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BOOK REVIEW

Sutherland, Gillian. In Search of the New Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Britain, 1870-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 200pp. ISBN: 9781107092792. $90.00.

Reviewed by Elizabeth D. Macaluso.

In In Search of the New Woman, Gillian Sutherland debunks and reinforms the caricature (or stereotype) of the New Woman by closely examining her work between the years 1870 and 1914 in Britain. She verifies this work by looking carefully at the differences between class (even within the middle class), educational opportunity, and employment of women as teachers, caregivers, artists, writers, journalists, actors, white-collar workers (clerks, government workers, shop girls, managerial positions), and ladies. Sutherland proposes that a careful study of these differences will account for what work was like for these middle-class women who were “New.” Rejecting the stereotype of New Women’s work as a liberation of a large group of women and a radical change in their economic and social status, she suggests that by closely reading the testimonies of New Women’s experiences (in letters, diaries, and memoranda) and by analysing statistical data from the period, a clearer picture will emerge of what middle-class women’s work was truly like in this period. Only then can we draw conclusions about whether or not (or to what degree) the kind of work women were doing changed their lives.

Sutherland argues that middle-class women’s lives were not radically changed by the new opportunities in education and employment afforded to them. She contends that their lives barely changed at all. Real change, if any, must be closely observed and accounted for through faithful adherence to written testimony, historical fact, and statistics that tell the true tale in regards to what was “new” at this time about women’s work.

Sutherland’s chapters on teachers, social workers, artists, white-color workers, and ladies are very strong. Her command over the historical details of these women’s lives and the access they had to education, the work and career choices they made, or that were made for them, and whether or not marriage changed those choices is authoritative. The following example makes more vivid the already-established claim that the opening of more schools for middle-class women furthered their education. Schools were homes for students who could not be educated domestically by governesses (18). By 1868, when the Schools Inquiry Commission began its own investigation into what proper schooling for both girls and boys should be, Anne Jemima Clough wrote a famous memorandum stating that schooling for girls should be just as rigorous as for boys – that there was nothing “wrong with a little competition between peers” (19) – and that this change would not only help female students but would also train “specialist teachers” to take on new positions that were outside of the home and a part of the public sphere (19). Sutherland makes these historical details quite evident even as she does not claim that these changes for middle-class women as teachers were at all extreme.

Sutherland does a brilliant job of debunking the myth that schooling radically altered the employment opportunities of middle-class women. Most of the women who were educated at Britain’s best institutions (like Newnham, Girton, Somerville, and Lady Margaret Hall) became teachers (for Girton, almost two-thirds of their students who landed employment became teachers) (24-5). And, only one third of Girton’s students between 1869 and 1914 chose other jobs or professions: six became writers; six became doctors; one became an artist; twenty-nine went on to volunteer work; twenty-one worked for the war effort; and fourteen became academics (24-5). As most women became teachers after their schooling, Sutherland concludes that women advanced little further from their former, menial positions as governesses. Furthermore, the work that was available to women was not that dissimilar to the philanthropic work that more privileged women undertook in the early and mid-century. “Caretaking work” for women consisted of philanthropy and unpaid and paid social work (12, 43, 45, 50, 52-5). Much of this work was voluntary, and the work that was paid afforded a small salary and humiliation in ladies’ social circles (namely, that it was shaming to be paid like a common worker).

Sutherland also discovers that nursing was considered little better than “domestic service” because most of the women who worked as nurses were untrained and underpaid: their salaries were just above shop girls’ salaries (94). There were very few artists, actors, and writers because women needed money and patronage to be successful in, and earn money through, these professions (58-61). In fact, most women turned to white-collar jobs for work as they were more readily open to women and they paid a decent wage, starting at £25’s. per anum (87, 92). Sutherland contends that these were the positions that truly offered women chances at independence (92). Yet, I wonder whether all middle-class women would have been pleased to work as white-collar employees given that their work was often extremely dull, and their salaries were often low or just barely sufficient to give them independent lives. At the end of the book, Sutherland adeptly asserts that the notion of “being a lady” could also affect a woman’s prospects for work and the ways in which she worked. One’s performance as a lady was strictly observed in all of the aforementioned jobs and professions for women as one could be dismissed if she did not adhere to the standards set for ladies in the workplace (149-58). Overall, Sutherland makes a fine and well-supported case that women’s “opportunities” (both educational and occupational) were still limited even at the fin de siècle.

Still, her analysis raises questions of emphasis. Sutherland minimises important facts that suggest significant change for women because she focuses so severely on limitations. What might happen to Sutherland’s analysis if she looked at the changes in women’s work from early and mid-century to the fin de siècle? Surely, she would find that significant educational and employment changes were occurring for women. These changes were not made overnight, but they were changes and, therefore, significant. For early and mid-century women the prospect of going to school outside of the home, not simply for rudimentary lessons, but, for higher learning that could lead to university training and then employment was a significant change that should not be taken for granted. But Sutherland understates this change. She further minimises the fact that women were becoming doctors even if there were relatively few of them doing so (Garrett Anderson), and de-emphasises the case of Evelyn Sharp who managed both teaching and publishing on a variety of subjects (book reviews, writing “middles,” short essays on topical subjects, children’s verse, and reading manuscripts for The Bodley Head), and was successful at both (65). Finally, no one should ignore the fact that fifty-three Girtonians and eighty-seven Newnhamites had publications to their names, even if only a handful of them made their living solely at writing (58). These facts are not given the emphasis that they deserve.

If Sutherland would concede that important changes did occur over the long nineteenth century, her argument for gradual change, not a radical shift as some scholars insist, would be even stronger. She also needs to acknowledge the important work of New Woman critics like Sally Ledger, Ann Ardis, Ann Heilmann, and Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis. Sally Ledger’s The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle is not mentioned in Sutherland’s book, and the work of New Woman critics, Ann Ardis and Ann Heilmann, is mentioned only once or twice. Angelique Richardson and Chris Willis’s The New Woman in Fiction and in Fact: Fin-de-Siècle Feminisms is the most often cited source. It is used to highlight a few arguments that Sutherland likes, but scarcely engaged in support of her thesis. In fact, Sutherland “bats away” (161-62) Ann Heilmann’s very important contention from New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism in the following manner:

Ann Heilmann has argued that New Woman writing was “a complex historical phenomenon which operated at both cultural (textual and visual) and socio-political levels;” and later that New Woman fiction and journalism “played a major part in contributing to the complex social changes which led to a redefinition of gender roles and a consolidation of the notion of women’s rights at the turn of the century.” It is easy to bat such a large claim away with the question, “Where is the evidence?” (161-62)

But Sutherland’s book fails to engage Heilmann’s claim, its evidence, and what it means for her argument, for her analysis, and her book as a whole. How would understanding that writers like Eliza Lynn Linton, W. R. Greg, W. T. Stead, Margaret Oliphant and Sarah Grand, Mona Caird, and Ella Hepworth Dixon were all responsible for creating the “caricature” of the New Woman affect Sutherland’s argument? How would knowing that Punch’s visual caricatures of the New Woman were largely anti-feminist and dismissive have an effect (or multiple effects) on Sutherland’s analysis? And, finally, what would a close examination of New Woman fiction (and more than just naming the few titles that Sutherland mentions at the beginning of the book) mean for understanding who the New Woman was, and for understanding the opportunities that she was afforded both educationally and professionally (Sutherland’s focus), and for what Heilmann claims she affects – changes in gender roles and women’s rights? How did the educational and professional opportunities that were offered to women at this time begin to change gender roles and/or women’s rights? Sutherland does not engage these very important questions that most of New Woman scholarship asks. Analyses like these could only strengthen Sutherland’s bid that women’s educational and employment opportunities were limited at the fin de siècle, but, they were still significant and they slowly led to even more opportunities, and greater change, for women at this time.

Nevertheless, Sutherland’s book is a notable text for its claim that scholarship on the New Woman should be careful about the amount of change that it ascribes to education and employment for middle-class women. It creates a highly meticulous, historical case for its thesis. Readers will enjoy learning about the personal histories that comprise this book. These histories will add to their grasp of the New Woman. Sutherland’s claim about the New Woman and her opportunities for education and work rings true: change was not sparse or great, but significant and slow.

Work Cited:
Heilmann, Ann. New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2000. Print.

Elizabeth D. Macaluso is a doctoral candidate in English, General Literature, and Rhetoric at Binghamton University. Her work focuses on the intersections between romantic friendship, the queer, and monstrosity in fiction of the British fin de siècle. She is currently writing a dissertation entitled: “I love you with all the moods and tenses of the verb”: Queer Friendships in Three British 1897 “Monster” Novels, under the direction of Melissa Free.