Rising discontent

With the exception of a few individuals, such as author Jane Austen (1775-1817), women are very much in the shadow of men. There is rising discontent with this, however. In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) produces A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, demanding that women be allowed to have some independence from men by being able to earn their own livings, and that girls and women should be given equal education to men. She writes:

The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.

Slowly, public life begins to see the rise to prominence of other women, such as prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845); Mary Carpenter (1807-77), who founds the first girls' reformatory school; novelists Emily and Charlotte Bronte and George Eliot; Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), who rebels against the middle-class path mapped out for her to become a celebrated nurse and administrator; and Fabian socialist Beatrice Webb (1858-1943), who together with her husband Sidney establishes the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Demands for better education for women increase. Bedford College for Women becomes the first higher-education establishment for females in 1846. Cambridge University takes on the women-only Girton College in 1873.

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