Abstract
In July of 1907, Constance Smedley published an article in the Fortnightly Review titled ‘The Hedda Gabler of To-day’. In this essay Smedley defended Ibsen’s heroine, calling her a ‘woman with a strong individuality’ who was ‘goaded to her death by the injustice and falsity of the conventions of her world’.1 Six months later, Frances Low published an angry rejoinder titled ‘The Parlour Woman or the Club Woman?’ where she referred to Hedda Gabler as a ‘travesty of womanhood’ and denounced Smedley for her ‘lively flights’ of irrational argumentation.2 Low objected to Smedley’s contention that domesticity was an intellectual prison, saying, ‘it is tragical to find women belittling and degrading what must ever be their divinest means of “development”’.3 For Frances Low, a woman’s rightful place was commanding the ‘little kingdom’ of home, fulfilling her duty as wife and mother.4
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Notes
Constance Smedley, ‘The Hedda Gabler of To-day,’ Fortnightly Review 82 (July 1907): 79, 83.
Frances Low, ‘The Parlour Woman or the Club Woman?’ Fortnightly Review 83 (January 1908): 116, 113.
Tamara Wagner, Antifeminism and the Victorian Novel (New York: Cambria, 2009), 5.
For discussion of the problem of defining late Victorian feminism and antifeminism, see Valerie Sanders, Eve’s Renegades: Victorian Antifeminist Women Novelists (New York: St. Martin’s, 1996), 1–9,
and Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 4–5.
Julia Bush, Women Against the Vote: Female Anti-Suffragism in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 9.
Early on, the family converted to the Theistic faith of Reverend Charles Annesley Voysey. See Desmond Chapman-Huston, The Lost Historian: A Memoir of Sidney Low (London: Murray, 1936), 22–23.
The People’s Palace building was later absorbed into the University of London complex. See Richard Garnett, Constance Garnett: A Heroic Life (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1991), 64. For more information on the construction and administration of the building, see [James, Miss. M. S. R.], ‘The Peoples’ Palace Library,’ The Library 2 (1890), 341–51.
According to her obituary, Low began publishing her work at age 18 (ca. 1880). It is difficult to identify these early pieces, but in Press Work for Women she refers to an early article on ‘Old School Books’ published in the Evening Standard and an article on the ‘Care and Education of Feeble-minded Children’ in the Times. Frances Low, Press Work for Women (London: Upcott Gill, 1904), 33, 51. The latter article is probably ‘Report of the Royal Commission on the Blind, & c: III. Idiots, Imbeciles, and Feeble-Minded Children,’ Times (July 27, 1889): A4. In addition to the articles I have cited in this chapter, Low published a large body of work in periodicals and newspapers, including the Athenaeum, Hearth and Home, and the Girl’s Realm. See Demoor, Their Fair Share, 30; ‘Notes and News,’ The Author 7–8 (1897): 193;
and Sally Mitchell, ‘Careers for Girls: Writing Trash,’ Victorian Periodicals Review 25, no. 3 (1992): 113.
In her introduction to the book, Low refers to the ‘astonishing amount of attention and interest’ her article garnered. Frances Low, Queen Victoria’s Dolls (London: Newnes, 1894), 1. The book was published by George Newnes, general editor of the Strand Magazine.
Frances Low, ‘Women Artists of the Day,’ Windsor Magazine 9 (February 1899): 283.
Frances Low, ‘The Receiving Room of the London Hospital,’ English Illustrated Magazine 152 (May 1896): 175.
Frances Low, ‘How Poor Ladies Live,’ Nineteenth Century 41 (March 1897): 405.
Frances Low, ‘How Poor Ladies Live: A Rejoinder and a “Jubilee” Suggestion,’ Nineteenth Century 42 (July 1897): 168.
Frances Low, ‘A Remedy for Baby-Farming,’ Fortnightly Review 63 (February 1898): 286.
For background on the club, see David Rubinstein, Before the Suffragettes: Women’s Emancipation in the 1890s (New York: St. Martin’s, 1986), 224;
and Elizabeth Crawford, The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide, 1866–1928 (London: University College London Press, 1999), 129–30.
See Demoor, Their Fair Share, 19–21; and Hilary Fraser, Stephanie Green, and Judith Johnston, Gender and the Victorian Periodical (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 40. For a discussion of the broader discourse on journalistic careers for girls at the fin de siècle, see Mitchell, ‘Careers for Girls.’
Frances Low, ‘A Woman’s Criticism of the Women’s Congress,’ Nineteenth Century 46 (August 1899): 201.
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© 2012 Alexis Easley
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Easley, A. (2012). Anti/Feminism: Frances Low and the Issue of Women’s Work at the Fin de Siècle. In: Gray, F.E. (eds) Women in Journalism at the Fin de Siècle. Palgrave Studies in Nineteenth-Century Writing and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137001306_13
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