Introduction
It began in childhood, when boys and girls became aware that one sex owned and ran the
world and the other was clearly subordinate. Society was organised around the needs of
men, who had assumed exclusive control of law and government and given themselves
every possible advantage over women in the other crucial areas of society: education,
occupation, inheritance, family life and religion. While a boy was raised to be independent
and to take his place in society as a landowner, businessman, army officer, career
professional or statesman, his sister was taught that her only ‘career’ would be that of wife
and mother, whether or not that suited her. Girls’ education was meagre (since teaching
them beyond what they needed for domestic life was deemed pointless) and all universities
were closed to them. While her brothers went to public school, a typical middle or upper-
class girl was taught at home by an unqualified governess from whom she learned literacy,
numeracy and ‘ladylike’ subjects. If lucky she might be sent to a ladies’ seminary or finishing-
school, but even there she was offered nothing academic or vocational. For example,
Frances Power Cobbe attended Miss Poggi’s ‘Exclusive Establishment for Young Ladies’ at
32 Brunswick Square, Hove, for two years (1836–8). The fee, £1,000, could have sent a
boy to Oxford University for three years. Despite this, she found ‘there was no solid
instruction, no real mental training’.
Access to money, above anything else, is what gives a person autonomy and, until the mid-
twentieth century, lack of it obliged dependence upon others, which brought with it
obedience to their wishes. Both methods of acquiring money — inheriting it or earning it —
were set up to severely disadvantage women. Property, businesses and wealth were
passed from father to son; daughters received less or nothing. Noble titles also passed
down the male line, denying women another source of power, influence or status. Nor was it
possible for women to accrue wealth through employment. Until the late nineteenth century,
the only career available to educated women was teaching infants or girls. Whether as
governesses working in private houses, or as teachers in schools or seminaries, their
wages were pitifully low. Some women with capital started a small business, typically
educational,1 but this rarely expanded beyond one establishment. Before 1882 married
women were hindered in business because they could not enter into a business contract,
sign a legal document, or sue a debtor (or anyone else) except with their husbands, giving
the men in effect control of their wives’ business matters.2
Marriage, among other things, usually ended the employment of middle-class women.
Except during the wars, from the 1890s until the 1950s state-owned or quasi-government
organisations did not recruit married women and existing staff were forced to resign if they
wed, regardless of their wishes, needs, rank, usefulness or length of service. This ‘marriage
bar’ applied only to occupations which needed (at least a modicum of) education and had a
career structure — char-ladies were safe!
By arranging inheritance in such a way as to prevent most women from coming into wealth,
and by excluding them from lucrative employment, men gave themselves two paramount
advantages: they kept most of the country’s resources in male hands and forced women
into involuntary dependence upon fathers, brothers and husbands.
Religion was a major influence on the lives of women. Home Bible-readings, compulsory
church attendance and obedience to father, husband, Jesus and an all-seeing, all-powerful
male God to whom one begged for mercy was the norm and those who disobeyed were the
exceptions and were castigated as sinful.
Women’s two roles in law and government were to obey the legislation men made and to
pay the taxes that men levied and spent. The legal system was solely in the hands of male
police, barristers, magistrates and judges and women were not even permitted to serve on
juries.3 Despite being the majority of the population they were excluded from local and
national government and no woman could vote in parliamentary elections. The exclusion of
women from the law-making process rendered them dependent upon men to change the
system. As this required men to surrender their gender privileges, it often took decades of
campaigning to persuade enough MPs to vote for a change in the law.
Marriage and motherhood
Only fifty-nine per cent (and only ten per cent of the senior academics) of the women in
Notable Sussex Women married, compared with over eighty per cent of the female
population in general. Many intellectual women regarded marriage with a cynical rather than
romantic eye, and with good reason, for it was a double-edged sword. A woman would
increase her social status, become mistress of a household and the mother of children, but
in exchange she gave up some of the most fundamental human rights.
Although men vowed ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow’, in fact the very opposite was
true. Until the law changed in 1870 and 1882, everything a woman owned, earned or
inherited was the property of her husband from their wedding day.4 This enormous transfer
of power turned women into paupers dependent upon handouts from their ‘lords and
masters’ and therefore subservient to them. A senior divorce judge even admitted that this
was done in order to trap women within marriage. During the wedding ceremony all brides
promised, within earshot of an ever-watching God they had been indoctrinated to fear, to
obey their husbands. Passive submission to his sexual desires was a wifely duty, and the
frequent childbearing and childrearing this inevitably led to further increased women’s
vulnerability and dependence upon men.5 Children were (until 1925) the sole property of
their father and, in the event of his death, their mother did not even have rights of
guardianship until 1886.7 The law gave fathers exclusive rights to make all decisions
concerning their children’s upbringing, and so the cycle began again when they favoured
sons over daughters for education and inheritance.
