'Special strengths for their own special duties': Women, higher education and gender conservatism in late Victorian Britain

History of Education

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 387-405

  Bush, Julia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 28044470278     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600500129583     Document Type: Review

References (102)

1. Lucy Cavendish to Mary Gladstone, 27 November 1888. BL Add MSS 46325. British Library. I owe this reference to Sheila Fletcher.
2. Ibid
3. Nineteenth Century Journal, June 1889, 25, 781-8.
4. Fortnightly Review, July 1889, 46, 123-39.
5. Ibid. Fortnightly Review, 46, 123-39.
6. B. Stephen, Emily Davies and Girton College (London: Constable, 1927), 348.
7. For example, in its front-page profiles of the most important figures in the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League during 1910. The Oxford links of Mary Ward and Ethel Harrison were emphasized, and the Duchess of Montrose portrayed in her doctoral robes, as an honorary LLD of Glasgow university.
8. M. Fawcett, Women's Suffrage. A Short History of a Great Movement (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1912), 22 and 45.
9. R. Strachey, The Cause: A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain (London: Virago, 1928; 1978 edn), Chapter XIII.
10. V. Woolf, A Room of One's Own (London: Hogarth Press, 1929).
11. V. Brittain, The Women at Oxford. A Fragment of History (London: George Harrap & Co, 1960), 130.
12. O. Banks, Faces of Feminism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981; 1986 edn).
13. S. Holton, Feminism and Democracy. Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain 1900-1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 28.
14. B. Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
15. J. Lewis, Women and Social Action in Victorian and Edwardian England (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991).
16. Sarah Delamont, in The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, edited by S. Delamont and L. Duffin (London: Croom Helm, 1978), 140 and 154.
17. Sarah Delamont, The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, Ibid., 184.
18. J. Burstyn, Victorian Education and the Ideal of Womanhood (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1984).
19. F. Hunt, ed., Lessons for Life. The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850-1950 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987).
20. J. Pedersen, The Reform of Girls' Secondary and Higher Education in Victorian England: A Study of Elites and Educational Change (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987).
21. C. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 172.
22. C. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up in Late Victorian and Edwardian England. Ibid., 172.
23. C. Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870-1939 (London: UCL Press, 1995), Introduction.
24. L. Abrams, The Making of Modern Woman: Europe 1789-1918 (London: Longman, 2002), Chapter 10.
25. S. Kingsley Kent, Gender and Power in Britain, 1640-1990 (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), 197.
26. J. Howarth, Chapter 10, '"In Oxford but...not of Oxford": the Women's Colleges', in The History of the University of Oxford, Vol. VII: Nineteenth Century Oxford. Part 2, edited by M. Brock and M. Curthoys (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 300.
27. See also J. Howarth, Chapter 13, 'Women', in History of the University of Oxford. Volume VIII. The Twentieth Century, edited by B. Harrison (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
28. S. Leonardi, Dangerous by Degrees: Women at Oxford and the Somerville College Novelists (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989).
29. P. Adams (1996) Somerville for Women. An Oxford Women's College 1879-1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
30. Quoted by Janet Howarth and Pauline Adams, from Annie Rogers's history of women's education at Oxford, Degrees by Degrees (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938).
31. J. Howarth, History of the University, VII, 240.
32. Concluding quotation by J. Howarth, History of the University, VII, 307, from Annie Rogers: Bodl. G.A. Oxon c.34/3 fo 129: Rogers to Madan, 6 September. 1923.
