‘The new woman is a mythical creature, like the bunyip.’
– attributed to Henry Hyde Champion
Vida, Isabella and the other members of the Queen Victoria Hospital committee would certainly have been described as ‘new women’. This was a label attached, mostly by journalists, to middle-class women who actively sought engagement with a non-domestic, wider world. They were not ‘new’, of course, but thanks largely to advances in education and public health, their numbers were growing. And in several countries, women were actually demanding rights equal to those of men, including the right to vote! Annette Bear-Crawford, among others, had pointed out that women had been working for equal rights somewhere in the Western world for at least fifty years, and being allowed to vote was a logical next step.
In Australia, press reactions to the possibility of equal rights for women ranged from resigned to scathing. Both attitudes were splendidly on display in 1889, when Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was first performed in the colony. It had taken its time: the play had first been performed ten years earlier in Europe. In Australia, as elsewhere, it created a sensation, becoming a cause célèbre. Vida and her mother, neither particularly interested in the theatre, would certainly have been in the Melbourne audience cheering on the character of Nora, the married woman who announces her right to use her own mind and abilities, untrammelled by male prejudice or the constraints of social position.
Though having these ‘demented and depraved’1 thoughts articulated on stage was new, books questioning the role of women and the value of marriage had existed for at least 100 years, ever since Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. For Vida and her contemporaries, the most influential contemporary novel about the rights of women was The Story of an African Farm by South African writer and radical feminist Olive Schreiner, published in 1883 under the pseudonym Ralph Iron. African Farm was really more of a polemic than a novel, with the three main characters representing different attitudes to women’s lot. Em represented traditional womanhood, with a strong desire for marriage and children; the main character, Lyndall (the name was invented by the author, just as the name ‘Wendy’ was coined by J.M. Barrie in Peter Pan), rejected the contemporary notions of a woman’s role; and trying to steer a path through all this was the hapless Waldo, the Victorian version of the sensitive New Age man, who was attracted to both women but tormented by religious doubt.2
African Farm, like Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch nearly a century later, gave clear and thoughtful expression to women’s often unexpressed frustrations. Lyndall, in disgust, says to Waldo, ‘Look at this little chin of mine, Waldo, with the dimple in it. It is but a small part of my person, but though I had a knowledge of all things under the sun, and the wisdom to use it, and the deep loving heart of an angel, it would not stead me through life like this little chin. I can win money with it, I can win love, I can win power with it, I can win fame. What would knowledge help me?’ Years later, when she was in England, Vida regretted missing the opportunity to meet Schreiner, who had been on a visit to South Africa at the time.
Vida does not seem to have been much of a fiction reader, but she must have known about, and perhaps even enjoyed, some of the less than high-minded women’s novels available in Australia at the same time as The Story of an African Farm. Much of this work found its readership through an impressive network of circulating libraries as well as bookshops – and there was also a flourishing serialisation industry in newspapers and magazines.3
One extremely popular title was The Woman Who Did (1895) by the Englishman Grant Allen: it went through twenty editions in one year and was later made into a popular silent film. It tells the story of the intellectual and strong-willed Herminia, who rejects marriage, believing it expresses man’s dominance over woman and stifles her need for independence. She takes a lover, becomes pregnant and has a daughter, Dolores. The lover dies and Herminia supports her child by becoming a hack journalist. Dolores falls in love with a socially prominent young man and discovers the truth about her ‘illegitimacy’ on the eve of her marriage. She rejects her mother, and Herminia nobly commits suicide to avoid being an obstacle to her daughter’s rise in society.
Then there was 1891’s A Yellow Aster by Kathleen Mannington Caffyn, who used the pen-name ‘Iota’. It went through four printings very quickly, and there were long waiting lists at libraries. The ironic title – there is no such flower as a yellow aster – refers to Gwen, a highly educated, bright and beautiful woman who dreams of a career that might change the world. She marries a man who knows she does not love him but accepts her, then becomes pregnant and has a baby. The act of becoming a mother makes her realise that marriage and motherhood are more important than any ambitions she might have for herself. Reviewers, mostly male, loved A Yellow Aster, with some regarding Gwen as a heroine for the times.
After all this earnestness and compulsion to tell women what was good for them, Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin’s My Brilliant Career, published in 1901, was remarkable. A heroine like Sybylla Melvyn who rejects an eligible and wealthy suitor in favour of following her own destiny, however difficult that will probably be, was a breath of fresh air. Even now, the ending of My Brilliant Career is almost shocking, and the fact that the book has scarcely been out of print from that day to this proves that its viewpoint remains fresh. Vida and her family greatly admired My Brilliant Career, and when its author and Aileen Goldstein became close friends, Isabella and her other daughters were delighted to welcome ‘dear little Stella’ as almost a member of the family.
The whole issue of women’s rights had been simmering for some time, in Australia as elsewhere. Vida was just about to begin her career as a speaker for the cause, and was able to draw on the work of an impressive, forceful and highly intelligent band of women.