No matter how disgruntled a woman might be with marriage in general and hers in particular,
it was in her interests to keep it intact, because if provoked her husband might exercise his
legal rights over her in full measure. Prior to 1870 separation left her destitute: her husband
retained her income and inheritance, both current and future, unless she could get a
divorce, which was expensive and difficult, especially as a husband’s adultery was not
sufficient grounds until 1923.8 Unfaithfulness on her part gave her husband grounds for
divorce, but as an adulteress she would be publicly disgraced (often in the national press)
and might never see her children again. Until 1884 a spouse who left could be sent to
prison for refusing to return;9 until 1891 a husband could abduct his runaway wife, imprison
her in his house and enforce his ‘conjugal rights’10 (marital rape was not illegal until 1991).
11
Staying single
Despite the enormous imbalance in the numbers of the sexes,12 unless they entered holy
orders, society viewed spinsters as objects of pity and ridicule, insultingly labelled them as
‘surplus’ (i.e. to men’s requirements) and devised schemes to deport them. The most
powerful women were wealthy widows and unmarried heiresses; however, in common with all
other single women, to be considered respectable even they could not have a sex life,
cohabit with a man or bear a child out of wedlock.
It was acceptable, however, to set up home with another woman, especially after the First
World War, which killed or maimed millions of men of marriageable age. Although lesbianism
was never illegal13 it was taboo, driving lesbians to secrecy and leaving today’s
researchers to guess which cohabiting women were lovers and which were platonic friends.
It is useful to bear in mind that our culture’s obsession with frequent, lifelong sexual activity
is a relatively recent phenomenon; previously it was normal for unmarried women to remain
celibate throughout their lives, especially as ‘decent’ women were expected to have no
sexual feelings.
The movement for women’s emancipation
From the mid-1700s a number of isolated individuals wrote about men’s poor treatment of
women as a class. Stirrings of more widespread discontent led to an organised movement
that began around the mid-1860s and focused on education, employment and the vote
[294]. From then, with the help of sympathetic male benefactors and MPs, women greatly
improved their position in each of those three areas and by the 1890s there were several
feminist newspapers (one of them edited by notable Sussex woman Florence Fenwick Miller)
that teemed with news of women’s achievements and campaigns. A large number of women
in this book contributed to the changing status of their sex; either directly, by campaigning,
or indirectly, by pioneering their way into male professions. Some of the most famous names
in feminist history lived in Sussex.14
Artists and sportswomen
It comes as no surprise that this category is the largest, for the literary and performance
arts were easier for women to enter than many other professions: no paper qualifications
were needed and no governing body could prevent them from working in their chosen field.
Every middle- or upper-class girl was taught to read, write and appreciate art, poetry and
literature, and a good many learned to draw and paint, giving them the basic tools needed
to become professional writers or artists, provided they had the necessary talent and could
surmount the various obstacles.
Charlotte Brontë remarked that because women were generally confined to the home, most
female novelists had limited life experience upon which to draw for storylines and
characters, whereas male writers had seen something of the world. Furthermore, it was
often difficult for women to obtain the peace and solitude required to think, plot and write,
because of the demand, criticised by Florence Nightingale, that women should be available
to others at all times and must instantly abandon any hobby or pastime in order to amuse or
serve them. Because they were usually dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands,
girls and women had to win the approval and goodwill of a man to secure not only the time
and space in which to nurture their talents, but also the funds for materials and equipment.
Girls blessed with a musical or artistic gift found it harder than boys to secure professional
training, because they had first to obtain their fathers’ permission (and funding) to engage a
private tutor or attend a specialist college. It was therefore easy for men to prevent their
daughters from pursuing anything they considered ‘inappropriate’ for the female sex or
wasteful to spend money on something she would abandon upon marriage. For her own
sake, a father could not condone activities that might make his daughter unmarriageable.
Being seriously absorbed in developing an artistic, literary or musical talent would deter
potential husbands: most men wanted a wife who would give him, his household and his
children her undivided attention, not one wrapped up in her own pursuits.
