’s suffrage. They also, interestingly, from an American point of view, invited a Black ex-American slaves to come. And Black American ex-slave women came in latter part of the 19th century and gave talks. And that’s how the whole thing takes off and links together anti-slavery and women’s rights. They saw it in that way. The first women’s suffrage committee was set up in Manchester in 1867 and was followed by London, Birmingham, and Bristol. And there, women’s organisations were formed to campaign for women’s suffrage. One of the great campaigners was Millicent Fawcett. She was also a founder of Newnham College Cambridge in 1871, but Millicent Fawcett was the sister of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. These two sisters had such an impact in Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Such an impact on women’s rights, such an impact on the culture of Britain that they changed it forever. It is staggering to think how these two sisters had such wide impact on the whole culture of our society. But they did. Before Victoria’s death, in 1897, the same year as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, there was formed the National Union of Women’s Suffrage societies. So all these little societies all over the country came together as the National Union of Women’s Suffrage. And that is what began the campaign that ended, the campaign that ended with women getting the vote.
It’s also true to say that women were campaigning in the Edwardian period as suffragettes causing damage. Now today, we are prosecuting in Britain, and I guess, in the countries you’re listening from, those campaigning violently for saving the environment. And we’re taking them to court and fighting them, imprisoning them. But that’s what we did to suffrage. Historians say, “Hang on a moment, you’ve got to think what you’re doing. Where does the future lie? Does the future lie with the authorities stamping down on environmental protesters or does the future lie with the arguments of the environmental protesters themselves?” No one’s condoning violence. And there is a difference between those committed violence as the suffragettes did against those who are campaigning without violence, the suffrage movement. If you were doing a university essay, you’d have to write an answer to the question, do such campaigns always require violence? Or do such campaigns work quicker with violence than without? Discuss. It’s interesting. It makes me personally pause for thought when I see on our television screens people being arrested. Yes, they are nuisances. Yes, they are blocking roads and all sorts of things. Yes, they’re doing things which I strongly disapprove of, but where does the future lie? Where does the future lie? And I suppose it’s pretty obvious to all of us that the future has to lie with governments taking questions in the environment seriously.
Now, as with other topics I’ve spoken on during this series on the Victorian Age, there’s a lot more I could have said and haven’t said. And some of you will be listening and thinking, “Why didn’t he mention the novelists like George Eliot or Elizabeth Gaskell or the Brontes? Why didn’t you mention those women?” Well, I just have. And certainly their writings influenced middle class women. Remember, literacy isn’t great amongst working class women. It influenced middle class women in the sense that a woman wrote this book and men read these books and there is a changing atmosphere in society. One of the big changes is girl’s and women’s education. I mentioned the 1870 education, but famous schools were established. North London Collegiate School was founded in 1850 by Ms. Buss, and Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1853, where five years later, Ms. Beale became head mistress. And there was a lovely anonymous verse, beautifully written, which I guess was written by some teenage girl in one of these schools, Ms. Buss and Ms. Beale, they weren’t married. And this teen, I like to think of this as a teenage girl. Those of you who got daughters, think of them as teenagers. Would they have written this? “Miss Buss and Miss Beale, cupid’s darts do not feel. How different from us, Miss Buss and Miss Beale.” That’s wonderful. I’ll read it once again. I love this. “Miss Buss and Miss Beale, cupid’s darts do not feel. How different from us, Miss Beal and Miss Buss.” But women’s education was taking place both privately and in the public sector.
I’ve already mentioned the founding of Newnham College Cambridge in 1871, partly founded by Millicent Fawcett, Lady Margaret Hall, LMH, in Oxford followed in 1878, and Somerville College Oxford in 1879. Of course, today, we have men’s colleges accepting women, women’s colleges accepting men. And I have to say for me, when I go back to my college in Oxford, when I was there in the 1960s, it was all male. It comes as a bit of a shock to find all these females in the college from the chaplain to the law, which I read law, to the students you see. And we blew their minds because we had a dinner for my year organised by ourselves. And of course we were all men. And because we were of that age, we wore dinner jackets and black ties. And they couldn’t get their heads around who we were. Nevertheless, that’s all positive change now. And in both Oxford and Cambridge and elsewhere, Oxford had women colleges and women followed degree courses, but could not get a degree until 1920. And unbelievably, women could not get a degree in Cambridge. Although Newnham College Cambridge had been established in 1871, they could not get a degree, take a degree, until 1947. The University of London was the first here to offer degrees to women in 1878. And my aunt, my wonderful Edwardian aunt who went to the University of Reading and read science, got her degree because it was a London degree that she got. So she was one of the earliest graduates in science that actually had the piece of paper saying that she had a BSC, a Bachelor of Science.
