From Spinster to Career Woman
Middle-Class Women and Work in Victorian England
Challenging preconceived notions about femininity, respectability, paid employment, and middle-class ladies in Victorian England.
Description
The late Victorian period brought a radical change in cultural attitudes toward middle-class women and work. Anxiety over the growing disproportion between women and men in the population, combined with an awakening desire among young women for personal and financial freedom, led progressive thinkers to advocate for increased employment opportunities. The major stumbling block was the persistent conviction that middle-class women - "ladies" - could not work without relinquishing their social status. Through media reports, public lectures, and fictional portrayals of working women, From Spinster to Career Woman traces advocates' efforts to alter cultural perceptions of women, work, class, and the ideals of womanhood. Focusing on the archetypal figures of the hospital nurse and the typewriter, Arlene Young analyzes the strategies used to transform a job perceived as menial into a respected profession and to represent office work as progressive employment for educated women. This book goes beyond a standard examination of historical, social, and political realities, delving into the intense human elements of a cultural shift and the hopes and fears of young women seeking independence. Providing new insights into the Victorian period, From Spinster to Career Woman captures the voices of ordinary women caught up in the frustrations and excitements of a new era.
Reviews
"In From Spinster to Career Woman, Arlene Young takes us on a fascinating, complex and radical journey exploring women’s work in mid-Victorian England." LSE Review of Books
“From Spinster to Career Woman serves as an excellent model for interdisciplinary research in women’s history and literary studies and will undoubtedly inspire new scholarship on women’s work in Victorian culture.” Victorian Studies
"This excellent book will interest Victorianists across disciplines. Young’s cultural analysis of the rise of the wage-earning middle-class woman sheds new light on an important topic." Susie Steinbach, Hamline University and author of Understanding the Victorians: Politics, Culture, and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain