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Reluctant Pioneer: A Life of Elizabeth Wordsworth
Biography of the British educator and author.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1978
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December 6, 2024
Elizabeth Wordsworth, great-niece of the poet, daughter of a bishop, and founding Principal of Lady Margaret Hall (LMH), one of the first women's colleges at Oxford, was a remarkable personality and led a remarkable life. Reluctant, perhaps, as a pioneer--she did not support women's suffrage, and preferred to stay out of the conversation about women being granted degrees--but a pioneer nonetheless. Battiscombe takes care to present her in her own words as much as possible, but there is complexity to her textual legacy that makes it sometimes difficult. Most of Wordsworth's surviving letters are to her siblings, and don't contain much detail about university life. Thus Battiscombe turns to recollections of Wordsworth's students, including Winifred Peck, whose A Little Learning convinced me I needed to know more about Wordsworth.
Hearing about the early days of women students at Oxford was truly great fun for me, knowing that my season studying abroad there would not have happened without their courage! I hadn't quite connected the facts that dons' marriage was allowed only a few years before women students--it must have seemed a real invasion to those accustomed to a male-only space. Learning about the many LMH students who took firsts was quite fun. (I did wonder why Dorothy L. Sayers chose Somerville--the nondenominational college--over LMH, the Anglican college, but I haven't read her biography yet.)
Wordsworth was also close friends with Charlotte Mary Yonge, and they spent lots of time together (usually Wordsworth traveling to Yonge, since Wordsworth was many years Yonge's junior). Battiscombe has written a biography of Yonge, so the detail there was really fun, and she calls Wordsworth a Yonge heroine come to life (particularly similar to Ethel May of The Daisy Chain).
If Wordsworth had received the opportunities she gave to the students of LMH, one can only wonder what she could have done in the academic world. She had facility in ancient languages, an expansive knowledge of biblical criticism, and a keen mind. Her take on George Eliot's deconversion rang true for me:
"[Wordsworth] describes the narrow Evangelicalism in which George Eliot was brought up as a form of religion particularly unattractive to a person of literary talent. 'This pietism is often combined with crude and materialistic ideas about a future state, and a narrow and injudicious standard of life in this, which could not fail to offend a man or woman who possessed (what many people do not possess) the power of vividly realizing the meaning of the words they use.' With admirable impartiality she points out that George Eliot was equally repelled by the arid teaching of the High Church Oxford Movement--'when a mind is looking about for first principles it will hardly be satisfied by appeals to St Irenaeus or St Chrysostom.'" (98-99)
Wordsworth gives an answer:
"Taking George Eliot as an example, Elizabeth goes on to ask the pertinent question, 'How is the Church to keep or gain a hold on men and women of genius?' Such people will not be attracted by any narrow or inadequate presentation of religious truth: 'There is a sense of the largeness of life, whether from the historical or scientific standpoint, to which popular religion is often painfully out of proportion in its childish and limited view of truth; there is the need of an intellectual as well as of an emotional basis for our faith or opinion, the disgust at petty and illogical narrowness, and no presentation of religion will ever satisfy the highest minds which is not at once philosophical, historical, and practical.'" (99-100)
Wordsworth calls for "'an enlightened, a scholarly, a thinking clergy,'" (100) which she says must keep abreast of women's education, lest they lose this demographic. Her deep faith, and principalship of a denominational college, did not prevent her from welcoming students who confessed to her that they had lost their faith; she only required that they come to breakfast neatly attired with brushed hair.
Wordsworth was a personality, difficult to capture on paper, but wonderful to read about. She was a "late bloomer," coming to the principalship at 39, but she had already blossomed in her work as a bishop's daughter, which required a rather daunting level of hospitality to various personalities and navigation between all the potholes of clerical relations. Reluctant Pioneer was a very interesting read for its information about the history of LMH and account of Wordsworth's life. I appreciated how Battiscombe handled the delicate parts of the story. I only wish she had cited her sources better and more often.
Hearing about the early days of women students at Oxford was truly great fun for me, knowing that my season studying abroad there would not have happened without their courage! I hadn't quite connected the facts that dons' marriage was allowed only a few years before women students--it must have seemed a real invasion to those accustomed to a male-only space. Learning about the many LMH students who took firsts was quite fun. (I did wonder why Dorothy L. Sayers chose Somerville--the nondenominational college--over LMH, the Anglican college, but I haven't read her biography yet.)
Wordsworth was also close friends with Charlotte Mary Yonge, and they spent lots of time together (usually Wordsworth traveling to Yonge, since Wordsworth was many years Yonge's junior). Battiscombe has written a biography of Yonge, so the detail there was really fun, and she calls Wordsworth a Yonge heroine come to life (particularly similar to Ethel May of The Daisy Chain).
If Wordsworth had received the opportunities she gave to the students of LMH, one can only wonder what she could have done in the academic world. She had facility in ancient languages, an expansive knowledge of biblical criticism, and a keen mind. Her take on George Eliot's deconversion rang true for me:
"[Wordsworth] describes the narrow Evangelicalism in which George Eliot was brought up as a form of religion particularly unattractive to a person of literary talent. 'This pietism is often combined with crude and materialistic ideas about a future state, and a narrow and injudicious standard of life in this, which could not fail to offend a man or woman who possessed (what many people do not possess) the power of vividly realizing the meaning of the words they use.' With admirable impartiality she points out that George Eliot was equally repelled by the arid teaching of the High Church Oxford Movement--'when a mind is looking about for first principles it will hardly be satisfied by appeals to St Irenaeus or St Chrysostom.'" (98-99)
Wordsworth gives an answer:
"Taking George Eliot as an example, Elizabeth goes on to ask the pertinent question, 'How is the Church to keep or gain a hold on men and women of genius?' Such people will not be attracted by any narrow or inadequate presentation of religious truth: 'There is a sense of the largeness of life, whether from the historical or scientific standpoint, to which popular religion is often painfully out of proportion in its childish and limited view of truth; there is the need of an intellectual as well as of an emotional basis for our faith or opinion, the disgust at petty and illogical narrowness, and no presentation of religion will ever satisfy the highest minds which is not at once philosophical, historical, and practical.'" (99-100)
Wordsworth calls for "'an enlightened, a scholarly, a thinking clergy,'" (100) which she says must keep abreast of women's education, lest they lose this demographic. Her deep faith, and principalship of a denominational college, did not prevent her from welcoming students who confessed to her that they had lost their faith; she only required that they come to breakfast neatly attired with brushed hair.
Wordsworth was a personality, difficult to capture on paper, but wonderful to read about. She was a "late bloomer," coming to the principalship at 39, but she had already blossomed in her work as a bishop's daughter, which required a rather daunting level of hospitality to various personalities and navigation between all the potholes of clerical relations. Reluctant Pioneer was a very interesting read for its information about the history of LMH and account of Wordsworth's life. I appreciated how Battiscombe handled the delicate parts of the story. I only wish she had cited her sources better and more often.
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