The Tale of Four Women and the Sexual and Gender Liberation

A century ago was the dawn of the sexual and gender liberation. It was a fitting time as it witnessed the passing of the eponymous Victorian era with the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Like the commencements of all epochs, it was marked by stubborn resistance, resilient reformers and societal backlash. These four women in diametrically opposed manners led the charge for sexual and gender liberation.

Some innovators and crusaders will forever have an unblemished legacy, most however being stubborn and dogmatic in their opposition to the status quo; often create implacable foes in their endeavours. Whilst these traits might be overlooked in the broad sweep of history and change, they will forever be remembered both as bold reformers and as flawed characters.

Main picture: Marie Stopes in her laboratory in 1904

 From our vantage point a mere 100 years after these events, it is difficult to comprehend the social milieu which debased women as second class citizens. None of them had the vote yet but more significantly in many respects women were the goods and chattels of their husbands. Through the long view of history, some women – there were very much the exception rather than the rule – had managed to break free of that mould. Queen Boudicca in AD60 and Queen Elizabeth I in the late 1500’s were such exceptions.

Queen Elizabeth 1

Queen Elizabeth 1

Ironically even the Christian Church devalued the role of women. They were regarded as the “temptress” and hence the villain in the piece. The only love that was condoned was “dispassionate” love that occurred before the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.

It was into this milieu that Marie Stopes was born. In certain respects, it can be claimed that Marie was born with a proverbial silver spoon in her mouth as her father was an academic and her mother was a Shakespearean scholar and woman’s rights campaigner. As an extremely intelligent woman, she became one of the few women to attend university and obtained her DSc in Paleobiology.

 

The mythical Garden of Eden in which dispaasionate love was displaced by passionate love

The mythical Garden of Eden in which dispassionate love was displaced by passionate love

In spite of this supposed enlightened upbringing, at the age of 31 in 1911 when Marie Stopes married a Canadian geneticist by the name of Reginald Gates, she was blissfully unaware of the concept of sex. The first sign of trouble was her steadfast decision to maintain her name out of principle rather than take her husband’s name. What also disturbed him was her support for the suffragette movement. Her “disobedience” in not complying with his dictates and his inability to assert his role as head of the household, was to cause further discomfort.

For Marie’s part what was even more disconcerting was the belief that there was something missing in her marriage: something on which she could not quite put her finger. After 6 months of marriage Reginald had never touched her in any way apart from a perfunctory kiss and she was determined to find out what that “something” was.

Marie had no clue where to start that research but being accustomed to researching topics in her studies, she headed for the public library. As she was certain that the answer lay somewhere in biology and anatomy, she requested that section only to be told that the use of those books was severely restricted and kept under lock and key. This she was duly informed that this action was to prevent the spread of immorality.

Reginald Gates

Reginald Gates

After duly getting her hands on these books, she would go to the library a few times a week to study anatomy and human reproduction. There she discovered the missing jigsaw piece couched in scientific language divorced from its emotional and sexual context.

Marie had discovered sex.

Even in the supposed enlightened household in which Marie had been raised and in spite of her mother being a Woman’s Rights Campaigner, sex was not an issue that was ever discussed let alone the word ever being used.

Armed with this information, she approached the impotent Reginald Gates and demanded a divorce. What she soon discovered was that divorce was only the prerogative of the male and not the female. Being an academic, Marie was able to establish that she could annul the marriage on the basis of non-consummation. Reginald did not contest the annulment and slunk off back to Canada duly chastised.

Cover of Marie Stopes' sensationally successful book entitled Married Love

Cover of Marie Stopes’ sensationally successful book entitled Married Love

Having discovered sex in theory, she then sought to inform other women of this wondrous activity having never physically practiced it herself. She started writing a book to educate but was stymied in that she did not know how to prevent pregnancies. After an address by Margaret Sanger at the Fabian Society on birth control, she sought her advice on contraception.

