LOOK CLOSELY: how does Nancy Banister act as part of Meade’s argument for women’s higher education?

CALL A CRITIC: Rosemary Auchmuty, “The Woman Law Student and the Girls’ College Novel”

Although Maggie suggests that Priscilla is her closest friend since Annabel Lee, Nancy often seems to be the only person who can really understand what’s going on inside Maggie’s head—emotionally, at any rate. Without the great intellect of Maggie and Priscilla, Nancy’s greatest gift seems to be her sensitivity towards the emotions of others, paired with the strength of will to put her foot down when it comes to other people’s bad or dangerous behavior. By including Nancy as a major secondary character throughout A Sweet Girl Graduate—a novel meant to encourage young women’s enrollment in higher education—Meade arguably suggests that this emotional intelligence and unflappability are important skills for at least some women to possess in order to create a committed and honest society of learning.

In her discussion of how women’s college novel authors promoted new ideas for female education, critic Rosemary Auchmuty argues:

One way that the authors of women's college novels dealt with the challenge of presenting radical ideas in a framework of social and literary conventionality was to offer a range of central characters ‘who validate plural roles for women: the scholarship girl who will teach, the rich girl devoted to social work, the beauty who will marry.’ Readers could choose whether to identify with the poor, plain, unmarriageable girl from whose viewpoint the tale was told or with the beautiful, brilliant, rich fellow student whom she admired, who got a first and also a husband.<small>[20]</small>

In A Sweet Girl Graduate, the reader might identify with Priscilla (“the scholarship girl who will teach”) or Maggie (“the rich girl” and “the beauty who will marry”). But what if the reader is, like Nancy, not beautiful, not clever, and not particularly exciting when it comes to her financials? Well, then the reader might instead recognize their own value as a kind, good-natured, and unflappable friend.

DEEP DIVE: gender and sexuality in Victorian England

LET’S CONSIDER: how could we read this novel as queer?

HISTORY CHECK: female relationships in the late 19th century

CALL A CRITIC: Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

The “thrilling” manner of Annabel’s “I love you” and her look of “passionate longing” towards Maggie in this scene build upon the very intense emotions we’ve seen from Maggie earlier in the book regarding her relationship with Annabel. Altogether these moments suggest an important question: what was the nature of Maggie and Annabel’s relationship? Was it platonic? Romantic? Sexual?

A contemporary queer studies lens encourages us to explore the unspoken in a literary text when it comes to gender and sexuality. In this case, a queer studies lens could question the apparently heteronormative relationships between Maggie, Annabel, and Hammond. Rather than assuming that “Annabel Lee’s unaccountable depression” following Maggie’s walk with Hammond is due to Annabel’s romantic attraction to Hammond, we could read that depression as due instead to Annabel’s romantic love for Maggie and the worry that Hammond will threaten the two women’s relationship. Such a reading would be supported by Annabel’s passionate language here, as well as the two women’s physical intimacy.

Questions like these are very important to ask as we revisit older texts and challenge our assumptions regarding gender, attraction, and sexuality. Queer identities and relationships have always existed—but we often assume any text written prior to the 1960s couldn’t possibly challenge our society’s dominant heteronormative expectations and strict gender roles.

How can we read this scene—and the book as a whole—differently if we allow ourselves to ask these questions? Could Maggie and Annabel’s relationship read as a romantic and/or sexual one? Could Priscilla’s own lack of concern for romance and sexual attraction read as an asexual identity? How does access to higher education allow women to challenge Victorian conceptions of gender and gender roles?

