Musical Women in England, 1870-1914: "Encroaching on All Men's Privileges", and: Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home (review)

Paula Gillett's Musical Women in England, 1870-1914 and Phyllis Weliver's Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900 are new additions to a growing body of interdisciplinary work on female singers and musicians, historical and literary. In keeping with the current interest in the figure of the prima donna, Gillett examines the careers of important nineteenth-century divas as well as Victorian fictions that feature professional singers. Much of this territory has been covered before, and while Gillett does offer new material and observations about divas, the great attraction and importance of this book is its thoroughly researched and thoughtful analysis of Victorian debates around women and music as well as its valuable and highly detailed study of the growth in the number of women musicians (and composers), the expansion of their opportunities for training and public performance, and the increase during this period in the number of women music teachers (such teaching was increasingly seen as a way for young middle-class women who had to work to retain a bit of their gentility—even as they were, of course, woefully exploited).

As Gillett shows in admirably reader-friendly prose, music was as highly gendered a realm as any other in Victorian culture. Publications as varied as The Girls' Own Paper, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Illustrated London News joined the music press and women's press in commenting on such topics as which instruments a girl could play while still retaining her femininity, the function of music as a tranquilizer for woman's excitable nature, the role of music in domestic life, women's capacity (or lack thereof) for musical interpretation and composition, the growing phenomenon of women music teachers, and the increasing desire of well-trained female musicians—we might call them New Women musicians—to perform publicly and make a living at it. Much of the commentary paralleled other debates, the debate over higher education, for example, and, not surprisingly, much of this commentary was negative.

Of course singing and playing the piano were part of a girl's education, and these skills were among the adornments that helped a young woman succeed on the marriage market. Gillett lays out how growing numbers of these women, either from necessity (if, say, a father died or lost his money) or personal desire, sought to expand their musical lives and opportunities. During the 1880s, for example, the violin became an increasingly popular alternative to the piano—this in spite of the centuries-old association of the violin with the devil, the long tradition of figuring the violin as a woman caressed by the player, and arguments that playing the violin distorted the beauty of a woman's form.

Women with means began to study seriously at conservatories during the period, and some of these women wanted to perform for a public greater than that of the drawing room. Gillett provides a fascinating account of the ways some women used musical philanthropy (playing in charity concerts or concerts for audiences of the East End poor) to circumvent prohibitions against the self-display of public performance under cover of engaging in traditional female activities like charity. She charts out, as well, the growth of women's orchestras and ensembles (some amateur, some professional) which developed in response to the reluctance of most professional groups to hire women.

Gillett also attends to how issues around women and music and the figures of the female performer and music teacher were handled in the fiction of...