Women who overcame the many obstacles and became professional writers or painters
were aware of undercurrents of prejudice against women in the arts, which is why some
invented a male pseudonym and others concealed their gender by using only their initials or
remaining anonymous.15
A good many middle-class girls were taught to dance, sing and play the piano, but only as
‘accomplishments’ — something acquired for the pleasure of others in a domestic setting
and certainly not for financial gain or public performance, which were thought vulgar. Many
budding performers met with parental disapproval because it was not respectable for a girl
to make a living on the stage. While a dignified Shakespearean thespian, a matronly,
operatic contralto or a concert pianist would rise above suspicion, female entertainers in
comedy, variety, pantomime, music hall and the circus were thought to have ‘loose morals’.
Indeed, their peripatetic, unchaperoned lifestyle was highly conducive to serial romances
and sexual adventures. In addition, the profession was overcrowded and many struggling
actresses resorted to casual prostitution to survive periods of unemployment.
In several respects female performers were a century ahead of their time: those at the
pinnacle of their profession earned ten, even twenty times the average working woman’s
wage; they were the only women of their era to reveal their legs or to wear men’s clothing in
public; they generally retained their maiden names after marriage and continued with their
careers while raising children; many had extramarital affairs and divorced and remarried
(sometimes more than once) when that was rare among — and considered scandalous by
— the general population.
Few competitive sports were open to women, who were hampered by long skirts and
corsets, by the cultural ideal of woman as passive and delicate, and by physicians’
insistence that strenuous sports could cause infertility, a serious threat in a social climate
where childbearing was seen as every woman’s raison d’être. It was acceptable for women
to compete (in a ‘ladylike’ fashion) at archery and croquet, and towards the late nineteenth
century at lawn tennis, golf and cricket, ladies’ tournaments taking place from the 1890s,
when the first women’s hockey and football teams were formed. Sports requiring revealing
costumes were completely unacceptable until the 1920s.
Philanthropists, social workers and reformers
Like their male counterparts, those who inherited wealth always helped those less fortunate
by founding or supporting educational, medical and welfare establishments. Many middle-
class spinsters received a small income from their family, which left them free to devote their
lives to unpaid social work or public service. Some came to see reform as the only lasting
way to cure society’s ills, which in some cases drew them outside of philanthropy and into
the very male world of politics, where they met the greatest opposition when attempting to
get votes for women [293].
Pioneers and professionals
Twenty-two per cent of notable Sussex women were either the first of their sex to achieve
something or followed careers that were considered the province of men. Compared with
philanthropists or artists, theirs was the hardest struggle and involved overcoming various
hindrances, which might include inadequate education, parental opposition, social
disapproval, official obstruction and, in some cases, legal obstacles. Careers required
serious study and self-confidence, but girls were raised to be modest and were cautioned to
hold themselves back because being ‘too clever’ would scare away a potential husband.
Furthermore, eminent physicians issued dire warnings that sustained intellectual study was
beyond women’s abilities and would lead to infertility.
The rare and lucky girl who managed to obtain both funds and paternal consent for higher
education still had to find an establishment that would admit members of her sex: until the
late nineteenth century universities and medical schools were strictly for men. Through
personal philanthropy special colleges for women were opened, starting with Queen’s
College and Bedford College in London in the 1840s. In the 1870s the London School of
Medicine for Women was founded and degree examinations at the University of London
were opened to women; at Cambridge, Girton and Newnham women’s colleges were
established and their students were admitted to Tripos examinations at the university from
1881, by which time Oxford also had two women’s colleges: Lady Margaret Hall and
Somerville [see p289]. All began as small, privately-owned, exclusive establishments
attended by a tiny minority of highly privileged young ladies. By 1910 there were just over a
thousand female students at ‘Oxbridge’; however, Oxford refused to grant a degree to any
woman until 1920, while Cambridge held out until 1947. Initially tutors at ladies’ colleges
were men; there were no suitably-educated women to take their places until the 1870s.
By the end of the nineteenth century teaching girls was no longer the only career open to
educated women. There were several thousand trained and qualified nurses, over 100
physicians6 and a few dozen government-appointed ‘lady inspectors’ of factories, schools,
workhouses or workshops. During the First World War women’s branches of the army, navy
and air force were formed, and nurses serving in army hospitals at home and abroad
proved themselves capable of working under dangerous conditions and of dealing with
wounded soldiers. This created new career opportunities for educated women, not only as
servicewomen and military nurses but as officers and chiefs of the Women’s Auxiliary Army
Corps, the Women’s Royal Air Force, the Women’s Royal Naval Service and Queen
Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service [see p297].