However—and this is a big however!—we also need to keep in mind the very different social conventions for close female friendships during this time period. In her book Between Women, critic Sharon Marcus explains how difficult it is for us to distinguish between platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships among women during this period, specifically because “the language of Victorian friendship was so ardent, the public face of female marriage so amicable, the comparisons between female friendship and marriage between men and women so constant” (43). For instance:

“Women who were friends, not lovers, wrote openly of exchanging kisses and caresses in documents that their spouses and relatives read without comment. Women regularly kissed each other on the lips, a gesture that could be a routine social greeting or provide intense enjoyment.” (57)

So, what are we to do with scenes such as these? How do we read them? A helpful way to think about approaching a text from multiple points of view is “yes, and...” A queer reading of ASGG is thought-provoking and supported by the text (yes)—and we could enrich our understanding of the text further by considering how the passionate and physically intimate friendships between women at this time both support and challenge that reading. This more fluid understanding of the text also encourages us to consider gender and attraction as spectrums, as opposed to categories with hard lines between them.

HISTORY CHECK: photography during the Victorian era

LET’S CONSIDER: how does Annabel’s memory express itself through image?

Meade’s floral motif recurs here, with the portrait depicting two “flowers” that have been captured “in the perfection of their youthful bloom and beauty.” As we’ve seen elsewhere, Meade gives painting a great deal of power in this book in her portrayal of Priscilla’s first exposures to “real” art—which is to say, paintings executed with great skill and multiple layers of meaning.

During the Victorian era, photography became cheaper and thus commercially viable in 1851 with Frederick Scott Arche’s invention of the wet collodion process.<small>[7]</small> However, the début of the Kodak camera in 1888 by George Eastman revolutionized the photographic market. This new camera came factory-loaded with a sensitized roll-film good for a hundred images, after which the entire camera would be returned to the factory for removal, development, and replacement of the roll-film.<small>[8]</small> By providing the means for casual photography sans darkroom chemistry, the Kodak camera gave Victorians the ability to capture their daily lives with the press of a button—so long as the camera owner could afford the $25 camera (about $685 today) and the $10 processing fee (about $275).<small>[9]</small>

Meade casually mentions photographs a few times in A Sweet Girl Graduate, though most memorably when Rosalind blushingly remembers how she “passionately kissed Maggie’s beautiful face as it looked at her out of a photograph.” <small>[Ch. XI]</small> The only visual traces of Annabel Lee, however, are not photographic, but rather left in the more impressionistic medium of paint: the portrait with Maggie, as well as the unfinished flowers that decorate Priscilla’s room.

Consider the individual strengths and limitations of photography or paint as mediums. Why might Meade have chosen paint as the medium to express Annabel’s lingering influence? How would a photograph of Annabel here have changed your experience of the text?

LOOK CLOSELY: who gets labeled a “prig”? why?

Annabel Lee shares a number of traits with Priscilla: old beyond her years, earnest, noble, honest, and kind towards others. Why, then, is Priscilla “held up to derision, and laughed at as odd, prudish, and uninteresting” during her first year at Heath Hall? <small>[Ch. XXXIII]</small> Admittedly, Priscilla can be very awkward when she’s feeling shy or out of place, prompting her cold behavior upon her initial arrival at St. Benet’s. But we might also consider whether her status as a “prig” could be tied to her lack of physical beauty, as well as her impoverished background attested to by her unattractive dresses and lack of apartment décor. Students who have linked their own self-worth to their appearance, such as Rosalind’s crowd, would necessarily see Priscilla’s lack of concern for appearances as a threat to their own power and status within Heath Hall.

HISTORY CHECK: earlier expectations for women’s learning

CALL A CRITIC: Mavis Reimer, “Worlds of Girls: Educational Reform and Fictional Form in L. T. Meade’s School Stories”

In her discussion of educational reform for girls during the 19th century, critic Mavis Reimer describes how “the traditional diversions of girls—domestic duties, religious devotion, and fashionable accomplishments—all assumed that girls were, to use Françoise Basch’s term, relative creatures.”<small>[4]</small>

Meade’s description of “superficial miscellaneous knowledge” as “[knowing] nothing properly” can be read as a commentary on these earlier expectations for the extent of women’s learning. Per Reimer:

The finishing schools emphasized the acquisition of enough elocutionary and musical skills to allow girls to give pleasing drawing room performances; skill in drawing and painting adequate to producing decorations for the home; knowledge of modern languages sufficient for conversing with the guests a father, brother, or husband might bring home.<small>[5]</small>

The narration clearly states that much of Maggie’s charm and conversational skill results from this type of superficial education—and so, according to her guardian, “you know enough” to enter society in a traditional London season, hopefully to be followed by marriage. (See next annotation.) From the perspective of this girls’ college novel, however, Maggie clearly does not yet know “enough”—and as soon as she meets a young woman who makes her realize this, Maggie thoroughly rejects her guardian’s plans.

DEEP DIVE: women’s self-education during the Victorian era

HISTORY CHECK: women’s “learning for the sake of learning”

We might describe the rise of women’s higher education institutions during the latter part of the 19th century as a long-delayed acknowledgment of women’s desire and ability to learn “for the sake of learning,” as opposed to learning a domestic skill (ex: sewing) or a socializing skill (ex: dancing) that will have some clear utility for her role as wife and/or familial caretaker. After all, the very fact that the women who first attended these colleges weren’t initially allowed real degrees or the chance to use their new knowledge for employment demonstrates most of all women’s desire to learn just for the sake of learning. (Remember that Ivy Williams, the first woman to be called to the English bar, completed her law examinations in 1903—but wasn’t called to the bar until 1922!)

However, women’s desire to learn wasn’t necessarily ignored prior to this point in history. For example, Emily Shore (1819-1839), a young woman devoted to self-education at home, described her typical day of study as consisting of: studying United States history (accompanied by painting her own maps and memorizing her notes on chronology), studying Venetian history and Indian history in the same manner, reading a short biography in French, and also memorizing the New Testament (“This I do while I am curling my hair in the morning.”).<small>[1]</small> A month after recording this schedule in her diary, she decided to add learning Greek and Latin to the list, although she admitted that she also needed “some relaxation in the way of works of imagination”; accordingly, she was “at present engaged with the Tempest.”<small>[2]</small> It is hard to doubt Shore’s sincerity when she says: “Really there is hardly any pleasure equal to that of acquiring knowledge.”<small>[3]</small>

What’s most important to note is Shore’s parents’ lack of censure regarding their daughter’s self-education program, except in regards to the risk of her intensive studies worsening her tuberculosis. They are in no way shocked or disapproving at her lack of femininity. A short play Shore wrote at thirteen years old actually demonstrates a collaborative attempt at self-education between herself and her mother as she attempts to read aloud Sir Joshua’s Discourses for the benefit of both their minds. The play is aptly named “The Interruptions,” however—a title which captures a major challenge faced by women pursuing self-education in the home.

With all this in mind, I suggest considering a couple of questions. Does the “radical” nature of (middle- to upper-class) women’s higher education necessarily just come from acknowledging women’s desire to learn? Or could it also come from actually providing these women with the time and environment they need in order to learn without interruption?

HISTORY CHECK: how female friendships actively facilitated heterosexual marriages

LOOK CLOSELY: why is Maggie unable to move on from Annabel’s death?

CALL A CRITIC: Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

At first read, we might interpret Maggie’s decision here in a pretty straightforward manner: “because Maggie feels guilty about Annabel’s death, she decides she can’t marry Hammond.” However, there may also be another unspoken element at work here when we consider the roles that close friendships played in facilitating marriage in the Victorian era. As critic Sharon Marcus explains in her book Between Women:

By helping each other marry, friends expressed their love for one another in a world that valued female friendship but deemed marriage the most important tie a woman could forge with another adult. […] Some women managed such feelings [of abandoning their friends upon their own marriage] by doing their best to help their friends make good matches, and as a result even the most intense female friendships promoted the hegemony of marriage.<small>[19]</small>

Annabel has already facilitated Maggie and Hammond’s initial attraction by introducing her two friends to one another. However, Maggie also needed to confirm Annabel’s approval of the match—an approval “which was essential to the completion of her happiness.” As the result of Annabel’s death, that question now can never be answered—and thus Maggie cannot commit wholeheartedly to neither marriage nor singlehood. Just as she cannot happily agree to be Hammond’s wife without Annabel’s blessing, the lack of a firm disapproval from Annabel makes it impossible for Maggie to prove herself a steadfast friend by rejecting an engagement with Hammond in order to stand by Annabel and prevent her heartbreak.

As you continue reading, I suggest paying attention to Priscilla and what role(s) she might fill in order to resolve a situation that seemingly can only be concluded by Annabel’s return from beyond the grave.

HISTORY CHECK: the importance of close female friendships in modeling a devoted heterosexual relationship

CALL A CRITIC: Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England

At first glance, this moment might seem a demotion of Annabel Lee, who, previously described as Maggie’s most beloved person in the world, now gets pushed aside when the prospect of marrying a man comes along. However, we could also understand this moment as a way of saying: “You already know how much Maggie loves Annabel Lee—so imagine how much she must love Hammond if she’s saying this.”

In her book Between Women, critic Sharon Marcus discusses how, “because friendship [between women] was so effusive, a wife who named her husband her friend was also expressing the warmth of her love for him.”<small>[16]</small> Although Maggie does not use that specific term “friend” here to describe Hammond, I would argue that Maggie’s love for her friend Annabel still provides an analog (a comparative model) when it comes to Maggie’s love for Hammond. To be clear, Marcus also states that Victorian women typically “drew clear distinctions between the love felt for a friend and for a spouse and often articulated their belief that marriage demanded unique feelings of love that went beyond even the warmest friendly devotion.”<small>[17]</small> Nonetheless, the language of love and devotion associated with Victorian women’s close friendships provided a means of recognizing, identifying, and expressing their emotional experience in their relationships with men.

This moment of apparent “demotion” for Annabel also perhaps results from our contemporary prioritization of women’s romantic and heterosexual relationships over their lifelong relationships with close friends. In the Victorian era, however, Marcus explains:

Far from compromising friendship, family and marriage provided models for sustaining it; female friends exchanged the same tokens as spouses and emulated female elders who also prized their friendships with women. Marriage rarely ended friendships and many women organized part of their lives around their friends.<small>[18]</small>

Especially given Annabel’s preexisting close relationship with Hammond, Maggie would expect Annabel to remain a crucially important presence in her life following her marriage.

LOOK CLOSELY: what does Hammond’s proposal say about new expectations for women—and for men?

CALL A CRITIC: Rosemary Auchmuty, “The Woman Law Student and Girls’ College Novel”

This specific condition that Hammond attaches to his proposal says a LOT about:

• how much he values higher education for women (including instruction in the Classical languages of Greek and Latin!)
• how he views Maggie, a woman whose higher education clearly forms part of his attraction to her
• how he views the increase in higher education for women overall as positive

In her discussion of Meade’s writing tactics in A Sweet Girl Graduate, critic Rosemary Auchmuty explores how Meade manages to challenge several social norms without shocking her readers, namely by balancing the unattractive Priscilla’s story of independence and intellectual preparation for a successful career against Maggie’s conventional romance plot. However, Auchmuty points out Meade’s nimble negotiation of her readers’ concerns regarding female higher education.

[Priscilla’s] best friend Maggie, whose romance lies at the centre of the plot, still manages to get first-class honours in her tripos. These two points establish that Meade supported higher education and careers for women, even though she allowed Maggie to marry in order to demonstrate that college did not render women unmarriageable and that it was possible to be educated and womanly.<small>[14]</small>

Hammond’s clear support for Maggie’s education at St. Benet’s thus underscores the continued femininity and heterosexual desirability of women who attended college. We might even consider how Hammond’s many charms—educated, thoughtful, kind, charismatic, handsome—combine with his positive attitude towards highly educated women to suggest that just such a man should be considered the new romantic ideal for women to demand.

In discussing the variety of ways in which the female characters of girls’ college novels found happiness and fulfillment in a life spent in the company of women, as opposed to marriage, Auchmuty says:

The tables have been turned. It is no longer the women who are unmarriageable but the men, who cannot measure up to female society. Forced to choose between marriage and a career, many university-educated women chose the latter.<small>[15]</small>

Here Hammond offers the example of a new ideal man—one whose chief attractions include his support and appreciation for women’s education.

HISTORY CHECK: Britain’s landed gentry

LET’S CONSIDER: how does this book both support and challenge traditional class hierarchy in Victorian Britain?

This paragraph makes clear that Hammond is a member of the landed gentry—landowners with a country estate who were often able to live entirely off their annual rental income, namely from tenant farmers.<small>[11]</small> It’s crucial to note that members of the landed gentry were most definitely considered upper-class. Maggie’s first letter to Hammond in Ch. VIII hints at this status, since she addresses the letter to “Geoffrey Hammond, Esq.” Although today British people use the term “esquire” as a common title of politeness added to a man's name in the absence of another title, the term in late 19th century Britain marked upper-class status as “a title of a gentleman of the rank immediately below a knight.”<small>[12,13]</small>

Although we’ve seen a certain progressive mingling of class over the course of the book, we’ve also often seen the continuing presence of class status in the way that characters speak to and about each other. It’s certainly positive for Hammond to be thinking ahead to his role as landlord with the goal of improving the lives of his renters. However, the idyllic manner in which the narration describes his future dominion as “a millennium of bliss” continues to enshrine the traditional landowner/tenants structure that informed so much of traditional British class hierarchy. Furthermore, it’s important to recognize that this novel’s central romance revolves around an extremely wealthy upper-class woman and an upper-class, wealthy man with a prosperous estate.

How might you see A Sweet Girl Graduate as promoting a traditionally rigid class structure? Where have you also seen Meade challenge that class structure?

DEFINITION: This phrase refers to the annual Summer Exhibition held by the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The curated exhibition is meant “to support artists and architects, by showcasing art of the moment to the nation.”<small>[10]</small> The young artist here must have been talented indeed!

Learn more about the history of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition here: https://chronicle250.com/

LITERARY REFERENCE: “Orestes and Pyalades of Greek legend”

Orestes is the more major figure from Greek mythology here, being the son of Agamemnon and his wife Clytemnestra. When Agamemnon returns home following the Trojan War, he is murdered by Clytemnestra and her new lover Aegisthus. Many years later, Orestes returns to Mycenae with the help of his friend Pylades and murders both his mother and Aegisthus in revenge for his father’s death.

Per Greek Boston:

Pylades was Orestes’ cousin and close friend, appearing in most of the stories about him and playing a pivotal role. Several Greek writers presented their relationship as a romantic or even homoerotic one. This is most exemplified in versions of the story where Orestes and Pylades seek the statue of Artemis. They were put in the position of choosing which one would leave and deliver a letter while the other would be killed. Both wished to sacrifice themselves for the other. Fortunately, both ended up escaping.

Greek Boston: www.greekboston.com/culture/mythology/orestes/

LITERARY REFERENCE: “Jonathan and David of Bible story”

The Hebrew Bible Book of Samuel features the story of Jonathan and David:

Now it came about when he [David] had finished speaking to Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as himself. Saul took him that day and did not let him return to his father's house. Then Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself. Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was on him and gave it to David, with his armor, including his sword and his bow and his belt. So David went out wherever Saul sent him, and prospered; and Saul set him over the men of war.

When David learns of the deaths of Jonathan and Saul, he laments:

How have the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan is slain on your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; You have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women.

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan#In_the_Bible

LOOK CLOSELY: Meade’s use of a floral motif

LET’S CONSIDER: how does Meade depict gender?

Think back to the initial description of Priscilla’s room—previously Annabel’s room!

The panels of the doors were also decorated with sprays of wild flowers in picturesque confusion. Both the flowers and the scroll were boldly designed, but were unfinished, the final and completing touches remaining yet to be given. Priscilla looked hungrily at these unexpected trophies of art.

She could have shouted with glee as she recognised some of her dear, wild Devonshire flowers among the groups on the door panels. <small>[Ch. III]</small>

Flowers are a recurring motif in this book, as seen in these unfinished floral paintings, comparisons of both Annabel and Maggie to fragile blooms, and Priscilla’s own adoration of flowers (both literal and metaphorical, perhaps). Flowers tend to be female-coded; the comparison here seems almost expected for such a beautiful young woman, but we would likely find the comparison odd when applied to a young man.

Consider the language Meade uses in this novel to depict gender, both feminine and masculine. What visuals and metaphors does she invoke to depict the female characters and their performance of gender? When is femininity negative and when is it positive? Which characters are described with masculine visuals and metaphors?

Bonus Question: How different are the ways in which Meade portrays femininity and the ways in which our contemporary society portrays femininity? Have our visuals and metaphors of femininity changed to any great degree?

DEFINITION: brilliant display or effect

DEFINITION: The London season was a traditional annual period during which nobility and landed gentry families would leave their country house that was their main home and come spend several months in London to socialize and engage in politics (since the Season coincided with the sitting of parliament).<small>[6]</small> The London season was also a high-stakes period for the nobility and gentry’s children of marriageable age. The Season allowed debutantes to be introduced into society and the whirlwind of social events gave young women the chance to try and find (and seduce) a suitable match.

Maggie’s guardian intends for her to enter society following her birthday and spend the Season in London looking for a potential husband, attended whenever in public by a (female) chaperon.

LOOK CLOSELY: Maggie’s self-education

Although this moment is glossed over quite quickly, it’s worth acknowledging how difficult this self-education would have been for Maggie. Given that we know she “knew nothing properly” prior to this point in time, this challenge must have been formidable. This moment both suggests her admiration and dedication to Annabel Lee and establishes her own outstanding intellect.

HISTORY CHECK: lower-class education and childhood during the Victorian era

LET’S CONSIDER: who gets to learn? and who gets to be a child?

As important as the leaps forward were in middle- and upper-class women’s education, we should also acknowledge that lower-class women had pretty much no access to higher education—or really, much education at all, period. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 took a major step forward in childhood education by requiring partially state-funded schools to be provided in currently underserved areas.<small>[16]</small> The curriculum primarily focused on reading, writing, arithmetic, and religious instruction.

Although the Act of 1876 imposed a legal duty on parents to ensure their child was educated, the Elementary Education Act of 1880 followed up with the requirement that school boards actually enforce compulsory attendance from 5 to 10 years.<small>[17]</small> Unfortunately, when the poorest families desperately needed money, it was understandably tempting for them to send their children off to work if a job was available to them. Lower-class girls’ basic education was thus, in theory, required by law, though still not a guarantee. However, the world described in A Sweet Girl Graduate—or in any of Meade’s equally popular school stories for younger girls—was a world completely out of reach to a lower-class woman.

Considering the differences in expectations for education based on class, we can also start to realize the very different conceptions of childhood based on class during the Victorian era. Child labor was a frequent occurrence when it came to lower-class children. Middle- to upper-class children, on the other hand, were expected to be nurtured, loved, and considerably educated before given much in the way of labor and responsibility.

Have you noticed any ways in which our current Western society still contains these inconsistent notions of childhood, such as the diminishing necessity of childhood education based on class and/or wealth?

LET’S CONSIDER: how do Priscilla’s sisters feel about her education? (and how does Priscilla feel?)

How might we read Hattie’s tone here? On the one hand, it could be admiring: Priscilla is heading off to the fictional equivalent of Oxbridge (Oxford/Cambridge) for three years of rigorous education, attending a school for which she had to pass a challenging entrance examination. Or Hattie’s tone could lean more towards sarcastic: Priscilla is abandoning her aunt and three younger sisters to go spend three years reading books and delighting in the absolute freedom that is devoted education without needing to worry about making money or taking care of others’ needs.

As you read on, do you notice any times when you see evidence of Priscilla’s own acute consciousness of these two alternate interpretations of her choice?

LET’S CONSIDER: the genderization of female intellectuals

Here Aunt Raby speaks directly to the reader who fears or distrusts women’s higher education, as was the case earlier in this chapter. This moment, however, specifically identifies one of the more prominent worries: that education would spoil young women’s femininity, and thus also their marriageability.

As you read on, consider the gendered ways in which Meade portrays the book’s most studious (and non-studious!) characters. How are the characters' appearances described in masculine or feminine terms? How does Meade describe or portray their mind and intellect in masculine or feminine terms?

HISTORY CHECK: money matters

In 2020 currency, two shillings is equal to about £13 or about $17 in the United States.<small>[12]</small>

Since Priscilla’s travel expenses, tuition, laundry, room, and board have already been paid for, these shillings would be entirely for her own comfort and amusement while at St. Benet’s College. Consider Priscilla’s shock at Aunt Raby’s indulgence: what does this moment communicate about Priscilla’s character, her relationship with Aunt Raby, and their domestic situation?

DEEP DIVE: higher education for women in the late 19th century and the role of the girls’ college novel

HISTORY CHECK: what are girls like “nowadays”?

CALL A CRITIC: Rosemary Auchmuty, “The Woman Law Student and the Girls’ College Novel”

This uncertainty on the part of both Priscilla and Aunt Raby reflects a larger ongoing debate regarding women’s access to higher education—as well as women’s roles in British society as a whole. Higher education opened to middle- and upper-class British women in 1869 with the founding of Girton College in Cambridge.<small>[3]</small> In 1880, the University of London became the first university to award degrees to female students.<small>[4]</small> Change was slow-going, however, with considerable concern over the impact of higher education on young women. Would their brains be able to handle the intellectual stress? Would they maintain their good character under the possible influence of unsavory young women? Would excessive education render them unmarriageable?

Nonetheless, increasing numbers of young women entered higher education and began graduating with considerable honors, even if they were unable to apply their studies to real-world employment—as in the case of Britain’s first female barrister, Ivy Williams, who completed her university examinations in 1903 but wasn’t allowed to begin the process of actually becoming a barrister until 1920.<small>[5]</small>

A Sweet Girl Graduate (1891) marked the first of nine English fiction novels published between 1891 and 1926 that make up the girls’ college novel subgenre.<small>[6]</small> L. T. Meade’s first contribution to the genre was tremendously successful and widely circulated, as were others.<small>[7]</small> In her article “The Woman Law Student and the Girls’ College Novel,” critic Rosemary Auchmuty explains that these novels were all written by advocates of women’s higher education and expanding career opportunities.<small>[8]</small> As such, these authors “were keen to inform an interested public that consisted of potential college students, their families, and well-wishers and to dispel their doubts and fears. They saw themselves in the role of educational and career advisers.”<small>[9]</small>

This moment in the novel already begins to address A Sweet Girl Graduate’s more worried readers by giving voice to their confusion and/or anxiety regarding women’s higher education. How might this direct recognition of the reader’s misgivings make it easier for Meade to convince them that higher education is nothing to fear?

LOOK CLOSELY: how much do these first three sentences tell us?

This unassuming opening paragraph actually delivers a great deal of information, not just about Priscilla’s personality, but also about her circumstances in life up to this point.

The trunk is new → Priscilla hasn’t had a reason to travel prior to now, nor have any of her family members, who otherwise might have been able to lend a trunk to her

The trunk has a canvas covering → canvas-covered trunks began appearing in the 1880s and would be painted with a water-resistant treatment; this material was practical and relatively cheap in comparison to leather, crystallized metal, or embossed metal that might decorate the traveling trunks of the well-to-do<small>[1]</small>

The initials in “large plain letters” → much like the trunk’s material, utility is of the essence here as opposed to decoration

The trunk is “neatly packed” and already “corded and strapped and put away” even though Priscilla doesn’t leave until the next day → Priscilla is very well-organized and is taking this new step in her life with great seriousness and advance planning

LOOK CLOSELY: framing Priscilla’s narrative

Think about this final sentence in conjunction with the chapter title. How does this idea of “going out into the world” frame Priscilla’s narrative? One possibility is as an adventure to places as yet unknown—which, at this time, was exactly how you might describe a woman headed out from home for the first time to attend higher education!

HISTORY CHECK: what is this “college life”?

Indeed, she can’t! After all, no one else has written a girls’ college novel yet, since A Sweet Girl Graduate will be the first. These college novels were extremely important in disseminating the very information that Priscilla lacks at this moment. Meade herself had no firsthand experience of college life, since universities were still closed to women when she was young.<small>[14]</small> However, in her research for a series of articles discussing British women’s colleges for the fashion and society magazine Ladies’ Pictorial, she visited Newnham College at Cambridge, which likely contributed to A Sweet Girl Graduate’s realistic setting.<small>[15]</small>

DEFINITION: “Butter money” (also known as “egg and butter money”) means the money you could earn by selling the butter you would normally keep back for your own use; essentially, Aunty Raby is doing without the “luxury” of butter in order to provide Priscilla with this allowance.

HISTORY CHECK: money matters

In 2020 currency, ten shillings is equal to about £64 or about $87 in the United States.<small>[13]</small>

LOOK CLOSELY: 19th century fashion and illustration

LET’S CONSIDER: what’s the role of illustrations in communicating historical setting?

Hal Ludlow’s illustration reflects the latest trends in fashion as far as Priscilla is concerned. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, the bustle beat a hasty retreat, resulting in a smoother silhouette with a narrow bell skirt. Priscilla’s period-appropriate dress also features a high upstanding collar and a tight bodice, as well as narrow sleeves beginning to shift towards the puffy “leg-o’-mutton” shape that would grow in immensity over the course of the decade. (Meanwhile, women’s skirts expanded out into flowing A-line skirts in order to visually balance their enormous sleeves!)

Aunt Raby, on the other hand, may be dressed according to the dress reform trend of the late 19th century. This trend, which ran in parallel with the Arts and Crafts Movement, sought to free women from tight corsetry and promote a less restrictive mode of dress. Her bodice appears to be more loosely fitted than Priscilla’s, with looser sleeves, and is wearing an apron befitting housework.

As you encounter descriptions of Priscilla and her appearance, you might think about Ludlow’s various illustrations and how effectively they portray what Meade’s words describe. How can illustrations clarify your vision of a historical world such as this one? How can your lack of familiarity with that historical world make you overly trusting of an illustration’s depiction?

You can find more information on late Victorian fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum, as well as the Fashion History Timeline.

HISTORY CHECK: parlours and social class

A parlour served two purposes at this point in time: a reception room for visitors and a “living room” for the family to enjoy.<small>[2]</small> The parlour was often filled with the family’s best possessions, since this room would typically be the only part of the house seen by visitors. The narrator refrains from commenting on the room’s furnishings, but simply having a parlour still says something about Aunt Raby—and about Priscilla by extension: they are at least middle-class, if not upper-class, because they are of enough social standing to need a room set aside for recreation, in addition to their rooms for sleeping and eating.

Try to pay attention to markers of class and wealth as you read on—and remember that, in Victorian Britain, class status was a matter of birth, not money. Which characters have money? Which characters are middle- or upper-class? Are any characters lower-class?

HISTORY CHECK: the young women who “must” get formally educated

Aunt Raby’s “if they must” reflects the initial role of universities and higher education for women in Great Britain. In 1865, the Cambridge Local Examinations for education assessment opened to young women looking for employment as governesses or school teachers.<small>[10]</small> For the first time, these young women had a means of proving their qualifications to potential employers by producing their university certificate.<small>[11]</small> The opportunities for higher education beginning in 1869 offered young women looking to become educators an excellent route to gainful employment; the wages such a woman could expect as a governess or school teacher increased in direct relation to her amount of higher education.

Why do you think Priscilla “must” do a “hard thing” and head out into the world, as Aunt Raby suggests? What clues has Meade provided so far?