by Anne Summers
20 Cited in JA Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, MA thesis, Monash University, 1966, p. 37.
21 University of Adelaide, Calendar, 1880, p. lxix.
22 Calendar.
23 Geoffrey Blainey, A Centenary History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1957, p. 59.
24 Blainey, A Centenary History of the University of Melbourne, p. 87.
25 Cited in W Vere Hole & Anne H Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, Halstead, Sydney, 1953, p. 32.
26 A similar trend was observable in the school system where in the late 1870s science subjects were included in the syllabus for the first time and became examinable for matriculation; at about the same time several corporate schools were established for girls in which they could study subjects previously limited to boys’ grammar schools. A Barcan, ‘The Australian tradition in education’, in RWT Cowan (ed.), Education for Australians, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1966, p. 13.
27 Letter signed ‘Currency Lass’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 January 1841.
28 Catherine Spence, Some Social Aspects of South Australian Life, The Register, Adelaide, 1878, p. 10.
29 John Tregenza, Professor of Democracy, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1968, p. 79.
30 Tregenza, Professor of Democracy, p. 83.
31 AG Austin, Australian Education 1788–1900, Pitman, Melbourne, 1961, p. 179.
32 Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 41.
33 Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 57.
34 The Bulletin, 10 May 1890.
35 Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 33.
36 In Loreto Eucalyptus Blossoms, December 1886; cited in Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 177.
37 Ernest Scott, A History of the University of Melbourne, Melbourne University Press in association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1936, pp. 99, 103.
38 Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 142.
39 Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’. What was probably not revealed was that the Sydney Medical School did not then provide a very warm welcome for its female students. One professor consistently failed all women in their final year and it was not until he went on sabbatical leave in 1893 that the first woman doctor graduated from Sydney, two years after Adelaide and Melbourne had produced their first graduates, even though they had opened their schools to women much later. Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 35.
40 Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 144. Scott, A History of the University of Melbourne, p. 104.
41 Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 144.
42 Cited in Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 94.
43 Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 87.
44 JE Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales, 1880–1914’, MA thesis, University of New England, 1967, p. 116.
45 Cited in Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 108.
46 See Scott, A History of the University of Melbourne, p. 102; and Appendix in Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney.
47 For example, papers like The Australian Woman’s Sphere (1903 to 1909) edited by Vida Goldstein and its successor, also edited by her, The Woman Voter (1909 to 1919) both in Victoria, and to a lesser extent The Dawn (1888 to 1905) edited in New South Wales by Louisa Lawson, had regular notes on women who pioneered or were otherwise successful in any field of endeavour outside the home.
48 Hole & Treweeke, The History of the Women’s College within the University of Sydney, p. 118.
49 Cited in Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 172.
50 Craufurd D Goodwin, Economic Enquiry in Australia, Australia and New Zealand Book Company, Sydney, 1969, pp. 330–9.
51 Tregenza, Professor of Democracy, p. 79.
52 Cited in Hicks, ‘Evidence and contemporary opinion’, p. 141.
53 Cited in Austin, Australian Education 1788–1900, p. 255.
54 Austin, Australian Education 1788–1900, p. 256.
55 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales, 1880–1914’, p. 252.
56 Reported in the Australian Journal of Education, June 1910.
57 When King’s School was established in Sydney in 1832, the principal was forced ‘to compromise with colonial practicality’ and instead of the purely liberal education he had hoped to give his students had to introduce scientific and commercial subjects alongside the classical studies. Barcan, ‘The Australian tradition in education’, p. 7. Similarly when Sydney University was founded in 1850 the foundation professors fought against a hostile press and public which favoured an instrumental kind of education designed to keep society supplied with a constant stream of professionally qualified graduates in the shortest possible time. The Arts degree which was all the University initially offered was considered to be time and money wasted. JJ Auchmuty, ‘The idea of a university in its Australian setting. A historical survey’, The Australian University, July 1963, p. 148.
58 Barcan, ‘The Australian tradition in education’, p. 15.
59 Nance Cooper, ‘The education of women’ in Donald McLean (ed.), It’s People thatMatter: Education for social change, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1969, p. 73.