Although employed in the very lowest-grade office jobs from the 1870s, and as clerks and
secretaries from about 1910, women rarely held senior positions in business until the late
twentieth century. Each male bastion was eventually conquered, initially by the efforts of
individual pioneers, although legal-minded women were assisted by legislation such as the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which allowed them to train and work as solicitors
and barristers and to serve as magistrates. Although many public-sector workers won equal
pay in the 1950s, real equality in the workplace did not begin to be possible until after the
implementation of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
Footnotes
* The author of this quote is a notable Sussex woman.
1. Typical women’s businesses were shops catering mainly to a female clientele, e.g. milliner,
dressmaker, and employment agencies for servants.
2. The Married Women’s Property Act 1882 gave wives the right to enter into legal contracts.
3. Women in the public gallery were usually told to leave court during rape or other sexual assault cases.
4. There were a few exceptions: the very wealthy could obtain a prenuptial legal settlement, but it required
the consent of the fiancé; a wife owned her paraphernalia (e.g. her clothing) and although her husband
owned the rental income from her property he could not sell it. The Married Women’s Property Acts
became law in 1870 and 1882. The first gave wives ownership of their earnings and inheritance up to
£200. The second gave wives control of all their property and made them liable to support their children
and husbands.
5. There was no woman-controlled contraception or legal abortion until the 1960s.
6. Three of the first five qualified female physicians appear in this book: Elizabeth Blackwell [224], Sophia
Jex-Blake [236] and Frances Hoggan [135].
7. The Guardianship of Infants Acts 1925 and 1886.
8. By 1857 only four British women had ever obtained a divorce, which required an Act of parliament. The
1857 Matrimonial Causes Act enabled divorce via the courts, allowed women to retain their property after
divorce and restored the legal rights they had enjoyed as spinsters.
9. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1884.
10. A test case in 1891, known as the Jackson Abduction Case, or the Clitheroe Case, ended this right.
11. A husband’s exemption from prosecution from rape of his wife was ended by the Law Lords in 1991.
12. In 1891, for example, women outnumbered men by 900,000.
13. Male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967.
14. Madame Bodichon [193], Emily Davies [39], Florence Fenwick Miller [165], Elizabeth Blackwell [224],
Sophia Jex-Blake [236], Emily Wilding Davison [96], Anna Jameson [137], Mary Richardson [227] and
Margery Corbett Ashby [201].
15. Twenty-two of the writers and painters in this book used a male or genderless pseudonym or
published as ‘Anon’.
It began in childhood, when boys and girls became aware that one sex owned and ran the
world and the other was clearly subordinate. Society was organised around the needs of
men, who had assumed exclusive control of law and government and given themselves
every possible advantage over women in the other crucial areas of society: education,
occupation, inheritance, family life and religion. While a boy was raised to be independent
and to take his place in society as a landowner, businessman, army officer, career
professional or statesman, his sister was taught that her only ‘career’ would be that of wife
and mother, whether or not that suited her. Girls’ education was meagre (since teaching
them beyond what they needed for domestic life was deemed pointless) and all universities
were closed to them. While her brothers went to public school, a typical middle or upper-
class girl was taught at home by an unqualified governess from whom she learned literacy,
numeracy and ‘ladylike’ subjects. If lucky she might be sent to a ladies’ seminary or finishing-
school, but even there she was offered nothing academic or vocational. For example,
Frances Power Cobbe attended Miss Poggi’s ‘Exclusive Establishment for Young Ladies’ at
32 Brunswick Square, Hove, for two years (1836–8). The fee, £1,000, could have sent a
boy to Oxford University for three years. Despite this, she found ‘there was no solid
instruction, no real mental training’.
Access to money, above anything else, is what gives a person autonomy and, until the mid-
twentieth century, lack of it obliged dependence upon others, which brought with it
obedience to their wishes. Both methods of acquiring money — inheriting it or earning it —
were set up to severely disadvantage women. Property, businesses and wealth were
passed from father to son; daughters received less or nothing. Noble titles also passed
down the male line, denying women another source of power, influence or status. Nor was it
possible for women to accrue wealth through employment. Until the late nineteenth century,
the only career available to educated women was teaching infants or girls. Whether as
governesses working in private houses, or as teachers in schools or seminaries, their
wages were pitifully low. Some women with capital started a small business, typically
educational,1 but this rarely expanded beyond one establishment. Before 1882 married
women were hindered in business because they could not enter into a business contract,
sign a legal document, or sue a debtor (or anyone else) except with their husbands, giving
the men in effect control of their wives’ business matters.2
Marriage, among other things, usually ended the employment of middle-class women.
