Girl Trouble

by Dyhouse, Carol

  60 See reports of MABYS (1877–1880; 1881–1883; 1884–1886) in the British Library, which also has Reports of the Moral Reform Union, 1882–1897; Higson, J. E., Women and Social Purity, London: SPCK, 1918.

  61 Money, Agnes L., A History of the Girls’ Friendly Society, London: Gardner, 1897 (revised edition 1911); Heath-Stubbs, M., Friendship’s Highway: Being a History of the Girls’ Friendly Society, 1875–1925, London: GFS Central Office, 1926; Harrison, B., ‘For Church, Queen and Family: The Girls’ Friendly Society 1874–1920, Past and Present, 61:1, 1973, pp. 107–38. See also the Women’s Library online exhibition ‘Bear Ye One Another’s Burdens’ by Vivienne Richmond at www.londonmet.ac.uk.

  62 Richmond, V., ‘“It Is Not a Society for Human Beings but for Virgins”: The Girls’ Friendly Society Membership Eligibility Dispute 1875–1936’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 20:3, 2007, pp. 304–27.

  63 Harrison, ‘For Church, Queen and Family’, p. 109.

  64 Heath-Stubbs, Friendship’s Highway, p. 50.

  65 Ibid., pp. 51–3.

  66 Miss Nunneley, ‘Snowdrop Bands’, in Women Workers, Papers read at a Conference convened by the Birmingham Ladies’ Union of Workers among Women and Girls in November 1890, Birmingham: 1890. See also issues of The Snowdrop, ‘Official organ of Snowdrop and White Ribbon bands’, issues for 1912 in the British Library.

  67 Ibid.

  68 Ruskin, J., Sesame and Lilies, London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1865.

  69 See for instance Krugovoy Silver, A., Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body, Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 63–4.

  70 On Ruskin generally see Batchelor, J., John Ruskin: No Wealth but Life, London: Chatto and Windus, 2000; on beauty queens see Cole, M., Be Like Daisies: John Ruskin and the Cult of Beauty at Whitelands College, St Albans: Brentham Press, 1992. Roehampton University has the archives of Whitelands College, including papers relating to the connection with John Ruskin, 1864–1978, and material relating to the annual May Day ceremonies, 1881–2001. The dresses, ornaments and bouquets of the May Queens have been preserved in the collection.

  71 There was also a flourishing trade in primers for the guidance of schools when using Ruskin’s texts, such as Sesame and Lilies. See, for instance, Modlen, W., Notes for the Use of Schools on Ruskin’s Sesame and Lilies, Huntingdon: K. Modlen, 1912.

  72 Mrs Parker, A Year’s Work amongst Factory Girls, London: GFS and Hatchards’ Piccadilly, 1884, p. 11.

  73 Report of the Social Purity Alliance for 1887–1888, Westminster: 1888, p. 14.

  74 Heath-Stubbs, Friendship’s Highway, pp. 111–12.

  75 Girls’ Statement Books from 1880s, in Archives, Salvation Army Heritage Centre.

  76 Richmond, ‘“It Is Not a Society for Human Beings but for Virgins”’.

  77 File relating to Dronfield Sex Education case in the National Archives, ED 50/185. The case is discussed in Mort, F., Dangerous Sexualities: Medico-Moral Politics in England since 1830, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1987, p. 121ff.

  78 Salvation Army Girls’ Statement Books, Archives, Salvation Army Heritage Centre.

  79 Royden, A. Maude (ed.), Downward Paths: An Inquiry into the Causes Which Contribute to the Making of the Prostitute, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1916.

  80 Ibid., Introduction, p. xii.

  81 Ibid., p. 49.

  82 Ibid., p. 50.

  83 Ibid., p. 54.

  84 Ibid., pp. viii, 110–15.

  85 Ibid., pp. 110, 114.

  86 Hansard, House of Commons Debates, 10 June 1912, vol. 39, paras 574–5.

  87 Terrot, C., Traffic in Innocents: The Shocking Facts about the Flesh Markets of Europe; A Story of Lust and Moral Depravity Unequalled in Civilized Times, New York: Bantam/E. P. Dutton, 1961.

  2 Unwomanly types

  1 Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was performed at the Novelty Theatre in London in 1889 with Janet Achurch as Nora. It aroused a storm of public controversy. Walter Besant, who had already revealed a deep-rooted antipathy to feminism in his satirical novel The Revolt of Man (1882), wrote a short story entitled ‘The Dolls’ House – and After’, which appeared in the English Illustrated Magazine in January 1890. This cautionary tale catalogued the disasters which Besant imagined that Nora’s desertion would have perpetrated on her family; her husband driven to drink, her son to forgery, her daughter to suicide. A spate of alternative endings and sequels to the play followed, with G. B. Shaw, Israel Zangwill and Eleanor Marx defending Ibsen’s viewpoint. See Shaw, G. B., ‘Still After the Doll’s House’, Time, February 1890, and Marx, E., and Zangwill, I., ‘A Doll’s House Repaired’, Time, March 1891.

  2 Crackenthorpe, B. A., ‘The Revolt of the Daughters’, Nineteenth Century, 35, January 1894, pp. 23–31.

  3 Jeune, M., ‘The Revolt of the Daughters’, Fortnightly Review, 55, February 1894, pp. 267–76.

  4 Pearsall Smith, Alys W., ‘A Reply from the Daughters’, Nineteenth Century, 35, March 1894, pp. 443–50.

  5 Hemery, G., ‘The Revolt of the Daughters: An Answer – by One of Them’, Westminster Review, 141, June 1894, pp. 679–81.

  6 Amos, Sarah M., ‘The Evolution of the Daughters’, Contemporary Review, 65, April 1894, pp. 515–20.

  7 Nightingale, F., ‘Cassandra’, printed as an appendix to Strachey, R., The Cause: A Short History of the Women’s Movement in Great Britain, Bath: Cedric Chivers, 1974, p. 402.

  8 Strachey, The Cause, pp. 14, 44.

  9 See Dyhouse, C., Girls Growing Up In Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981.

  10 There is a useful exploration of the governess in Hughes, K., The Victorian Governess, London: Hambledon Press, 1993.

  11 The best treatment is probably still Stephen, B., Emily Davies and Girton College, London: Constable, 1927. See also Sara Delamont’s entry for Emily Davies in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and references.

  12 Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, Chapter 2. See also Dyhouse, C., ‘Miss Buss and Miss Beale: Gender and Authority in the History of Education’, in Hunt, F. (ed.), Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850–1950, Oxford: Blackwell, 1987, pp. 22–39.

  13 Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up; on the GPDS (later GDS) see Kamm, J., Indicative Past: 100 Years of the Girls’ Public Day School Trust, London: Allen and Unwin, 1971.

  14 See McWilliams Tullberg, R., Women at Cambridge, London: Gollancz, 1975 (revised edition published by Cambridge University Press, 1998); Dyhouse, C., No Distinction of Sex? Women in British Universities 1870–1939, London: UCL Press, 1995.

  15 Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex? pp. 91–125.

  16 ‘Honour to Agnata Frances Ramsay’, Punch, 2 July 1887.

  17 On women students and college rooms see Hamlett, J., ‘“Nicely Feminine, yet Learned”: Student Rooms at Royal Holloway and the Oxbridge Colleges in Late Nineteenth-century Britain’, Women’s History Review, 15:1, 2006, pp. 137–61.

  18 Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex?

  19 On Sophie Bryant see Sheila Fletcher’s entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, also Drummond, I. M. (ed.), Sophie Bryant, DSc, Litt D, 1850–1922, London: private publication.

  20 ‘George Egerton’ (Mrs Mary Chavelita Dunne), Keynotes, London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, 1893.

  21 ‘Borgia Smudgiton’, with ‘Japanese Fan-de-Siècle illustrations by Mortarthurio Whiskersly’ in Punch, 106, 10 March 1894; Part II, 106, 17 March 1894. See the discussion of the ways in which the New Woman was parodied as a symbol of disorder in Richardson, A., The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001, especially the Introduction.

  22 Grant Allen, The Woman Who Did, London: John Lane, 1895.

  23 Fawcett, M. Garrett, ‘The Woman Who Did’, Contemporary Review, vol. LXVII, 1895, pp. 625–31.

  24 See, for instance, Victoria Crosse, The Woman Who Didn’t, London: Roberts Bros, Boston: John Lane, 1895; ‘Lucas Cleeve’ (Adelina Kingscote), The Woman Who Wouldn’t, L
ondon: Simpkin Marshall and Co., 1895.

  25 See, for instance, Stutfield, Hugh E. M., ‘Tommyrotics’, Blackwoods Magazine, June 1895, and ‘The Psychology of Feminism’, Blackwoods Magazine, January 1897.

  26 The Rational Dress Society, founded in London in 1881, argued for bloomers and bifurcated garments that came into their own when cycling rose in popularity in the 1890s. See Cunningham, Patricia A., Reforming Women’s Fashion 1850–1920: Politics, Health and Art, Kent State University Press, 2003; Marks, P., Bicycles, Bangs and Bloomers: The New Woman in the Popular Press, Lexington: Kentucky University Press, 1990.

  27 Glendinning, V., A Suppressed Cry: Life and Death of a Quaker Daughter, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969, p. 71; Marshall, M. Paley, What I Remember, Cambridge University Press, 1947, p. 20.

  28 Glendinning, A Suppressed Cry, p. 73.

  29 From Lennox, G. R., Echoes from the Hills, Devon: Arthur H. Stockwell, 1978, p. 24.

  30 Delamont, S., ‘The Contradictions in Ladies’ Education’, in Delamont, S., and Duffin, L. (eds), The Nineteenth Century Woman: Her Cultural and Physical World, London: Croom Helm, 1978, p. 146; see also Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, p. 68.

  31 The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, translated, with an introduction, by Mathilde Blind, London: Cassell and Co., 1890.

  32 Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, Virago Press edition, 1985, offset from 1891 edition, introduced by Rozsika Parker and Griselda Pollock, p. 133.

  33 Stead, W. T., ‘The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff: The Story of a Girl’s Life’, Review of Reviews, June 1890, pp. 539–49.

  34 Ibid., p. 549.

  35 Shaw, G. B., ‘The Womanly Woman’, in The Quintessence of Ibsenism, London: 1891.

  36 Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, p. 290.

  37 The issue of femininity as performance was explored fully a century later by Judith Butler in her (now) classic analysis Gender Trouble, New York and London: Routledge, 1990.

  38 Spencer, H., Principles of Biology, London: Williams and Norgate, 1867, vol. II, pp. 485–6.

  39 Clarke, Edward H., Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls, Boston, MA: James R. Osgood, 1875. Project Gutenberg eBook, p. 9.

  40 Maudsley, H., ‘Sex in Mind and in Education’, Fortnightly Review, new series, 15, 1874, pp. 466–83.

  41 Ibid., p. 468.

  42 Ibid., p. 477.

  43 See Presidential Address by Dr Withers Moore, annual meeting of the British Medical Association in Brighton, 1886, reported in British Medical Journal, 14 August 1886, pp. 338–9. For more discussion see Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, pp. 151–9. See also Burstyn, J. N., ‘Education and Sex: The Medical Case Against Higher Education for Women in England, 1870–1900, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117:2, April 1973, pp. 79–89.

  44 Lawson Tait, R., Pathology and Treatment of Diseases of the Ovaries, Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, New Street, 1883; Clouston, T. S., ‘Psychological Dangers to Women in Modern Social Developments’, in The Position of Women, Actual and Ideal. A Series of Papers Delivered in Edinburgh, 1911, with a preface by Sir Oliver Lodge, London: Nisbet, 1911, pp. 108–11; Thorburn, J., Female Education from a Physiological Point of View, Manchester: Owen’s College, 1884.

  45 Tylecote, M., The Education of Women at Manchester University, 1883–1933, Publications of the University of Manchester no. 277, 1941, p. 31.

  46 Histories of women’s fight for medical education include: Bell, E. Moberley, Storming the Citadel: The Rise of the Woman Doctor, London: Constable, 1953; Lutzker, E., Women Gain a Place in Medicine, New York: McGraw Hill, 1969; Blake, C., The Charge of the Parasols: Women’s Entry to the Medical Profession, London: Women’s Press, 1990; Bonner, T. Melville, To the Ends of the Earth: Women’s Search for Education in Medicine, London and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. See also Dyhouse, C., ‘Driving Ambitions: Women in Pursuit of a Medical Education 1890–1939’, in the same author’s Students: A Gendered History, London and New York: Routledge, 2006.

  47 On Elizabeth Garrett Anderson see Anderson, L., Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, 1836–1917, London: Faber and Faber, 1939.

  48 Garrett Anderson, E., ‘Sex in Mind and Education: A Reply’, Fortnightly Review, 15, 1874, pp. 582–94.

  49 Annie G. Howes (chair), Health Statistics of Women College Graduates: Report of Special Committee of the Association of Collegiate Alumni, together with Statistical Tables Collated by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labour, Boston, MA: Wright and Potter, 1885.

  50 Mrs H. Sidgwick, Health Statistics of Women Students of Cambridge and Oxford and of Their Sisters, Cambridge University Press, 1890.

  51 Pfeiffer, E., Women and Work: An Essay, London: Trübner, 1888.

  52 Ibid, pp. 89–101.

  53 Atkinson, P., ‘Fitness, Feminism and Schooling’, in Delamont, S., and Duffin, L. (eds), The Nineteenth Century Woman.

  54 Tylecote, The Education of Women at Manchester University, p. 31.

  55 See Chisholm, C., The Medical Inspection of Girls in Secondary Schools, London and New York: Longmans Green and Co., 1914.

  56 On the WSPU and suffrage battles generally see, among others, Purvis, J., and Holton, S. Stanley, Votes for Women, London: Routledge, 2000, and Purvis, J., and Joannou, M., The Women’s Suffrage Movement: New Feminist Perspectives, Manchester University Press, 1998.

  57 Liddington, J., and Norris, J., One Hand Tied behind Us: The Rise of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, Virago: London 1978, reprinted by Rivers Oram Press, 2000.