60 Goodwin, Economic Enquiry in Australia, pp. 339–45.
61 Ethel Puffer Howes, ‘The meaning of progress in the woman movement’, in William L O’Neill, The Woman Movement, Allen and Unwin, London 1969, p. 210. Havelock Ellis gave enthusiastic support to Key’s theories of motherhood in several of his works while she returned the favour by dedicating one of her books to him.
62 Ellen Key, The Renaissance of Motherhood, GP Putnam, New York, 1914, p. 132.
63 Maybanke Anderson, Mother Lore, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1919, p. 5
64 Anderson, Mother Lore, p. 12.
65 Hone, ‘The movement for the higher education of women in Victoria in the later nineteenth century’, p. 171.
66 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales, 1880–1914’, p. 252.
67 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales, 1880–1914’, p. 254.
68 MJ Wood, ‘Reforms in law affecting women and children’ in Louise Brown et al. (eds), A Book of South Australia: Women in the first hundred years, Rigby, Adelaide, 1936, p. 131.
69 Wood, ‘Reforms in law affecting women and children’, p. 130.
70 Peter Spearritt, ‘The kindergarten movement, c. 1890–1972’, unpublished paper, Department of Government, University of Sydney, 1972, pp. 2–3. The first kindergarten in New South Wales had been established in the grounds of the Methodist Ladies’ College, Burwood in 1891. Methodist Ladies’ College, Jubilee Souvenir 1886–1936, Sydney, n.d., p. 17.
71 Spearritt, ‘The kindergarten movement’, pp. 4, 12.
72 Spearritt, ‘The kindergarten movement’, p. 5.
73 Isabel McCorkindale (ed.), Pioneer Pathways, WCTU, Melbourne, 1948, p. 121.
74 . Spearritt, ‘The kindergarten movement’, p. 5a.
75 Maybanke Anderson, ‘Women in Australia’ in Meredith Atkinson (ed.), Australia:Economic and political studies, Macmillan, Melbourne 1920, p. 296.
76 Jessie Ackermann, Australia from a Woman’s Point of View, Cass
ell, London, 1913, p. 91.
77 1903 in New South Wales and South Australia, 1905 in Victoria; Keith Dunstan, Wowsers, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, p. 132.
78 SM Eade, ‘A study of Catherine Helen Spence 1825–1910’, MA thesis, Australian National University, 1971, p. 221.
79 Peter Macarthy, ‘The Harvester Judgement: An historical assessment, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1967, p. 550.
80 Cited in Norman MacKenzie, Women in Australia, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1962, p. 172.
81 MacKenzie, Women in Australia.
82 Cited Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales, 1880–1914’, p. 263.
83 Dunstan, Wowsers, p. 164.
84 Cited in Dennis Shoesmith, ‘“Nature’s Law”: The venereal disease debate, Melbourne, 1918–19’, ANU Historical Journal, December 1972, p. 20.
85 Shoesmith, ‘Nature’s Law’, p. 21.
86 Shoesmith, ‘Nature’s Law’.
87 GT Caldwell, ‘From pub to club: The history of drinking attitudes in New South Wales (1900–1945) and the growth of registered clubs’, ANU Historical Journal, December 1972, p. 25.
11 Feminism and the suffragists
1 The first demands for female suffrage were made before Federation and it was to changes in legislation for which the states were responsible that the feminists first addressed themselves. Even after Federation, the state right to vote remained an urgent priority, for most of the issues that concerned women remained state responsibilities.
2 The vote for women was obtained in the following sequence: Wyoming, US – 1869; Colorado, US – 1893; New Zealand – 1893; South Australia – 1894; Utah, Idaho, US – 1896; Western Australia – 1899; Australia – 1902 New South Wales – 1902; Tasmania – 1903; Queensland – 1905; Finland – 1906; Victoria – 1908; England – 1918 for women aged 30 and over, 1928 for full adult suffrage; US – 1920.
3 Peter Biskup, ‘The female suffrage movement in Australia’, BA Honours thesis, University of Western Australia, 1959, p. 68.
4 Ian Turner, ‘Prisoners in petticoats: A shocking history of female emancipation in Australia’ in Julie Rigg, (ed.), In Her Own Right, Nelson, Melbourne, 1969, p. 20.
5 Sally White, ‘Women’s electoral lobby’, Dissent, no. 28, Winter 1972, p. 40.
6 R Gollan’s Radical and Working-Class Politics (Melbourne University Press, 1967) is one labour history that devotes some attention to the feminist movement, but he is a singular example of an historian caring to comment upon this phase in our political history. By contrast, there is hardly an aspect of union and parliamentary politics involving men that has not been eagerly taken up, rigorously examined, carefully analysed and passionately dissertated upon by the hordes of historians of the 1890s who inhabit Australian universities.
7 The most accessible secondary accounts of the Australian suffrage campaign are Norman MacKenzie, Women in Australia, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1962, Chapters 1–3; Dianne Scott, ‘Womanhood suffrage: The movement in Australia’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 53, part 4, December 1967, pp. 299–322; Peter Biskup, ‘The Westralian Feminist Movement’, University Studies in History, vol. 3, no. 3, October 1959, pp. 71–84. MacKenzie’s account is inadequate because of its virulent anti-feminism; Scott’s is more reliable, but because of the enormous field she has to cover, she concentrates only on the progress of the legislation in the various states; Biskup discusses only one state.
8 The activities of the feminist movements in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have been the subject of several higher degree theses, but unfortunately these unpublished works are not accessible to general readers. The feminist movements of Britain and the US have been meticulously examined and voluminous accounts have been published. The New Zealand suffrage campaign was the subject of a recent book: Patricia Grimshaw, Women’s Suffrage in New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Wellington, 1972. Australian students still do not have the basic tools – scholarly histories, popular accounts and biographical works – with which to begin researching and assessing the first wave of feminist politics in this country.
9 Gertrude O’Connor, Genesis of Women’s Suffrage, Typescript, Mitchell Library, QA920.7/L, June 1923, pp. 5, 6. Ms O’Connor is Louisa Lawson’s daughter.
10 For accounts of the harassment Louisa Lawson suffered because of her championship of women workers in the printing trade, see J Hagan, ‘An incident at the Dawn’, Labour History, no. 8, May 1965, pp. 19–21.
11 These graduates chose either to form small self-protective groups within the women’s movement, as they did within the Sydney Women’s Club, or they completely rejected any form of union in favour of individually striving to achieve their particular ends. Their fear of being labelled feminist, and perhaps jeopardising their marriage chances, or reinforcing the frustrated spinster image, probably motivated this attitude. The difference between the feminists, few of whom had a tertiary education, and the university women, was illustrated by their contrary attitudes to Tennyson’s ‘The Princess’, a poem about a college for women whose founders had vowed never to marry and who banned men from the premises. Quotations from this poem appeared frequently in the newspapers and in the speeches of Australian feminists, especially the following couplets:
‘The woman’s cause is man’s; they rise and sink
Together, dwarfed or god-like, bond or free …’
(which was one of the mottoes of the Womanhood Suffrage League)
‘For woman is not undeveloped man,
But diverse …’
The first women’s club at the University of Melbourne was called the Princess Ida Club, the title taken from Gilbert and Sullivan’s satire of the Tennyson poem. The Sydney women were more ambivalent, using one enigmatic line from the poem – the single word ‘Together’ – for their college bookplate.
12 Brief accounts of her life can be found in Sylvia Lawson, ‘Edited, printed and published by women’, Nation, no. 3, 25 October 1958; and Sue Bellamy, ‘The Dawn’, Mejane, no. 1, March 1971. The Bulletin’s comment that, ‘Despite all, Louisa Lawson is essentially a womanly woman, of a characteristically feminine type. Her nature is the groundwork of her son Henry’s; but there is in him the additional element of restless male intensity’, completely discounted the restless intensity that had enabled her to physically survive, bring up a family, engage in political activities and continue to write poetry in addition to bringing out a newspaper for 17 years.
