According to a book, both a lot and very little has changed in the last 100 years.
From the moment I saw The Book of the Woman When it sat on a dusty shelf in a second-hand shop, I knew I had to save it. I was intrigued: At 719 pages, this thick tome – browned at the edges and threatening to fall apart – promised to teach wealthy British women in 1911 everything they needed to know about being a woman, from keeping poultry to raising children to supervising servants.
According to the handwritten inscription, a lucky Miss Wilson received the manual as a Christmas present in 1911, with “best wishes” from a “Mr. Brooke.” I was intrigued by this relationship – but as I leafed through it, I could only assume that this Mr. Brooke had hoped to educate his future wife by sending her a literal manual on womanhood. While the book describes various tasks, there are hints about what a woman’s job was in the early 20th century.th Century. The lady’s goal is not to attract the attention of the crowd. To suppress their loud laughter. To please.
So much has changed! I thought so. But so little had happened.
There is a lot in The Book of the Woman that feels like it’s from another world – the etiquette of business cards, how to make a fur muff. But much of it also feels familiar: the housework and family work that naturally falls to women, the fact that if we want certain careers, we better expect to have to fight for them. While some of the details may be different, it’s clear that the real purpose of this normative book was to tell women how to live – and in that respect we still have work to do.
About pregnancy
When I picked up The Book of the WomanI was heavily pregnant and reading every feminist birth book I could get my hands on (a surefire way to scare yourself about childbirth). I immediately flipped to the baby section to find out what women in the early 20th century were being told, only to find that the section titled “Baby’s Arrival” was only two paragraphs long and contained nothing at all about the act of birth itself.
However, a whole page was devoted to the general topic of clothing during pregnancy: three times as much space as squeezing the thing out. One important aspect of pregnancy that is covered in great detail is whether or not to wear a corset during pregnancy – not for fetal safety reasons, of course, but because “you have to try not to attract attention.” (The author’s advice is to keep the corset, but to wear a less tight one, to give health an extra inch over vanity.)
And ladies, no snacks during this special time (or ever, really), no theatre visits, and for heaven’s sake, please avoid travelling by bus, train or tram towards the end of the last term. Most importantly, “All morbid and sensational literature should be avoided.”
Over a century later, non-medical people still tell pregnant women what to do and when. We’re told to take all the medications, go it without medication, have a birth plan, have no birth plan—meanwhile, some pregnant women aren’t told much at all. But never is there more unwanted advice than during this magical time. When a yoga teacher told me I was having complications giving birth because I “didn’t try hard enough” to do it naturally, it took all my calm not to end it with a flying warrior pose. I imagine I would have felt the same if someone had scolded me for not wearing the right maternity corset.
About Beauty
It is not surprising that a book with such strong opinions on maternity fashion The Book of the Woman also contains a whole lot of beauty tips. The book is packed with valuable tips like: “Try to develop a happier outlook on life if you want to get rid of those annoying little wrinkles between your eyebrows permanently” and “Overwork and worry are a strong hindrance to any beauty culture.” Because we women should of course prioritize the absence of wrinkles over too much brooding. (Just FYI: ugly gray hair is also usually caused by worry – so we really should ALL STOP WORRYING if we want to stay young.)
This chapter also makes it clear who exactly the book is aimed at. One tip that particularly reflects the diversity of the British upper class in 1911 is a guide to bleaching your neck and arms. For real. This involves bathing in milk (the services of dairy cows never end) and applying copious amounts of powder, which basically tells wealthy white women to turn into doughnuts in order to be beautiful.
But don’t worry, ladies, because in 2024, we’re free of the obsession that distorting our faces makes us look ugly, that our bodies have to look a certain way, and why any of that matters. Unless you count the endless “new beauty obsessions” we’re encouraged to spend our hard-earned money on (which, of course, still make us less than men), the smoothing Instagram filters it’s now normal to view the world through, and the constant need to define a bikini body as anything but a body that happens to be wearing a bikini.