This book was entitled Married Love, a revelation to most people. Being regarded as “seditious” and “immoral” in many quarters, Marie Stopes failed to get the book printed. Finally Marie was introduced to Humphrey Roe, a philanthropist interested in birth control and he supplied the necessary finance to publish the book. The book was an instant success, requiring five editions in the first year, and elevated Stopes to national prominence.

 On 26 March 1918, the day Married Love was first published, Stopes visited Humphrey Roe, who had just returned from WW1 with a broken ankle after his plane crashed. Less than two months later they were married and Stopes had her first opportunity to practice what she preached in her book.

Humphrey Roe

Humphrey Roe

Of course my recommendation to the two would have been rather to live together for a few years before getting married, but with the prevailing social mores, such behaviour was not tolerated; hence the hasty marriage.

Marie was vehemently opposed to abortion as she regarded abortion as the least acceptable form of birth control procedure.

The blemish in her personal story was her support for the burgeoning science of eugenics. Being a scientist by training, she wholeheartedly supported the premise. The second flaw in her character related to the class divide. Marie was steeply imbued with this concept. As such, her assistance was targeted at the middle classes even though those in greatest need were probably the indigent class.

Francis Galton, the founder of the science of eugenics

Francis Galton, the founder of the science of eugenics

Whereas Marie Stopes was an intellectual, Emily Davison can indubitably be classified as a militant activist. Davison joined the militant Women’s Social and Political Union [WSPU] in 1906 shortly after its establishment by Emmeline Pankhurst. The stance adopted by its members was that women’s suffrage could only be achieved through militant confrontational tactics. As such Emily handily met the criteria for membership. In 1908 she resigned her teaching post to dedicate herself full-time to achieve the WSPU’s aims.

Emily Davison

Emily Davison

Emily rapidly gained a notorious reputation as a militant and violent campaigner. She operated mainly on her own initiative and without the approval – explicit or otherwise – of the WSPU. Her modus operandi evolved from disrupting meetings to ultimately stone throwing and arson. For these offences, she was incarcerated no less than nine times and being force-fed 49 times.

Amongst her most notorious attacks included a violent attack on a luckless David Lloyd George – the Chancellor of the Exchequer – lookalike.

On the 8th June 1940 at the age of 40, Emily struck once more. The target this time was the Epsom Derby or, to be more precise, King George V’s luckless horse Anmer, which was lying third last. As the horse rounded the bend and headed towards the finish line, Emily ducked under the railing and strode out into the path of the charging  horse. As Ms Davison – she would have preferred that appellation infinitely better than Miss, for she was unmarried – grabbed the bridle, the horse tumbled and trampled her underfoot.

Emily Davison at the Epsom Derby

Emily Davison at the Epsom Derby

The horse sprang up but the hapless jockey and the comatose Emily had to be stretchered off the race course.

The horse survived

Emily did not.

Emily died four days later due to a fractured skull and internal injuries caused by the incident

Like other acts of suffragette militancy, Davison’s actions divided public opinion, some admiring her courage, others decrying the disruption of sport, the injury to jockey Herbert Jones and the slight to the King.

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Yet her death had not been in vain. One of the direct consequences was to galvanise male political support for suffrage, in the form of the Northern Men’s Federation for Women’s Suffrage. This initially took the form of a deputation to the Prime Minister Asquith; when this was rebuffed.

Ultimately it was Emily’s untimely death – tragic but unplanned – which spurred the suffragette’s cause.

The 1920’s were not called the Swinging 20’s for nothing. An explosion of relief and live-for-the-here-and-now fever gripped the nation. The British nation would careen on a journey of exuberance, frivolity and gaiety where the so-called Bath and Bubble parties were all the rage.

Jitterbug dancers

Jitterbug dancers

As if making up for lost time and those of their fallen comrades they partied the nights away. Out went the formal dances and in came the shimmie, the heebie-jeebie, the Camel walk and the Black Bottom.

