My mother read law at Cambridge in the early 50s, she never said that much about it but your article made me realise she was one of the first to gain a degree. Thank you 😘
Gosh, that's impressive, Jo. From my reading I think women students just made the most of being there, which is good! But there was such a long struggle to get those degrees.
"The ladies’ wish for an education could be indulged by Cambridge gentlemen as long as it seemed a light-hearted game, but with proof of their intellectual ability, it became a more serious matter." Fascinating perspective, Ann.
Thank you Wendy! It was no wonder that Muriel & other women occasionally dreamed of storming the Senate House (if you'll forgive the associations). But they had a great love for & loyalty to their university.
I love the board game. The detail that really delighted me is that editing an academic journal puts you out of the game. I’m off to share this with my partner, who edited the Journal of Child Health Care for 23 years…
Aha, Muriel knew a thing or two! Thanks Jon. It's almost as if she was telling herself to avoid such pitfalls, if she wanted to become 'head of house' (Girton) which she clearly did. Nowadays colleges often tend to elect someone outside the system, I think.
To my absolute shame, I read MC Bradbrook on Shakespeare at university and I didn't realize she was a woman...Thank you for this enlightening post that opened my eyes to this extraordinary woman.
Oh that's so nice to hear, Deborah, thank you! To my own shame I hadn't heard of her either, until the University put on this exhibition in 2019, and her 'ladder of success' game caught my eye (rather than her scholarly books!). I was pleased that the organizers highlighted the work of Mary Paley Marshall in this website, following my suggestion.
I currently live in Cambridge and visiting Girton has been a pleasure. The dining hall, full of paintings of female academics, & corridors full of photographs of pioneering female scholars, is quite a change from being an undergraduate at Merton, Oxford, which was only just celebrating 40 years of admissions for women & which was full of paintings of rather dour looking men. It made me realise how special educational institutions for women were and how impressive the women attending them.
Many thanks Arden, glad you are enjoying Cambridge, and Girton is wonderful. Since most Cambridge colleges, like those of Oxford, only admitted women 40 years ago there just aren't that many portraits! But I think they are making up for lost time. Selwyn College Cambridge named a meeting room after Kathleen Lyttelton for her suffrage work with Millicent Fawcett (& she also happened to be the first Master's wife).
This was a riveting read Ann, thank you so much. The effigy of the 'Girtonite' is horrendous. Oddly enough I've been researching aspects of public condemnation for a post later this week. It's almost always men - and even if men were criticising other men it was often because they were perceived to have allowed women to get the better of them. Misogyny ran deep and strong and it still does.
Love the game — does #5, “gets converted” refer to something academic?
This whole piece reminds me of a conversation I had as an undergrad with a woman who was in her late 30s or early 40s. She was finishing up a PhD then, but had done her undergraduate studies quite late, and the same with starting the PhD. She explained that she came from an upperclass British family, had gone to a fancy boarding school for secondary school, and then been sent to Oxford — to attend secretarial school in the town of Oxford.
Her parents had forbidden her from applying to the university itself. She was at most 20 years older than me, probably less.
Muriel became an active member of the Church of England while an undergrad, and kept it up for the rest of her life, I think. There's more in the obit, which I belatedly included! How interesting that the person you met was forbidden to study at the university, but presumably secretarial college there was a good way of meeting & marrying an Oxford man! Shocking. Good for her that she got to study what she wanted to in later life.
Oh, so the converted thing was literal! Oh dear. I was guessing that maybe female students “converted” to being matriculated students after X number of years, or their degrees were converted to Masters degrees, or some such thing. Shows how easy it is to go astray when trying to make things complicated! (Though I did also think of Brideshead Revisited and wonder if it was fashionable in her year to convert from Church of E to Roman Catholicism, or something along those lines.)
Thanks for the explanation, and for the entire fascinating story.
Yes, that was precisely it, about Oxford. She said that it was planned that she would go to dances and so forth with the Oxford men, meet someone that way, and get married. I was stunned at the whole story: it seemed from another century, not something that could have happened to someone not so very much older than I was.
