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Any great change must expect opposition because it shakes the very foundation of privilege. —Lucretia Mott (1793–1880)
When she said goodbye to her father last night, she felt like a sheet of paper folded in half and torn roughly along the crease. Two smaller versions of herself exist now, each with an edge that is undefined and feathery.
Nobody could ever label Beatrice an average woman; she has inherited her six-foot stature from her father and her hearty appetite for politics from her mother.
Beatrice may be fluent in ancient Greek, propagate orchids in her own greenhouse, attend debates in the House of Commons, and type begging letters on behalf of Serbian orphans, but she has never lived alongside other young women.
What she has discovered of friendship comes from observing her mother’s relationships. It occurs to her that these are rather like cocoa; some are too strong, some too weak, and some spoil if left too long. Some even burn the tongue.
she sees an unremarkable woman with hooded eyes, flat chest, and hair the pallor of weak tea. A woman dressed in a secondhand academic gown and shoes that don’t quite fit, trying out a life that isn’t quite hers.
What they do not appreciate is that there is a dead weight inside her that just will not budge in London. If she remains, Otto imagines it dragging her thrashing to the bottom of the Thames. Oxford is her life buoy.
She adores the clarity of mathematics, the certainty of right and wrong.
Miss Theodora Greenwood English
Miss Marianne Grey English
Miss Beatrice Sparks PPE
Miss Ottoline Wallace-Kerr Mathematics
Beatrice has an indistinct jaw, curious eyes, and ruddy cheeks. Her fingers are dappled blue with ink.
Marianne, in contrast, has a long neck and a pale, freckled face. She looks fragile and insubstantial, like a handkerchief worn over time to a mesh of delicate threads.
And yet for some reason she cannot fathom, he insists on appearing everywhere she goes.
Words are flimsy things, easily manipulated, open to interpretation.
Beatrice’s infernal and wearying interest in everything.
“We’ve waited sixty years for this moment,” says an elderly woman, seizing Beatrice’s hand and shaking it vigorously.
Beatrice’s generation is benefiting from years of lobbying, militancy, suffering, and protest by women like her who refused to accept the status quo.
“Bertrand Russell puts it quite well,” says Otto. “He says it’s a shame that gossips are obsessed with people’s hidden vices when what they ought to be looking out for are their hidden virtues.”
“Ubi concordia, ibi victoria, ladies. Where there is unity, there is victory.”
Marianne feels hope nudging her ankles like a cat.
“He describes the rules as ‘equality with separation.’ It will make Oxford a laughingstock.”
mutual reliance and constant company are new concepts to her, and sometimes she finds herself in desperate need of a moment alone—no doubt something her mother would consider a weakness.
One must not pollute the education of young men, after all.
Vows are sworn to ensure that they never encounter “fire or flame.” If only Charles and George had been afforded such value.
It is another tiny grain of sand added to the bucket of progress. The bottom of the bucket is almost covered.
often ask myself,” she begins, “if women had always been taught to paint, sculpt, publish, report, write, calculate, translate, and experiment, what kind of world would we live in now? “And how will we ever know the contribution of women to the great scientific and cultural achievements of the past? What about the women who were instrumental in listening, editing, advising, inspiring, recording, and assisting famous men? Women who have been written out of history, their contributions unrecorded and unvalued. “I put it to you that a country is only truly democratic if opportunity is not
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All the decent ones went to France and came back as wrecks—just like the men.
only has she too much to catch up on in terms of work and sleep, but she needs an hour or two of quiet contemplation to manage the transition between her two very different lives.
Otto admires Miss Rogers’s vitality and the way she views life as something to be seized. It rarely happens that Otto cannot get a word in edgeways.
What’s the point in fighting as hard as we are if it’s all thrown away over a love affair?”
“Isn’t it comforting to think that numbers and musical notes unite so many people around the world, regardless of what language they speak?” “I would be more comforted,” Otto replies, “if their leaders weren’t so eager to blow each other’s heads off.”
It is no surprise that the noun friend is derived from an ancient root word meaning to love, that it is etymologically bound to the word free. These marvelous women give her the confidence that what she is doing is right.
“Oh, I think that’s a bit strong, Edith,” says Miss Rix. “All war work is valid. Well done to you, Beatrice.”
She presses the coin to her lips. Persistence and ingenuity. She will not forget.
Education is politics,
No man is worth losing a place at Oxford whether he has returned from the dead or not.
And that is the moment the outing ceases to be fun for her anymore: when the distance between the cold stone steps and her warm bed suddenly seems insurmountable.
As she pulls on her nightgown, a Herculean task, her eyes are already closed.
She would call out, but her mouth is full of something strange, and someone has tied her down by the hands.
What Marianne really wants to say is that misogyny is like the mice under the floorboards at the rectory, scuttling about unseen but never far away.
Sometimes I have to hide away in my room because I need to be quiet. As if I’ve eaten too much and feel uncomfortable and have to sleep it off. Is that very odd?” Otto groans. “I do that all the time, you idiot. Friendship is like this quilt—cozy mainly, but it can also be utterly stifling. I can assure you, the need to escape is entirely normal.”
Perhaps one day a woman’s appearance or class will not matter so much in politics, she muses, but right now it is the votes that count, and they must be tactical.
Grumbles of discontent evolve into heated debate. Beatrice is in her element.
The MP who follows is clearly fond of the sound of his own voice, which is decidedly whining and nasal.
“Women’s colleges will never be well funded as they do not have a history of benefactors or endowments. There can be no income from land or investments. How can they ever compete with men’s colleges on an equal footing? They will drag this university down.
“Gentlemen, would you like to see the Oxford Union Society taken over by women? Knitting in the chamber, having tea parties in the library? Because that is where the admission of women to Oxford will lead, I can assure you!” There is a burst of laughter, applause, and shouting.
Grounds herself in the mundane.
“We don’t all go to Oxford to become Marie Curie. Most of us are ordinary people grasping the opportunity of an extraordinary education—and that goes for the men too.”