On getting divorced, Kate Meyrick was faced with bleak prospects and her young daughters a future of penury. That all changed when Ma Meyrick as she was affectionately known, decided that she had to educate her daughters at Roedean. To pay their exorbitant fees, she opened a string of successful night clubs such as the Silver Slipper, the Manhattan, The Little Club and the most famous of them all, the “43” in Shoo.

The profits from these ventures was sufficient to pay for her daughters schooling until a poker faced unsmiling Home Secretary with a sobriquet of Jix was appointed. With his eye cast decidedly at the aspects of degeneracy and immorality, he waged a campaign to have them closed.

Kate Meyrick

Kate Meyrick

This he did successfully but not before Kate Meyrick’s daughters had finished their schooling at married into the aristocracy.

For me, Kate Meyrick epitomises the entrepreneurial spirit of the recently liberated 1920’s woman not yet unshackled but with sufficient pluck, determination and perseverance, able for the very first time succeed in business.

To me Ottoline Morrell represents the maverick aristocrat who encouraged many of the up and coming novelists of her day including such notables as DH Lawrence, Virginia Woolf and the venerable poet Siegfried Sassoon. Ottoline shared an open marriage with her husband, both having numerous affairs over the years. Their country house, Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire, was a haven for these artists and intellectuals.

Ottoline Morrell

Ottoline Morrell

Ottoline liked an array of people as variety was the proverbial spice of her life. In this context, variety implied not just people with a different outlook on life but the opposite sex for Ottoline was bisexual.

Ottoline represented a modern woman, shorn of the need for the validation of a man but instead titillating one another with ideas, dreams and hopes. It was into this milieu that a young DH Lawrence was to step. In spite of being the son of a Yorkshire coalminer, Ottoline displayed no inhibitions in engaging him in small talk and finally in long languid walks through the park-like Garsington Manor grounds.

They were inseparable as they ambled, arms entwined, through the Oxfordshire idyll. Both were very enamoured with the other, he with his radiant charm and sharp intellectual, and she, with his unusual view of life.

DH Lawrence

DH Lawrence

Then Ottoline read DH Lawrence’s latest novel Woman in Love. The main female role was played by the domineering and foolish Hermione Roddice. In every way, this was unmistakably a duplicate of Ottoline Morrell and her beloved Garsington Manor.

Ottoline was mortified, nay deeply hurt. How could Lawrence be so despicable and callous as it categorise her in such unflattering terms?

The insouciant relationship was transformed into one of contempt and hatred. Some critics believe that she served also as the model for Lawrence’s most famous heroine, Lady Chatterley. She didn’t have sex in a woodshed, but her fling with “Tiger”, a young stonemason who came to carve plinths for her garden statues, was an open secret among the pathologically gossipy Bloomsbury’s.

Ottoline Morrell, the mistress of Garsington Manor

Ottoline Morrell, the mistress of Garsington Manor

On hearing of her imminent death from bone cancer, Lawrence did attempt reconciliation but Ottoline did not reply. Shortly after her death, Lawrence himself was to die not from heart ache, as is sometimes alleged, but due to something more prosaic, tuberculosis.

Ottoline represented the first cohort of liberated women who were au fait and comfortable with their own sexuality. Women now had the vote but female MPs were like hen’s teeth and women were not yet in senior executive positions but Kate Meyrick had shown an alternative path, that of the entrepreneur.

It would take many more steps until the development of the pill in the sixties finally guaranteed sexual and reproductive freedom for the woman but the path to full equality was still ongoing.

Quote by DH Lawrence

Quote by DH Lawrence

Sadly in many parts of the world, including most of the Arab world, women do not yet even enjoy rudimentary rights. Even the basic right such as the right to drive a car is not afforded to certain women.

But these four women even though mainly unknown to a modern generation exemplify the road to the attainment of that goal.

For that we must salute them.

 

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