Amazing that this idea of 'marrying well' carried through to modern times... which again shows that though privileged in terms of wealth, many women weren't encouraged to develop their intellectual talent as it was considered they'd be more useful as wives & mothers... and probably Oxbridge men were encouraged to study subjects like law, because their fathers did!
Yes, I wonder if there was a resurgence in Christian conversion among English university students in the 1920s/30s? Another interwar subject worth looking into, thanks Maria!
I suppose also that I was used to thinking of university as something that one could be unfairly kept from due to lack of privilege, not excess of privilege.
The great historical novelist Dorothy Dunnet never got to do a degree at all, as I recall, for basically the same reason.
I have a friend in her late sixties whose father (a QC no less) wouldn't let her go to university on the grounds that "she'd end up with her hands into sink anyway". After being 'finished' in Switzerland she went on to do degrees in law and psychology. She's one of the cleverest women I know.
That is mind-boggling, and upsetting. I'm so glad that she went on to do her degrees anyway — but late 60s now! So this likely happening as late as the 1070s. Insane. Do you know if she went ahead at the time, despite what her father said, or if she had to wait until she was older?
It's extraordinary, isn't it, but just a fact that a daughter's education was so often seen as an 'add-on' or expensive, time-consuming luxury, when she would inevitably end up as a wife and mother, and not turn it into capital gain. Virginia Woolf spent years being frustrated that her father had blocked her chance of university, though later recognized that he did encourage her and Vanessa's creativity. But even so!
I’ve been thinking about this and how free availabile contraception has totally changed things. The publication of ‘ Married Love’ in 1918 was a seminal moment. Once you can choose whether to have children or not then a world of other choices opens up. No wonder the modern patriarchs feel threatened.
My mother read law at Cambridge in the early 50s, she never said that much about it but your article made me realise she was one of the first to gain a degree. Thank you 😘
Gosh, that's impressive, Jo. From my reading I think women students just made the most of being there, which is good! But there was such a long struggle to get those degrees.
"The ladies’ wish for an education could be indulged by Cambridge gentlemen as long as it seemed a light-hearted game, but with proof of their intellectual ability, it became a more serious matter." Fascinating perspective, Ann.
Thank you Wendy! It was no wonder that Muriel & other women occasionally dreamed of storming the Senate House (if you'll forgive the associations). But they had a great love for & loyalty to their university.
I love the board game. The detail that really delighted me is that editing an academic journal puts you out of the game. I’m off to share this with my partner, who edited the Journal of Child Health Care for 23 years…
Aha, Muriel knew a thing or two! Thanks Jon. It's almost as if she was telling herself to avoid such pitfalls, if she wanted to become 'head of house' (Girton) which she clearly did. Nowadays colleges often tend to elect someone outside the system, I think.
To my absolute shame, I read MC Bradbrook on Shakespeare at university and I didn't realize she was a woman...Thank you for this enlightening post that opened my eyes to this extraordinary woman.
Oh that's so nice to hear, Deborah, thank you! To my own shame I hadn't heard of her either, until the University put on this exhibition in 2019, and her 'ladder of success' game caught my eye (rather than her scholarly books!). I was pleased that the organizers highlighted the work of Mary Paley Marshall in this website, following my suggestion.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/the-rising-tide
Thank you for the link. Goodness, there are so many women whose light has been hidden.
I know! We are chipping away at the shadows…
I currently live in Cambridge and visiting Girton has been a pleasure. The dining hall, full of paintings of female academics, & corridors full of photographs of pioneering female scholars, is quite a change from being an undergraduate at Merton, Oxford, which was only just celebrating 40 years of admissions for women & which was full of paintings of rather dour looking men. It made me realise how special educational institutions for women were and how impressive the women attending them.
Many thanks Arden, glad you are enjoying Cambridge, and Girton is wonderful. Since most Cambridge colleges, like those of Oxford, only admitted women 40 years ago there just aren't that many portraits! But I think they are making up for lost time. Selwyn College Cambridge named a meeting room after Kathleen Lyttelton for her suffrage work with Millicent Fawcett (& she also happened to be the first Master's wife).
And why is it -still- 40 respective 20% in 2025?