33. J. Howarth, History of the University, VII, 301.
34. See Annual Report of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League, Oxford Branch 1909-10, Bodleian Library, Oxford.
35. L. Delap, 'Feminist and Anti-Feminist Encounters in Edwardian Britain', Historical Research (2005, forthcoming).
36. The present article has benefited from discussion of related themes at a symposium organized by Lucy Delap at King's College, Cambridge, May 2003, titled 'Victorian and Edwardian Feminism, Antifeminism and the Periodical Press'. Other contributors included Ann Heilmann, Maria di Cenzo, Sarah Tasker, Valerie Sanders, Deborah Thorn, Ben Griffin and Tom Villis. I am grateful to Lucy Delap for her comments on this article.
37. See also V Sanders, Eve's Renegades: Victorian Anti-Feminist Women Novelists (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996)
38. ; J. Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power (London: Leicester University Press, 2000) and
39. 'British women's anti-suffragism and the Forward Policy, 1908-1914', Women's History Review, 11/3 (2002), 431-54.
40. See M. Brock and M. Curthoys, History of the University;
41. also the enthusiastic summary of 'the opportuneness of the moment' by Elizabeth Wordsworth in Lady Margaret Hall. A Short History issued on behalf of the LMH Appeal Fund, edited by G. Bailey (London: Oxford University Press, 1923), Chapter 1.
42. Mary Ward, Speech at Dublin (February 1905) to the AGM of the Irish Central Bureau for the Employment of Women. Mary Ward papers, Pusey House, Oxford.
43. M. Ward, A Writers Recollections (London: W. Collins Sons, 1918), 96.
44. M. Ward, A Writers Recollections, Ibid., 102.
45. M. Ward, A Writers Recollections, Ibid., 152.
46. L. Creighton, Memoir of a Victorian Woman. Reflections of Louise Creighton 1850-1936, edited by J. Covert (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 48.
47. L. Creighton, Memoir of a Victorian Woman. Reflections of Louise Creighton 1850-1936, Ibid., 56.
48. Georgiana Max Muller chaired the WNASL Oxford branch in 1908-09.
49. These fundamental characteristics of feminism are singled out by B. Caine, Victorian Feminists, 6
50. and English Feminism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 1
51. and also by O. Banks, Faces of Feminism, 3.
52. Other writers have tried to stretch their definitions to include the more conservative feminists, rather than acknowledging the limited usefulness of this category, for example C. Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, 142
53. and P. Levine, Feminist Lives in Victorian England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), Chapter 1.
54. M. Ward, Delia Blanchflower (London: Ward, Lock, 1915), 165.
55. M. Ward, Recollections, 153.
56. See J. Bush, 'British Women's Anti-Suffragism' (2002). The 'second objective' reflected Mary Ward's life-long loyalty to the social reformism of Balliol scholars T.H. Green and Arnold Toynbee.
57. J. Trevelyan, The Life of Mrs Humphry Ward (London: Constable, 1923), 224.
58. M. Ward, A Writer's Recollections, 98.
59. See L. Creighton, Memoir, edited by J. Covert, and J. Covert, A Victorian Marriage: Mandell and Louise Creighton (London: Hambledon & London, 2000).
60. L. Creighton, A Purpose in Life (London: Wells Gardner, Darton, 1901), 12, 9, 11, 17, 19.
61. L. Creighton, The Art of Living (London: Longmans, Green, 1909), 89, 96, 114, 113.
62. See also J. Pedersen, The Reform of Girls' Secondary and Higher Education.
63. See her extensive writings on women's role in the Anglican Church, and also B. Heeney, The Women's Movement in the Church of England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).
64. E. Davies, The Higher Education of Women, edited by J. Howarth (London: Hambledon Press, 1866; 1988 edition), 98.
65. M. Fawcett, Home and Politics (London: Women's Printing Society, 1894), 8.
66. See discussion of Emily Davies's position by Janet Howarth in her introduction to The Higher Education of Women, xlvi and by
67. B. Caine, Victorian Feminists, 97-102.
68. See histories of women's education at Oxford, and Janet Howarth's entry for Bertha Johnson in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Bertha Johnson later became the principal of the Society of Oxford Home Students: 'the first woman with a senior university appointment'
