In search of the new woman : middle-class women and work in Britain, 1870-1914 / Gillian Sutherland.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sutherland, Gillian, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women--Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century.

Women.

Women--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Middle class women--Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century.

Middle class women.

Middle class women--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Women employees--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Women employees.

Women employees--Great Britain--History--20th century.

Women white collar workers--Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century.

Women white collar workers.

Women white collar workers--Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Social conditions.

History.

Great Britain--Social conditions--19th century.

Great Britain.

Great Britain--Social conditions--20th century.

Physical Description:

xi, 187 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Summary:

"The 'New Women' of late nineteenth-century Britain were seen as defying society's conventions. Studying this phenomenon from its origins in the 1870s to the outbreak of the Great War, Gillian Sutherland examines whether women really had the economic freedom to challenge norms relating to work, political action, love and marriage, and surveys literary and pictorial representations of the New Woman. She considers the proportion of middle-class women who were in employment and the work they did, and compares the different experiences of women who went to Oxbridge and those who went to other universities. Juxtaposing them against the period's rapidly expanding but seldom studied groups of women white-collar workers, the book pays particular attention to clerks and teachers and their political engagement. It also explores the dividing lines between ladies and women, the significance of respectability and the interactions of class, status and gender lying behind such distinctions"-- Provided by publisher.

"The 'New Women' of late nineteenth-century Britain were seen as defying society's conventions. Studying this phenomenon from its origins in the 1870s to the outbreak of the Great War, Gillian Sutherland examines whether women really had the economic freedom to challenge norms relating to work, political action, love and marriage, and surveys literary and pictorial representations of the New Woman. "-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1. 'A sort of bogey whom no-one has ever seen'? The nature of the search

2. 'All that she sees before her... is teaching'; formal schooling and its opportunities

3. 'The exercise of what may be termed her maternal faculties: public service and 'caring' occupations

4. 'Impossible for a lady to remain a lady': art, literature and the theatre

5. 'The real social divide existed between those who... dirtied hands and face and those who did not: women white collar workers (I)

6. 'A beggarly makeshift, but for me it was wealth beyond price': women white collar workers (II)

7. Ladies and women

8. Some conclusions: degrees of freedom

Sources and select bibliography.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107092792

1107092795

9781107467347

1107467349

OCLC:

889941175

Online:

Cover image