Except during the wars, from the 1890s until the 1950s state-owned or quasi-government
organisations did not recruit married women and existing staff were forced to resign if they
wed, regardless of their wishes, needs, rank, usefulness or length of service. This ‘marriage
bar’ applied only to occupations which needed (at least a modicum of) education and had a
career structure — char-ladies were safe!
By arranging inheritance in such a way as to prevent most women from coming into wealth,
and by excluding them from lucrative employment, men gave themselves two paramount
advantages: they kept most of the country’s resources in male hands and forced women
into involuntary dependence upon fathers, brothers and husbands.
Religion was a major influence on the lives of women. Home Bible-readings, compulsory
church attendance and obedience to father, husband, Jesus and an all-seeing, all-powerful
male God to whom one begged for mercy was the norm and those who disobeyed were the
exceptions and were castigated as sinful.
Women’s two roles in law and government were to obey the legislation men made and to
pay the taxes that men levied and spent. The legal system was solely in the hands of male
police, barristers, magistrates and judges and women were not even permitted to serve on
juries.3 Despite being the majority of the population they were excluded from local and
national government and no woman could vote in parliamentary elections. The exclusion of
women from the law-making process rendered them dependent upon men to change the
system. As this required men to surrender their gender privileges, it often took decades of
campaigning to persuade enough MPs to vote for a change in the law.
Marriage and motherhood
Only fifty-nine per cent (and only ten per cent of the senior academics) of the women in
Notable Sussex Women married, compared with over eighty per cent of the female
population in general. Many intellectual women regarded marriage with a cynical rather than
romantic eye, and with good reason, for it was a double-edged sword. A woman would
increase her social status, become mistress of a household and the mother of children, but
in exchange she gave up some of the most fundamental human rights.
Although men vowed ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow’, in fact the very opposite was
true. Until the law changed in 1870 and 1882, everything a woman owned, earned or
inherited was the property of her husband from their wedding day.4 This enormous transfer
of power turned women into paupers dependent upon handouts from their ‘lords and
masters’ and therefore subservient to them. A senior divorce judge even admitted that this
was done in order to trap women within marriage. During the wedding ceremony all brides
promised, within earshot of an ever-watching God they had been indoctrinated to fear, to
obey their husbands. Passive submission to his sexual desires was a wifely duty, and the
frequent childbearing and childrearing this inevitably led to further increased women’s
vulnerability and dependence upon men.5 Children were (until 1925) the sole property of
their father and, in the event of his death, their mother did not even have rights of
guardianship until 1886.7 The law gave fathers exclusive rights to make all decisions
concerning their children’s upbringing, and so the cycle began again when they favoured
sons over daughters for education and inheritance.
No matter how disgruntled a woman might be with marriage in general and hers in particular,
it was in her interests to keep it intact, because if provoked her husband might exercise his
legal rights over her in full measure. Prior to 1870 separation left her destitute: her husband
retained her income and inheritance, both current and future, unless she could get a
divorce, which was expensive and difficult, especially as a husband’s adultery was not
sufficient grounds until 1923.8 Unfaithfulness on her part gave her husband grounds for
divorce, but as an adulteress she would be publicly disgraced (often in the national press)
and might never see her children again. Until 1884 a spouse who left could be sent to
prison for refusing to return;9 until 1891 a husband could abduct his runaway wife, imprison
her in his house and enforce his ‘conjugal rights’10 (marital rape was not illegal until 1991).
11
Staying single
Despite the enormous imbalance in the numbers of the sexes,12 unless they entered holy
orders, society viewed spinsters as objects of pity and ridicule, insultingly labelled them as
‘surplus’ (i.e. to men’s requirements) and devised schemes to deport them. The most
powerful women were wealthy widows and unmarried heiresses; however, in common with all
other single women, to be considered respectable even they could not have a sex life,
cohabit with a man or bear a child out of wedlock.
It was acceptable, however, to set up home with another woman, especially after the First
World War, which killed or maimed millions of men of marriageable age. Although lesbianism
was never illegal13 it was taboo, driving lesbians to secrecy and leaving today’s
researchers to guess which cohabiting women were lovers and which were platonic friends.
It is useful to bear in mind that our culture’s obsession with frequent, lifelong sexual activity
is a relatively recent phenomenon; previously it was normal for unmarried women to remain
celibate throughout their lives, especially as ‘decent’ women were expected to have no
sexual feelings.