Women also entered professions. Education, Ms. Beale and Ms. Buss, yes, but all those primary schools needed teachers and they had women following the 1870 Education Act. It’s not only male and female. It’s class as well. And there’s some of you will have read. If you haven’t, you have a wonderful treat in store. Flora Thompson’s “Lark Rise to Candleford.” It is an absolute must book to read. I’m pleased to say that I was introduced to the book many decades ago by a lady who was very much a feminist. She was an early anaesthetist and she had the privilege of holding the suffrage flag when Mrs. Pankhurst spoke in Birmingham and her mother was on the committee. And I said, “Why, how wonderful. What did Mrs. Pankhurst say?” She said, “I have no idea.” She said, “I was bloody well fed up holding the flag.” But she was wonderful lady, Dr. Field. And Dr. Field introduced me to Flora Thompson’s “Lark Rise to Candleford.” Now in the story, Laura, who is in fact Flora, the new author, Laura in the story is a school teacher and she comes to a village school. And she talks about the dilemma facing the vicar’s wife. And it’s reported like this. The vicar’s wife said, “Now I should like to ask Ms. so-and-so to tea, but do I ask her to kitchen or dining room tea?” The point being, was she of a social class to be allowed to take tea with the vicar and his wife, or was she of a social class that could only take tea with the servants? The matter was resolved for the vicar’s wife because someone told her, you know what gossips are.
Some gossip in the village. “You do realise she’s going out with a gardener.” “What? A gardener?” “Yes, a gardener.” “Oh, well that decides it then.” So she was only invited to kitchen tea because her boyfriend was a gardener. Class rules oh clay. Class trumps professionalism in this case. Many women became educators. Other women went into private households as governesses. And they also were in this in-between world. Were they servants or were they part of the house owners, the family? And that was never really resolved. They were in this in-between world, between the family and the servants. It must have been very difficult for them. There was medicine. I mentioned Dr. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. Yes, there was medicine, but I suppose most of the women in medicine were nurses. And it was Florence Nightingale, certainly not a modern nurse in terms of the understanding of illness. And I’ll talk more about her next week when I look at the Crimean War. But Florence Nightingale was a Victorian icon. And because of that, many women, middle class women were attracted in to the nursing profession. By the 1890s, there were factory inspectors who were women. There were women factory inspectors. Fancy being a entrepreneur with a factory in the 1890s in Victorian Sheffield to be told that a factory inspector was coming. So you have a discuss. “What do we do? Well, we make sure we got plenty of good whiskey around, then we’ll have a cigar.” And then the door opens and a woman comes in. My goodness me. I’d have given something to be there when the first woman inspector went in to the first male-dominated factory. There was an explosion across professions. Not, no, not like today. Of course, not like today, but a definite step. Not just a foot in the door, but a foot in the room beyond the door.
And there was no going back. Now I promised I would mention something about working class voices. Now the women I mentioned in terms of the socialist party, or the socialist movement, I should say, which becomes the Labour Party eventually, were middle class women. But there were working class women within the trade union movement. They were small in number, but they were more than anywhere else in Europe. And their voices were heard. In 1874, a lady called Emma Patterson founded an organisation called the Women’s Protective and Provident League, later changed the Women’s Trade Union League, which was to promote trade unionism amongst women. In 1875, Emma Patterson became the first woman to be a delegate to the Trade Union Council, the umbrella organisation. In 1876, there were just over 10,000 women registered with trade unions. Within 20 years, that figure of 10,000 had increased tenfold to 100,000 women trade unionists. So don’t tell me that women had no political voice. It isn’t true. In 1888, 1888, the first motion is presented to the Trade Union Congress on equal pay for equal work. Things are on the move. I’m sure now you’ve got the message that I’ve been pumping out for the last hour. Now you might say, “Oh gosh, William, that’s been so sort of, I was going to say, and not so much academic, but it’s been so sort of proper what you’ve said. And surely most women were not affected by these things.” Yeah, I suppose that’s true. When did the breakthrough come for all middle class women perhaps? And it comes through fashion. It’s very interesting how fashion, and there are fashion historians who write today and will tell you about that, how fashion influences history.
Think about the 1960s, for example, the Teddy Boys, miniskirts and all the rest of it. Fashion affects society. And the big thing in late Victorian England were, excuse me, bloomers, bloomers. Here’s the definition. “Bloomers are a bifurcated garment that were worn under dresses. They soon became a symbol of women’s rights because early activist, Amelia Bloomer, wore drawers,” drawers, “long enough to stick out from under her dress.” Another description is from a encyclopaedia of clothing and fashion. It reads, it’s a quotation from the time, from the 19th century. “Our skirts have been robbed of about a foot of their former length, and a pair of loose trousers of the same material as the dress substituted. These latter extend from the waist to the ankle and may be gathered into a band. We make our dress the same as usual, except that we wear no bodice, or a very slight one. The waist is loose and easy and without whalebones. Our skirt is full and falls a little below the knee.” Bloomers are in two parts. Why did it take off? This is from a museum in Paris, the Musee de la Mode de la Ville and it’s writing of winning cyclists wearing bloomers in 1895. In the 1890s, cycling took off. It was a huge thing, cycling clubs, and women went. Many a future marriage was undertaken. Maybe a puncture. Maybe a puncture deliberately made. “Oh, could you possibly help in my tyre?”
Most certainly. And then, yeah, you know the rest. This is what the Musee de la Mode de la Ville de Paris writes on 1895 cycling bloomers. “Cycling was all the rage among the French classes in the 1880s and especially in the 1890s. For the bourgeoisie,” middle class, “this new leisure activity required appropriate dress, which had to be invented. Since there was no tradition to abide by, people opted above all for comfort and practicality with an emphasis on durability, as in this case, or on the softness of fabrics like jersey.” And do we thank the French for bloomers? No, we thank the Americans for bloomers. But it changes attitudes. I remember when I first was married, my mother-in-law absolutely speaking out viciously, and this is the 1970s against women wearing trousers. She lands up wearing trousers. My mother never wore trousers. I don’t think there are many women today who’ve never worn trousers. Now, I didn’t quite know how to finish, but I finish like this. This is a quotation from a contemporary American non-fiction writer called Mallory O'Meara, and she wrote a book called “Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol.” Forget all of that. She’s writing about 1837, the year that Victoria came to the throne. That’s why she’s chosen to write 1837. And Mallory read. “So it was better for everyone involved if women stayed at home, maybe even closed inside a stockings drawer or hat box just in case.” In other words, know your place.
In other words, this twofold society of men and women. In other words, the angel in the home. I would comment and finish with my comment. “By 1901, then Victoria died. Women were certainly out of the stocking drawer and out of the hot, hot hat box and were marching towards equality and freedom, literally marching in the case of the suffragettes in Britain who were founded just two years after Victoria died.” She died in 1901. The suffragette movement, the suffragettes, in other words, violent action began in 1903. I hope that that was both informative and enjoyable. I now risk my life and limb with comments from women around the world saying that you’ve got it completely wrong. So shall I look at questions? I’m dreading this. Oh, hang on. Why’s that done that? Hell. Oh, I’m sorry, I only went on what I was asked.
Q&A and Comments:
There’s all sorts of questions about when was Canada Day. I’m not getting involved in that.
Carrie says, “You may have said this already. I missed the start. Apologies. But when you talk of angels in the home and looking after the servants, you’re talking about middle and upper class Victorian women,” exactly, “So many working class women always had to work, hence why they’re called working class.” Absolutely right, Carrie. And I hope later on in the talk, you’ve got that.
“William, I do think a poor woman today would still feed her husband first, then the children. No take left of herself. There’s logic in that behaviour still.” Naomi, you make an interesting point there. The most well-known German saying is , fully covering the role of women.“
Sacena, absolutely. Still arguing about independence. I’m not getting involved.
Q: "How do you equate the role of Victoria in comparison to her reigning over a society? Did she rule over a kingdom or a queendom?”
A: No, we’re never a queendom, David. It’s always a kingdom. A kingdom with a queen, but not a reigning queen, but a sovereign queen, never a queendom. But she wasn’t very bright, to be honest, David. And she never took on board the role of, the position of other women in society. It was not something that crossed her mind.
Rose, “Sadly, the bell concept was alive and well in the early ‘70s in South Africa. I remember it too well.”