  58 For details of suffragette processions and spectacle see Tickner, L., The Spectacle of Women: Imagery of the Suffragette Campaign, 1907–1914, London: Chatto and Windus, 1988.

  59 West, R., ‘A Reed of Steel’, in Marcus, Jane (ed.), The Young Rebecca, p. 243.

  60 Lytton, Lady Constance and ‘Wharton, J., Spinster’, Prison and Prisoners: Some Personal Experiences, London: Heinemann, 1914.

  61 Liddington, J., Rebel Girls: Their Fight for the Vote, London: Virago, 2006.

  62 Ibid.

  63 Rosen, A., Rise Up Women! The Militant Campaign of the Women’s Social and Political Union 1903–1914, London: Routledge, 1974, p. 125.

  64 The admirer was Henry Nevinson. See John, Angela V., War, Journalism and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century: The Life and Times of Henry W. Nevinson, London: I. B. Tauris, 2006, p. 100.

  65 Tickner, The Spectacle of Women. The Women’s Library has several postcard images of the Women’s Coronation Procession, 17 June 1911, 129, postcard box 04.

  66 Crawford, E., The Women’s Suffrage Movement, a Reference Guide, 1866–1928, London: UCL Press, 1999, pp. 322–3.

  67 Dyhouse, No Distinction of Sex, pp. 217–18.

  68 For Emmeline Pankhurst and her relationships with her daughters see Purvis, J., Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography, London: Routledge, 2002.

  69 Brittain, Testament of Youth, pp. 38–9.

  70 Marjorie Anderson, interview with Winifred Starbuck, first broadcast on Woman’s Hour, c. 1958, www.bbc.co.uk/archive/suffragettes/8323.shtml.

  71 Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, Chapter 3.

  72 Davin, A., ‘Imperialism and Motherhood’, History Workshop Journal, 5:1, 1978, pp. 9–66.

  73 Dyhouse, C., ‘Good Wives and Little Mothers: Social Anxieties and the Schoolgirl’s Curriculum, 1890–1920’, Oxford Review of Education, 3:1, 1977, pp. 21–35.

  74 See for instance, Bremner, C. S., The Education of Girls and Women in Great Britain, London: Swann Sonnenschein, 1897, pp. 47–8; Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up, pp. 170–1.

  75 Chorley, K., Manchester Made Them, London: Faber and Faber, 1950, p. 248.

  76 Hall, G. Stanley, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Relation to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion and Education, New York: Appleton, 1904.

  77 See also Hall, G. Stanley, Educational Problems, New York: Appleton, 1911; and his Youth: Its Regimen and Hygiene, New York: Appleton, 1906.

  78 See discussion of Hall’s views in Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up
, Chapter 4, ‘Adolescent Girlhood: Autonomy versus Dependence’.

  79 Cole, M., Marriage, Past and Present, London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1938, p. 95.

  80 Hall, ‘The Budding Girl’, in Educational Problems, vol. II, p. 1.

  81 Ibid., p. 33.

  82 Ibid., p. 34.

  83 Hall, Youth: Its Regimen and Hygiene, pp. 303–19.

  84 Ibid., pp. 320–1.

  85 Hall, Educational Problems, p. 29.

  86 Ibid., pp. 29–33.

  87 Quoted in Stacey, J., Béreaud, S., and Daniels, J. (eds), And Jill Came Tumbling After: Sexism in American Education, New York: Dell, 1974, p. 277.

  88 Ross, D., G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet, University of Chicago Press, 1972, pp. 9, 97–8.

  89 Campbell, J. M., ‘The Effect of Adolescence on the Brain of the Girl’, paper presented to the Association of University Women Teachers in London, 23 May 1908, pp. 5–6.

  90 Barnard, A. B., The Girl’s Book about Herself, London: Cassell, 1912, pp. 21–2.

  91 Blanchard, P., The Care of the Adolescent Girl, London: Kegan Paul, 1921, esp. p. 67.

  92 See, for instance, Saywell, E., The Growing Girl, London: Methuen, 1922.

  93 Dangerfield, G., The Strange Death of Liberal England, London: Constable, 1936, described the suffragettes in such terms.

  3 Brazen flappers

  1 The relationship between modernity, young women and femininity was much discussed not only in Britain but also on a global level. ‘The Modern Girl Around the World’ research group, based at Duke University in North Carolina but incorporating scholars from all over the world, has been focusing on these issues, particularly in relation to representations and the appearance of ‘the modern girl’. See Weinbaum, E., Thomas, Lynn M., Barlow, Tani E., Ramamurthy, P., Poiger, Uta G., and Yue Dong, M. (eds), The Modern Girl Around the World, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008. An earlier statement of research findings was published by the same group in Gender and History, 17:2, 2005, pp. 245–94. See also Søland, B., Becoming Modern: Young Women and the Reconstruction of Womanhood in the 1920s, Princeton University Press, 2000.