The movement for women’s emancipation
From the mid-1700s a number of isolated individuals wrote about men’s poor treatment of
women as a class. Stirrings of more widespread discontent led to an organised movement
that began around the mid-1860s and focused on education, employment and the vote
[294]. From then, with the help of sympathetic male benefactors and MPs, women greatly
improved their position in each of those three areas and by the 1890s there were several
feminist newspapers (one of them edited by notable Sussex woman Florence Fenwick Miller)
that teemed with news of women’s achievements and campaigns. A large number of women
in this book contributed to the changing status of their sex; either directly, by campaigning,
or indirectly, by pioneering their way into male professions. Some of the most famous names
in feminist history lived in Sussex.14
Artists and sportswomen
It comes as no surprise that this category is the largest, for the literary and performance
arts were easier for women to enter than many other professions: no paper qualifications
were needed and no governing body could prevent them from working in their chosen field.
Every middle- or upper-class girl was taught to read, write and appreciate art, poetry and
literature, and a good many learned to draw and paint, giving them the basic tools needed
to become professional writers or artists, provided they had the necessary talent and could
surmount the various obstacles.
Charlotte Brontë remarked that because women were generally confined to the home, most
female novelists had limited life experience upon which to draw for storylines and
characters, whereas male writers had seen something of the world. Furthermore, it was
often difficult for women to obtain the peace and solitude required to think, plot and write,
because of the demand, criticised by Florence Nightingale, that women should be available
to others at all times and must instantly abandon any hobby or pastime in order to amuse or
serve them. Because they were usually dependent on their fathers, brothers or husbands,
girls and women had to win the approval and goodwill of a man to secure not only the time
and space in which to nurture their talents, but also the funds for materials and equipment.
Girls blessed with a musical or artistic gift found it harder than boys to secure professional
training, because they had first to obtain their fathers’ permission (and funding) to engage a
private tutor or attend a specialist college. It was therefore easy for men to prevent their
daughters from pursuing anything they considered ‘inappropriate’ for the female sex or
wasteful to spend money on something she would abandon upon marriage. For her own
sake, a father could not condone activities that might make his daughter unmarriageable.
Being seriously absorbed in developing an artistic, literary or musical talent would deter
potential husbands: most men wanted a wife who would give him, his household and his
children her undivided attention, not one wrapped up in her own pursuits.
Women who overcame the many obstacles and became professional writers or painters
were aware of undercurrents of prejudice against women in the arts, which is why some
invented a male pseudonym and others concealed their gender by using only their initials or
remaining anonymous.15
A good many middle-class girls were taught to dance, sing and play the piano, but only as
‘accomplishments’ — something acquired for the pleasure of others in a domestic setting
and certainly not for financial gain or public performance, which were thought vulgar. Many
budding performers met with parental disapproval because it was not respectable for a girl
to make a living on the stage. While a dignified Shakespearean thespian, a matronly,
operatic contralto or a concert pianist would rise above suspicion, female entertainers in
comedy, variety, pantomime, music hall and the circus were thought to have ‘loose morals’.
Indeed, their peripatetic, unchaperoned lifestyle was highly conducive to serial romances
and sexual adventures. In addition, the profession was overcrowded and many struggling
actresses resorted to casual prostitution to survive periods of unemployment.
In several respects female performers were a century ahead of their time: those at the
pinnacle of their profession earned ten, even twenty times the average working woman’s
wage; they were the only women of their era to reveal their legs or to wear men’s clothing in
public; they generally retained their maiden names after marriage and continued with their
careers while raising children; many had extramarital affairs and divorced and remarried
(sometimes more than once) when that was rare among — and considered scandalous by
— the general population.
Few competitive sports were open to women, who were hampered by long skirts and
corsets, by the cultural ideal of woman as passive and delicate, and by physicians’
insistence that strenuous sports could cause infertility, a serious threat in a social climate
where childbearing was seen as every woman’s raison d’être. It was acceptable for women
to compete (in a ‘ladylike’ fashion) at archery and croquet, and towards the late nineteenth
century at lawn tennis, golf and cricket, ladies’ tournaments taking place from the 1890s,
when the first women’s hockey and football teams were formed. Sports requiring revealing
costumes were completely unacceptable until the 1920s.