I know! Equality isn't there yet, alas.
Reading the Stack it seems Cambridge is always behind and very much so
This was a riveting read Ann, thank you so much. The effigy of the 'Girtonite' is horrendous. Oddly enough I've been researching aspects of public condemnation for a post later this week. It's almost always men - and even if men were criticising other men it was often because they were perceived to have allowed women to get the better of them. Misogyny ran deep and strong and it still does.
Thanks Liz, just spotted this 3 months later! I will be interested to read your post.
Love the game — does #5, “gets converted” refer to something academic?
This whole piece reminds me of a conversation I had as an undergrad with a woman who was in her late 30s or early 40s. She was finishing up a PhD then, but had done her undergraduate studies quite late, and the same with starting the PhD. She explained that she came from an upperclass British family, had gone to a fancy boarding school for secondary school, and then been sent to Oxford — to attend secretarial school in the town of Oxford.
Her parents had forbidden her from applying to the university itself. She was at most 20 years older than me, probably less.
Muriel became an active member of the Church of England while an undergrad, and kept it up for the rest of her life, I think. There's more in the obit, which I belatedly included! How interesting that the person you met was forbidden to study at the university, but presumably secretarial college there was a good way of meeting & marrying an Oxford man! Shocking. Good for her that she got to study what she wanted to in later life.
Oh, so the converted thing was literal! Oh dear. I was guessing that maybe female students “converted” to being matriculated students after X number of years, or their degrees were converted to Masters degrees, or some such thing. Shows how easy it is to go astray when trying to make things complicated! (Though I did also think of Brideshead Revisited and wonder if it was fashionable in her year to convert from Church of E to Roman Catholicism, or something along those lines.)
Thanks for the explanation, and for the entire fascinating story.
Yes, that was precisely it, about Oxford. She said that it was planned that she would go to dances and so forth with the Oxford men, meet someone that way, and get married. I was stunned at the whole story: it seemed from another century, not something that could have happened to someone not so very much older than I was.
Amazing that this idea of 'marrying well' carried through to modern times... which again shows that though privileged in terms of wealth, many women weren't encouraged to develop their intellectual talent as it was considered they'd be more useful as wives & mothers... and probably Oxbridge men were encouraged to study subjects like law, because their fathers did!
Yes, I wonder if there was a resurgence in Christian conversion among English university students in the 1920s/30s? Another interwar subject worth looking into, thanks Maria!
Fun! The game does seem to suggest that she was speaking about an experience everyone would recognize. I look forward to reading it if you write it!
I suppose also that I was used to thinking of university as something that one could be unfairly kept from due to lack of privilege, not excess of privilege.
The great historical novelist Dorothy Dunnet never got to do a degree at all, as I recall, for basically the same reason.
I have a friend in her late sixties whose father (a QC no less) wouldn't let her go to university on the grounds that "she'd end up with her hands into sink anyway". After being 'finished' in Switzerland she went on to do degrees in law and psychology. She's one of the cleverest women I know.
That is mind-boggling, and upsetting. I'm so glad that she went on to do her degrees anyway — but late 60s now! So this likely happening as late as the 1070s. Insane. Do you know if she went ahead at the time, despite what her father said, or if she had to wait until she was older?
When I first knew her in the late 70s she was doing an OU degree. So yes, she had to wait until she was financially independent
Wow. So the same as the woman I knew. I think that she had also done a Swiss finishing school. Unbelievable, really.
It's extraordinary, isn't it, but just a fact that a daughter's education was so often seen as an 'add-on' or expensive, time-consuming luxury, when she would inevitably end up as a wife and mother, and not turn it into capital gain. Virginia Woolf spent years being frustrated that her father had blocked her chance of university, though later recognized that he did encourage her and Vanessa's creativity. But even so!
I’ve been thinking about this and how free availabile contraception has totally changed things. The publication of ‘ Married Love’ in 1918 was a seminal moment. Once you can choose whether to have children or not then a world of other choices opens up. No wonder the modern patriarchs feel threatened.
Agreed, Liz. Marie Stopes might have done it (partly) for eugenics reasons, but what a great thing she did for women.