69. Howarth, histories of women's education at Oxford, op. cit.
70. Letter from C.M.K., Anti-Suffrage Review, February 1913.
71. Anti-Suffrage Review, April 1913.
72. V. Brittain, The Women at Oxford, 56.
73. C. Yonge, The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations (London: Macmillan, 1856).
74. C. Yonge, The Clever Woman of the Family (London: Macmillan, 1865).
75. See G. Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer: a Life of Elizabeth Wordsworth (London: Constable, 1978) and
76. C. Yonge, Womankind (London: Mozley & Smith, 1876), which provides the fullest summary of her views on woman's special role in the family and wider society.
77. G. Battiscombe, Reluctant Pioneer, 70.
78. C. Wordsworth, Christian Womanhood and Christian Sovereignty (London: Rivingtons, 1884), 44.
79. G. Battiscombe, 68.
80. Elizabeth Wordsworth to 'Dearest Chris', 7 February 1913. Elizabeth Wordsworth correspondence, Lady Margaret Hall archive, Oxford.
81. Elizabeth Wordsworth, First Principles in Women's Education (Oxford: James Parker, 1894), 4, 5.
82. Elizabeth Wordsworth, First Principles, 7, 10, 9, 11, 17, 13.
83. Elizabeth Wordsworth in E.A. and B.H.S., Impressions of L.H.M.S. (London: printed for private circulation, 1927), 47.
84. In the same piece she commented that they did not meet frequently. This slightly distancing comment possibly reflects a wish to dissociate herself from certain of Lucy Soulsby's educational views by this later date. Elizabeth Wordsworth's correspondence in the 1880s suggests warm regard and friendship. The two women shared holidays, according to her biographer, as well as sharing a commitment to Anglicanism and to social action (for example, both attended Church Congresses and meetings of the National Union of Women Workers, and enjoyed each other's papers).
85. Elizabeth Wordsworth, on this occasion, supported the opening of degrees (but not university prizes) to women. Lucy Soulsby's LMH Council supporters included Bertha Johnson, who took the still more strongly conservative line of supporting a separate university for women.
86. L. Soulsby, Home Rule or Daughters of Today (Oxford, James Parker, 1894);
87. The Woman's Kingdom (London: Longmans Green, 1910)
88. ; A Women's Movement: Address to Old Girls, January 25 1913 (Oxford: James Parker, 1913).
89. L. Soulsby, Home Rule, 6 and 7.
90. E.A., B.H.S. and P.H., The Letters of S.S.S. and L.H.M.S. (Mrs and Miss Soulsby) (London: printed for private circulation, 1929).
91. L. Soulsby, A Woman's Movement, 23, 24 and 30.
92. L. Creighton, Memoir, edited by J. Covert, 56.
93. E. Wordsworth, Essays Old and New (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1919), 81.
94. The visit is described very fully in E. Wordsworth, Glimpses of the Past (London: Mowbray, 1913), 161-5. Ruskin also visited Somerville, and donated books to both colleges, despite having earlier refused to open his own lectures to women (in 1871).
95. J. Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies (London: Dent, 1866; 1970 edn), 49. This essay was also admired by the more conservative feminists, though strongly disliked by early twentieth-century radicals such as Maud Royden (who was educated at LMH).
96. See D. Birch (ed.), Ruskin and Gender (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), Chapter 5, for a detailed analysis by L. Peterson of Anna Jameson's influence on Ruskin. She challenges the view that Ruskin was unsympathetic to progressive women, whilst also noting the ambiguities of his essay.
97. John Ruskin, Ruskin and Gender, ibid., 64 and 76.
98. E.A. and B.H.S., Impressions, 52.
99. Empire Hymn by E. Wordsworth, in the archives of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
100. A. Burton, Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994).
101. Social evolutionist arguments were also sometimes used to support the suffrage cause, illustrating once again the continuum between feminist and anti-feminist thought. For a fuller discussion of the ideas and activism of female imperialist associations, see J. Bush, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power.
102. See J. Sutherland, Mrs Humphry Ward: Eminent Victorian, Pre-Eminent Edwardian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 306.