Philanthropists, social workers and reformers
Like their male counterparts, those who inherited wealth always helped those less fortunate
by founding or supporting educational, medical and welfare establishments. Many middle-
class spinsters received a small income from their family, which left them free to devote their
lives to unpaid social work or public service. Some came to see reform as the only lasting
way to cure society’s ills, which in some cases drew them outside of philanthropy and into
the very male world of politics, where they met the greatest opposition when attempting to
get votes for women [293].
Pioneers and professionals
Twenty-two per cent of notable Sussex women were either the first of their sex to achieve
something or followed careers that were considered the province of men. Compared with
philanthropists or artists, theirs was the hardest struggle and involved overcoming various
hindrances, which might include inadequate education, parental opposition, social
disapproval, official obstruction and, in some cases, legal obstacles. Careers required
serious study and self-confidence, but girls were raised to be modest and were cautioned to
hold themselves back because being ‘too clever’ would scare away a potential husband.
Furthermore, eminent physicians issued dire warnings that sustained intellectual study was
beyond women’s abilities and would lead to infertility.
The rare and lucky girl who managed to obtain both funds and paternal consent for higher
education still had to find an establishment that would admit members of her sex: until the
late nineteenth century universities and medical schools were strictly for men. Through
personal philanthropy special colleges for women were opened, starting with Queen’s
College and Bedford College in London in the 1840s. In the 1870s the London School of
Medicine for Women was founded and degree examinations at the University of London
were opened to women; at Cambridge, Girton and Newnham women’s colleges were
established and their students were admitted to Tripos examinations at the university from
1881, by which time Oxford also had two women’s colleges: Lady Margaret Hall and
Somerville [see p289]. All began as small, privately-owned, exclusive establishments
attended by a tiny minority of highly privileged young ladies. By 1910 there were just over a
thousand female students at ‘Oxbridge’; however, Oxford refused to grant a degree to any
woman until 1920, while Cambridge held out until 1947. Initially tutors at ladies’ colleges
were men; there were no suitably-educated women to take their places until the 1870s.
By the end of the nineteenth century teaching girls was no longer the only career open to
educated women. There were several thousand trained and qualified nurses, over 100
physicians6 and a few dozen government-appointed ‘lady inspectors’ of factories, schools,
workhouses or workshops. During the First World War women’s branches of the army, navy
and air force were formed, and nurses serving in army hospitals at home and abroad
proved themselves capable of working under dangerous conditions and of dealing with
wounded soldiers. This created new career opportunities for educated women, not only as
servicewomen and military nurses but as officers and chiefs of the Women’s Auxiliary Army
Corps, the Women’s Royal Air Force, the Women’s Royal Naval Service and Queen
Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service [see p297].
Although employed in the very lowest-grade office jobs from the 1870s, and as clerks and
secretaries from about 1910, women rarely held senior positions in business until the late
twentieth century. Each male bastion was eventually conquered, initially by the efforts of
individual pioneers, although legal-minded women were assisted by legislation such as the
Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919, which allowed them to train and work as solicitors
and barristers and to serve as magistrates. Although many public-sector workers won equal
pay in the 1950s, real equality in the workplace did not begin to be possible until after the
implementation of the Equal Pay Act 1970 and the Sex Discrimination Act 1975.
Footnotes
* The author of this quote is a notable Sussex woman.
1. Typical women’s businesses were shops catering mainly to a female clientele, e.g. milliner,
dressmaker, and employment agencies for servants.
2. The Married Women’s Property Act 1882 gave wives the right to enter into legal contracts.
3. Women in the public gallery were usually told to leave court during rape or other sexual assault cases.
4. There were a few exceptions: the very wealthy could obtain a prenuptial legal settlement, but it required
the consent of the fiancé; a wife owned her paraphernalia (e.g. her clothing) and although her husband
owned the rental income from her property he could not sell it. The Married Women’s Property Acts
became law in 1870 and 1882. The first gave wives ownership of their earnings and inheritance up to
£200. The second gave wives control of all their property and made them liable to support their children
and husbands.
5. There was no woman-controlled contraception or legal abortion until the 1960s.
6. Three of the first five qualified female physicians appear in this book: Elizabeth Blackwell [224], Sophia
Jex-Blake [236] and Frances Hoggan [135].
7. The Guardianship of Infants Acts 1925 and 1886.
8. By 1857 only four British women had ever obtained a divorce, which required an Act of parliament. The
1857 Matrimonial Causes Act enabled divorce via the courts, allowed women to retain their property after
divorce and restored the legal rights they had enjoyed as spinsters.
9. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1884.