13 Louisa Lawson, ‘A poet’s mother’, Bulletin, 24 October 1896.
14 In fact the majority of Australian suffragists were married or, like Rose Scott and Vida Goldstein, had refused several offers: ‘Life is too short to waste on the admiration of one man,’ wrote Scott – and expressions of contempt for the male sex were rare.
15 Cited in Biskup, ‘The female suffrage movement in Australia’, p. 92. My emphasis.
16 Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales, Annual Report 1892, p. 5.
17 Article on Rose Scott, Sydney Daily Mirror, 6 September 1972. The Factories and Shops Act of 1912 was introduced into the Legislative Assembly by Attorney-General WA Holman. Holman was a frequent visitor to Scott’s salon.
18 JE Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales 1880–1914’, MA thesis, University of New England, 1967, pp. 70–1.
19 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales’, p. 228.
20 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales’, p. 112.
21 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales’, p. 193.
22 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales’, p. 205.
23 Keith Dunstan, Wowsers, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, p. 37.
24 REN Twopeny, Town Life in Australia, Elliott Stock, London, 1883, p. 70.
25 Dunstan, Wowsers, p. 43.
26 Isabel McCorkindale (ed.), Torchbearers, WCTU, Adelaide, 1949, p. 20.
27 Dunstan, Wowsers, p. 43.
28 Dunstan, Wowsers, p. 75.
&nb
sp; 29 . McCorkindale, Torchbearers, p. 113.
30 Cited in Biskup, ‘The female suffrage movement in Australia’, p. 98.
31 ‘A Citizen’ who has no Vote, Woman Suffrage: A Refutation and an Appeal, Australian Christian World Publishing House, Sydney, n.d., (c. 1897), p. 5.
32 Dora Montefiore, From a Victorian to a Modern, E Archer, London, 1927, pp. 30–1.
33 Similar rights were granted in other states as follows: Victoria – Marriage Act, 1912; Queensland – Guardianship and Custody of Infants Act, 1916; South Australia – Guardianship of Infants Act, 1887; Western Australia – Guardianship of Infants Act, 1920; Tasmania – Guardianship and Custody of Infants Act, 1934. Enid Campbell, ‘The legal status of women in Australia’ in Norman MacKenzie, Women in Australia, p. 418.
34 Rose Scott, Address to the Feminist League, Sydney, 12 April 1921, Typescript, Mitchell Library, AS75/2.
35 For example, Maybanke Anderson, Woman’s Suffrage in Australia, August 1924, Typescript, National Library of Australia, Ms. 3447.
36 Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House, whose passionate defence of the right of women to determine their own lives even at the expense of husband and children and caused a furore when it was first produced in Europe, was staged in Sydney in 1890, six years after the first English production.
37 Cobb, ‘The women’s movement in New South Wales’, p. 92.
38 Women’s Literary Society, Programmes, Mitchell Library, 374.23/W.
39 One of the weaknesses of the first feminist movement was its failure to develop a body of theory. John Stuart Mill’s and Mary Wollstonecraft’s books, and some of the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the US, constituted almost the total volume of theoretical writing. This was partly because feminists in most countries were too busy fighting identifiable wrongs to have much interest in what they regarded as mere exegesis. It was probably because few of the early feminists had had a university education that there was no group of intellectuals providing theory as there was in the socialist movement, but this lack of theory was undoubtedly one reason why feminism was not taken seriously by the labour movement. The principles and ideals that guided their fight can be discerned in articles they contributed to journals, and were expounded in pamphlets and manifestos, but the purely theoretical accounts of women’s oppression – attempts to articulate this oppression and relate it to a wider theory of revolutionary change – have all been written by socialists, such as August Bebel, Charles Fourier, Alexandra Kollontai and, more recently, Simone de Beauvoir and Juliet Mitchell. It has only been with the development of women’s liberation that some attempt to expound feminism as a serious theoretical position has been made, in for example, Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, Jonathan Cape, London, 1971.