About the work
After I had safely brought the book home, I decided to take a closer look at the table of contents. Had I discovered “Careers for Women” and “Women in Politics”? Had I judged too quickly?
It is incredible that Florence B. Jack, the editor of The Book of the Woman, suggests that the woman of 1911 has it pretty good in the working world. There are many vocations for a young lady, unlike those tedious old days. A woman can be a teacher, a private secretary, a florist, a beekeeper, and even a clerk, for heaven’s sake! (Not to be confused with a regular clerk, of course.) She can also pursue the “most feminine profession” of all: a nurse. But no matter what you choose, Jack warns, there are Is one catch – you have to be really good. As a woman, there is no room for mediocrity. (That still applies today.)
As for my own career as a journalist, I might have found it a little harder to break into it in 1911, for Jack warns that the profession is “not as accessible as other professions.” It is possible, but the aspiring journalist must be “really clever.” As for education, a girl should get a job as a typist or secretary in a newspaper office. Leave journalism school to the boys, right? But when a woman succeeds as a reporter, “her intuition and tact are so much greater than those of the average male reporter that she is sometimes entrusted with very special tasks.” Imagine that. An exceptional employee, given more responsibility than the average one. Do we even need feminism anymore?
Shockingly, the book also gives women permission to become doctors in 1911. It just requires that there be no female medical students at Oxford and Cambridge, thank you very much. Apparently, there is also little “old-fashioned prejudice against the ‘woman doctor'” and, even more encouragingly, “there is no ‘undercutting of fees’ which women must apply in most other professions.” So if you want to earn the same as a man for the same work (will we women ever be satisfied?), then start looking into human biology. (Perhaps just don’t consult The Book of the Woman for anatomy lessons.) Oh, and if your raison d’être is to be a surgeon (that prefix is obligatory, of course), you’d better find a new raison d’être, because in this profession, more than any other, “prejudice is one of the most dangerous enemies.” So old news.
By comparison, one would hope that advice on “careers for women” in 2024 would encourage you to take any job you damn well please. But of course, that doesn’t mean women and nonbinary people will be treated the same as their male counterparts. Call me when female pilots are no longer confused with flight attendants and the gender pay gap is eliminated. And that’s before we conflate gender with class, race, geography, sexuality, and everything else that impacts pay and treatment in the workplace.
About Politics
Finally, we come to “Women in Politics”. In 1911, British women could be campaign volunteers, speakers and campaign organisers. But make no mistake – they were not trusted to actually vote, let alone stand as political candidates themselves. Nevertheless, after all the advice on housekeeping, dressing properly and dealing with neighbours, I was surprised that the last section of The Book of the Woman turned to the women’s suffrage movement. Now the men have lost interestit seems to indicate we really think so.
There is a lot of talk about servants and country houses everywhere. The Book of the Womanso it’s no surprise that it wasn’t a book for all women: it was a book for privileged women. But I found it somewhat heartening that one of the final comments is devoted to how the suffragist movement brought together women of all classes and political positions, “the peeress and the scullery girl,” marching together in processions and fighting for what is right. In particular, Jack talks about women’s desire to improve work and wages, so that work could be judged by its “true market value, rather than the sex of the worker.” It’s a passionate exploration of why women want freer lives, and how their involvement in politics can create better circumstances for all of humanity.
In many ways, that’s still true today – and frustratingly, it feels like we’re still fighting for the same things. It also feels like we’re still fighting against the same things too. I don’t know that a Women’s book of 2024, you wouldn’t pay quite as much attention to ironing ruffles. But look at the pages of mainstream publications aimed at women and you’ll find a wealth of articles on how to prep outfits, how to make a charcuterie board bigger than your own house, and how to achieve smoky lips. Aren’t we still being told how to exist? Isn’t this more of the same?
If we didn’t look at this issue as a mere endnote, but instead focused on how we can work together to drive progress for all of us, maybe we could move past all these objective standards of what a woman “should be” and instead check off what we really should know.