10. A test case in 1891, known as the Jackson Abduction Case, or the Clitheroe Case, ended this right.
11. A husband’s exemption from prosecution from rape of his wife was ended by the Law Lords in 1991.
12. In 1891, for example, women outnumbered men by 900,000.
13. Male homosexuality was illegal until the Sexual Offences Act 1967.
14. Madame Bodichon [193], Emily Davies [39], Florence Fenwick Miller [165], Elizabeth Blackwell [224],
Sophia Jex-Blake [236], Emily Wilding Davison [96], Anna Jameson [137], Mary Richardson [227] and
Margery Corbett Ashby [201].
15. Twenty-two of the writers and painters in this book used a male or genderless pseudonym or
published as ‘Anon’.
Excerpted from the book Notable Sussex Women Helena Wojtczak 2008 |
| Excerpted from the book Notable Sussex Women |
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| British women's low status in the 19th century |
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| Excerpted from the book Notable Sussex Women by Helena Wojtczak (c) 2008 |
“Man is brought up to believe himself the all paramount, the most favoured; the one to whom power should be given and in whom command should be vested. Woman is brought up on a directly opposite principle. Thus the girl marries, believing herself her husband’s inferior, and in turn transmits these doctrines to her children.” Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905) “You bring up your girls as if they were meant for sideboard ornaments and then complain of their frivolity.” John Ruskin (1819–1900) “A girl in innumerable subtle, indirect ways is taught to mistrust herself. Ambition is held up to her as a vice — to a boy it is held up as a virtue. She is taught docility, modesty and diffidence. Docility and diffidence are of uncommonly little use in the business or professional world.” Lady Rhondda (1883–1958) “The marriage codes of all nations, even the most civilised, render women in effect the slaves of men.” William Thompson (1775–1833) “Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church.” Old Testament, Ephesians 5: 22–23 “A woman is not naturally a man’s slave. The marriage service makes her so; but that is a creation of man’s.” Lady Florence Dixie (1855–1905) “Man to command and woman to obey — all else confusion.” Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) “A married woman is deprived by law of certain rights that she may be the more dependent on her husband, to the rendering more sure and permanent of the marriage bond.” Lord Penzance (1816–1899) “Marriage is for woman the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.” Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) Under exclusively man-made laws women have been reduced to the most abject condition of legal slavery in which it is possible for human beings to be held ... under the arbitrary domination of another’s will, and dependent for decent treatment exclusively on the goodness of heart of the individual master.” Florence Fenwick Miller* (1854–1935) “’Tis less to be wondered at that women marry off in haste, for if they took time to consider and reflect upon it, they seldom would.” Mary Astell (1668–1731) “I think, therefore I am single.” Lizz Winstead (1961–) “A single woman is so free, so powerful.” Bessie Rayner Parkes* (1829–1925) “What we ask is the removal of the aristocracy of their sex and the removal of the slavery of our sex.” Florence Fenwick Miller* (1854–1935) “Nature herself has decreed that woman ... should be at the mercy of man’s judgement.” Rousseau (1712–1778) “Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.” Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) “I consider that women who are authors, lawyers, and politicians are monsters.” Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) “Ours is not a country which really encourages women, although our women have admirable records in every field they are allowed to try ... they are too often frowned out, made to feel intruders in a man’s world.” Pearl Binder* (1904–1989) “Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted … They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their ‘duty’ to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.” Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Virginia Woolf* (1882–1941) “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” Virginia Woolf* (1882–1941) “Alas! a woman that attempts the pen / Such an intruder on the rights of men / Such a presumptuous Creature, is esteem’d / The fault, can by no virtue be redeemed.” Countess of Winchilsea (1661–1720) “People find out I’m an actress and I see that ‘whore’ look flicker across their eyes.” Rachel Weisz (1971–) “Women are born to a life both monotonous and dependent ... In their case, genius is a useless and dangerous endowment, which takes them out of their natural state.” Félicité de Genlis (1746–1830) “If the feminine abilities were developed to the same degree as those of the male her maternal organs would suffer and we should have a repulsive and useless hybrid.” Professor Paul Möbius (1853–1907) “Charity is the calling of a lady; the care of the poor is her profession.” Hannah More (1745–1833) “When a woman becomes a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs.” Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) “A blank wall of social and professional antagonism faces the woman physician that forms a situation of singular and painful loneliness, leaving her without support, respect or professional counsel.” Dr Elizabeth Blackwell* (1821–1910) |
Excerpted from the book Notable Sussex Women Helena Wojtczak 2008 |
Excerpted from the book Notable Sussex Women Helena Wojtczak 2008 |