Elliot, “When a man marries a woman, he believes she will never change. When a woman marries a man, she believes she can change him. They inevitably each will be disappointed. George Bernard Shaw.” I told you this is difficult waters for a tutor. I merely leave George Bernard Shaw to speak for himself.
Q: David, “You answer my previous question away. Another comment. My father had a news item that Victoria gave 20 pounds to the Irish famine and 20 pounds to the fancy dog show. I think that reflects her attitude in general to the majority of her subjects. What is your opinion?”
A: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think that’s as you put it. I’m missing all of that. “What was the qualification to be a ratepayer?” It depends upon the value of your property.
Peter. “Seems that the women who were actually learned back would draw their favours from the Greek 'Lysistrata.’” Yes, they did. It was an extraordinary thing that happened to be honest.
Val says, oh. Well, that, thank you, Val. That’s a nice comment.
Monty. “In ‘The Observer’ newspaper yesterday, Neal Ascherson has a review of a book by David Blackbourn called ‘Germany in the World: A Global History, 1500 to 2000.’ Ascherson also quoted from a book by Christopher Clark called ‘Sleepwalkers.’” That book I know. I haven’t caught up with David Blackbourn’s Germany book. He is a great historian in Germany. So I’m pleased to be told about that new book. I have read ‘Sleepwalker.’ “It’ll be interesting to hear your opinion about these books unless you have done so in previous lectures.” No, I don’t know David Blackbourn’s “Germany in the World,” I’m afraid. Christopher Clark’s book “Sleepwalkers” is excellent.
Yes, Michael, you are right. “We are not clamping down on campaigners for climate change for their beliefs, but by the way they are protesting often badly affecting lives of other people.” That’s absolutely true. But that’s the difference between suffrage and suffragettes. Those who were suffragists did not turn to violence and suffragettes did. The interesting question is, did women’s suffrage come quicker because of the suffragettes? I think the answer is, in terms of women’s suffrage, no, it didn’t. It came because for two reasons. One, yes, because of suffragettes whom Asquith’s government, radical though it was, had forced feeding of women. And it’s a famous occasion when George V, not a person that would’ve intervened and a person you would’ve thought was the very epitome of male pater familias, George V said to Asquith, “Why are you treating these women like this? It’s not right and it must stop.” And Asquith said, “Forgive me, but I believe there’s only one of us who’s elected in this room. And it isn’t you, sir. It’s me.” Now, whether that actually took place, I don’t know, but it shows that there was terrible opposition to the way that Asquith’s government were treating women. That is true. But it’s also true that the suffragists asked their members to support the war in 1914. Maybe at the end of the war, it was impossible not to give women the vote, as in 1944, it was impossible for de Gaulle not to give French women the vote. Yeah, yeah. So, I don’t know. We’ll have to see if we can do a course about protest or a discussion about protest.
Protest is, yeah, it’s tricky is protest. In the end, I always fall back on the belief that justice trumps the law. Sorry I had to use the word trumps, but justice trumps the law. And you merely think of Nazi Germany to underline that.
Stuart says, “In the US, full national women’s suffrage granted by constitution in 1920, but women could vote in several states before that. Jeannette Rankin of Montana became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives 1916. New Jersey had allowed women property owners, same as ratepayers, to vote in the 1790s.” Yes, they were exactly. And that’s what I was saying, Stuart, the path that if we take America, the path that the United States and Britain on was the same. There are significant, sorry, is the same path, but it not necessarily at the same speed or in the same way. But your point is extremely well-made and fits with what I was trying to say.
Arlene says, “In the late ‘50s in Montreal, my mother could not have her child admitted to hospital. Only a husband had that right. In 1971, Eaton’s department store would not issue me with a store card under my first name. 'How will your husband be able to shop here?’ she asked. He can apply for his own card in his own name. I got my card.” Yeah, I think lots of women of a, dare I say, lots of women of a certain age will also have suffered in exactly the same way across all the countries.
Izzie. “Elizabeth Heyrick organised a women’s boycott of sugar sold in shops as an anti-slavery worker in England.” Yes, that’s absolutely true. They called it blood sugar. And the Quakers, I don’t know whether Elizabeth Heyrick was a Quaker, but the Quakers were at the forefront of blood sugar. It’s why I mentioned the town of city of Chelmsford in Essex in England. It’s why a Quaker there called Marriage. The family is called Marriage, that’s their surname, they were farmers. They grew grain for bread, but they also, by being supporters of anti-slavery, they began to grow sugar beet so that they could offer sugar beet, which was, in their words, blood-free. Unfortunately, they couldn’t compete on price with the sugar from the slave plantations in the Caribbean.
Q: Victoria, “Isn’t your musing aunt was Bachelor of Science? What would you suggest instead?”
A: No, far be it from me, Victoria, to suggest that you are right. There it is again. Irene. Oh, hello, Irene. “I think my old college, University College London, may be the first to admit women in London in the 19th century.” I think you’re right. I think you are right about that.
Margaret. “I adored ‘Lark Rise to Candleford.’ When I went to live abroad in ‘77, I was so homesick that the book took me home on every page.” It is a wonderful book. And if you saw the television series, forget that. The book’s far better.
Ralph. “When I joined the faculty in a surgical subspecialty department in 1976, it was completely male, even down to the trainee fellow selected, of course, chosen by the male faculty. By the time I retired, both staff and trainees were predominantly female and we had a woman chair. Other surgical departments also have woman chairs now. The next president of the institution could well be a woman in the not too distant future.”
Martin answers Victoria’s question about what would my aunt be as a Bachelor of Science. Martin says, “Spinster doesn’t quite hack it.” It certainly doesn’t. Irene says, “I have an LLB, i.e., Bachelor of Laws.” Yes, we haven’t departed from that. That’s interesting, isn’t it?
Q: Shelly, “Didn’t the typewriter allow many women to get out of the house?”
A: Absolutely.
“Then into the office. It was considered socially acceptable.” It was. And it also removed men from clerical work because men were considered to be incompetent on typewriters, hand-fisted perhaps. So the picture of the regency office with a high desk and a man sat on a high stool with a quill pen is replaced by a woman on a low desk with a typewriter. And that’s absolute, typewriters are very important To get women out the house. So were shops. Department stores in particular were considered proper places for women to go. Helped in Britain by all female carriages on railway lines, so that women were safe.
Jackie. “In the '70s, I bought my first flat and I had to get a mortgage. Camden Council in London would only give me a mortgage if I had a previous mortgage application refused. This was easy. The Halifax at the time would not grant a mortgage to a single woman, so that’s how I obtained my mortgage from Camden Council and could buy my flat. Can you imagine that nowadays?” No.
Irene again. “Even when women achieved equal pay for equal work, that wasn’t helpful because women didn’t get the equal work jobs. My friends and I in the '60s pushed through the other better equal pay for work of equal value.” Absolutely right.
Michelle. “Women may hold more roles of power now, but they’re still not treated the same way that men are.” Jerry, I agree. That’s absolutely correct. Of course. “My great grandmother,” says Sandy, “born 1857, told me she was considered very fast because she shortened her skirts so that they did not sweep with ground.” Don’t you love that old fashioned word, very fast.
Margaret. “I was a student at the Royal Academy of Music, '60 to '63. We women were not allowed,” capital letters, “to wear trousers. One day I was waiting in the hall, not in that day to study. I was sharply told off by the lady superintendent for wearing a trouser suit.”
Oh, Estelle, what a wonderful comment. Estelle writes, “Women won’t be really equal until there are some incompetent women on boards of top companies.” Well, I don’t know as though whether you are British or not, but we might point to Lady Mone as an example of someone we wouldn’t want on a board. That’s for the Brits listening.
Oh, that’s, Hazel, I do appreciate your comment because a man talking about women’s matters in the 21st century is not easy. On the other hand, women talk about men and I can’t see any reason why men can’t talk about women. But I wouldn’t have tried this, by the way, if my audience had been in their 30s and 40s. It would’ve been too risky to do that as a man because you’re older and wiser.
Q: “How did Queen Victoria react to the changes by the end for her reign?” says Judith.
A: By ignoring them. Oh, that’s, a number of people seem, and women seem to be saying to me, thanks very much. Well, that’s really… With the employment of lower class women in the war, the number of maiding decreased. Women’s dress became more easy for women to dress and undress herself since there wasn’t a maid at her call night and day.“ 10 out of 10, Esther. Absolutely spot on.
Q: "Names of the two sisters, please.”
A: Millicent Fawcett and Elizabeth Garrett Anderson. You can Google them. Millicent Fawcett, F-A-W-C-E-T-T. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson.
Thank you ever so much everyone. I’ll see you next Monday for the penultimate talk. Next Monday is the Crimean War. See you then.