From Spinster to Career Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Victorian England by Arlene Young (review)
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From Spinster to Career Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Victorian England opens with talk of revolution. Rather than the industrial revolution, Arlene Young charts a transformation for young women, one which slowly granted them a doorway into the professional world. Young [End Page 167] argues that the need for employment and reconceptualisations of professionalism, the middle-class woman, and femininity worked in dialogue through the second half of the nineteenth century. Focusing on nurses and typewriters, the book demonstrates how demographic determinates, social constructions, and literary representations influenced Victorian middle-class women who worked. Young sheds light on how the rise of the professional nurse and typewriter coincided with and manipulated Victorian "fixations" such as "the Woman Question, the Strong-Minded Woman, the Glorified Spinster, and the New Woman" (13).
Young challenges scholarship by Christopher Keep and Katherine Mullin that predominantly focuses on the historical context and wider conceptions of work in the nineteenth century. Instead, she offers a fresh perspective by bringing literary representations into conversation with social and historical material. She warns that imposing modern views hampers understanding of the radical nature of nursing and typewriting in Victorian England. Moreover, Young argues that the demographic imbalance—the higher proportion of women to men through the nineteenth century—is essential to understanding social debates about women striving to work, challenging critics such as Ellen Jordan who downplay its role. Through her analysis of cultural and literary history, Young convincingly demonstrates how this imbalance shaped Victorian society.
Young quotes from an 1892 issue of the Woman's Herald to establish the methodology integral to the book: "Ideals of womanhood are largely originated by heroines in real life, and by heroines in fiction, as well as by the unconscious but powerful interaction of these two factors" (4). Real and fictional heroines embody Young's premise that the periodical press and fiction contributed to social change and that the powerful interaction between cultural and literary constructions is integral to book history research. The texts under discussion include prose and fiction by well-known midcentury authors and prominent New Woman writers, as well as vignettes from the Idler, but the study also encompasses writers and periodicals on which there is little scholarship, offering a welcome addition to Victorian literary and social history.
The book is effectively structured by pairing historical chapters on the rise of each profession with chapters analysing fiction. Each chapter (re)traces the developments of the nineteenth century, allowing Young to add new dimensions to the revolution rather than simply moving sequentially through the time period. However, as the profession of typewriting did not emerge until much later in the century, there is a slight imbalance of focus between nursing and typewriting, particularly in the number of fictional typewriters. The trope of marriage pervades the book, facilitating effective discussion of the incompatible Victorian constructions of femininity [End Page 168] and professionalism that meet in the figure of the middle-class working woman.
In the first chapter, Young scrutinises shifting conceptions of employment, professionalism, and femininity in the context of the Woman Question. Focusing on the midcentury, she argues for the impact of the demographic gender imbalance and explores the burgeoning opportunities for middle-class women's remunerated employment. Further, Young contends that support or criticism for women's employment in the periodical press was not dictated by simple divisions between genres, readerships, and popularity, highlighting the plethora of voices in these debates.
The second and third chapters offer valuable insights into middle-class women's path to professional nursing. As Young states, "The transition of the lady nurse from selfless volunteer to trained and efficient professional was anything but smooth" (39). Chapter two charts the historical events and debates integral to the professionalisation of nursing, including the Crimean War and the Guy's Hospital crisis in 1880. The Crimean War was influential in cementing associations...