One of the earliest and most influential was Henrietta Dugdale, who had come to Australia from England in 1852 and was in her early seventies when she made her mark.4 She was clever and articulate, often being described as ‘formidable’ or ‘redoubtable’, almost always synonyms for ‘confident’ when applied to women. Dugdale had taken an active part in the campaign to pass the Married Women’s Property Act of 1884 that gave women in Victoria the right, among other things, to own and dispose of property, enter into contracts under their own names, and run their own separate bank accounts.
Dugdale knew how to get and keep attention. The press never tired of lampooning her and her clothes: in newspapers and magazines of the period she is always depicted as a bloomer-wearing, cropped-haired battleaxe. In fact Dugdale was small with delicate features, steady eyes and a wide, determined mouth; her appearance was in almost comic contrast to the ferocity of her writing and opinions.
In many respects, Dugdale’s firmness in stating her beliefs made her an admirable role model for Vida. Dugdale wrote in her only novel, A Few Hours in a Far-Off Age: ‘[Men], those poor vain creatures, with much assumption of wisdom . . . [make] laws affecting woman’s liberty, property, and even children, without consulting her, her happiness, or any higher feeling than their own self-love, comfort and aboriginal greed. In short, the women up to past the nineteenth century were really slaves in all but name.’5
Her greatest achievement was probably being a co-founder of the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society (VWSS), the first group of its kind in Australia. Formed in 1884 partly as a reaction to the widely reported increase in violent crime against women, the VWSS existed ‘to obtain the same political privileges for women as are now possessed by male voters: equal privileges in marriage and divorce’.6 Vida and Isabella might very well have attended the society’s initial meeting on 25 May 1884, when Vida was only fifteen. Dugdale later declared, ‘I was the first and only woman who publicly advocated the moral right of woman to her share in political power, also to other human rights, university learning, and possession of property after marriage.’7
Dugdale never believed that women were angels. If equality between men and women was to be achieved, she believed, they should be brought up in the same way, with the same beliefs, assumptions and expectations. Vida, the principal of a co-educational school, would probably have agreed with this, as well as Dugdale’s assertion that the brutality of the age was not just attributable to the vanity and ignorance of men, but to the pervasiveness of alcohol. But the Goldsteins would certainly have parted company with her over the question of religion: Dugdale considered every Christian church a despotic organisation formed by men to humiliate women, and believed that most Christians were intolerant hypocrites.
In many respects Dugdale was a true visionary, and her beliefs in free education, Australia as a republic and equality of the sexes – even her contention that flying machines would one day travel between Sydney and Melbourne – mark her out as a woman well before her time. She also had a nice line in cynical realism. In 1883 she wrote, ‘If we permit woman to go beyond her sphere, domestic duties will be neglected. In plainer language, if we acknowledge woman is human, we shall not get so much work out of her.’8
Dugdale’s declaration that she was the first female suffragist was a piece of hyperbole. She founded the VWSS with her friend Annie (Annette) Lowe. They were an interesting pair. Dugdale was nothing if not forceful while Lowe, equally determined, was much quieter and gentler. This may be why there is relatively little information about her, though what exists is striking. She was born in Australia, but her date and place of birth are unknown. Unusually, she gave her father credit for her liberal views: one of ten children, she said that she, her sisters and brothers were treated equally. ‘I applied my father’s arguments for manhood suffrage to the women’s cause,’ she wrote. She was a friend of the poet Henry Kendall and had at least two children by a man whom she never named publicly; this man took her into the outback, where she met indigenous people who had never seen a white woman.9
Lowe was clearly tough. She once declared, ‘I like opposition [because it] gives you such a chance of showing up the weakness and absurdity of the arguments against women’s suffrage.’ She also knew how to use humour. When a male parliamentarian described women as ‘shrieking cockatoos’, she remarked gently that in nature the male cockatoo was the one that did the shrieking.
Dugdale and Lowe were effective organisers. By June 1885, a year after the VWSS was founded, it had almost 200 members, both women and men. Its monthly meetings were chaired by Dr John Bromby, the canon of St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral and a well-known supporter of the vote and higher education for women. However, the following newspaper account of an 1885 VWSS meeting is a pretty good example of the tedious jocularity that was de rigueur for many mainstream journalists when they reported anything to do with reforms and women:
About a hundred weather-beaten dames and damsels were present to protest against their being any longer ground under the heel of the tyrant man. In the chair was the patriarchal Dr Bromby, who contended in his opening speech that every married woman should have a vote . . . The ladies laughed and pounded the floor vigorously with their parasols by way of endorsing the giddy old doctor’s sentiments. Then half a dozen of their chosen orators took the floor in succession, including the redoubtable Mrs Dugdale, the best platform speaker they have. ‘Women’s wrongs’ constituted the solitary theme . . . the Victorian Women’s Suffrage Society means to carry on an active propaganda [for the franchise] during the coming year. But who ever heard of a dozen strong-minded women working together in harmony and unanimity for a year?10
A prominent member of the VWSS was Brettena (short for Bridgetana) Smyth. Unlike the other women who joined, she was concerned not so much with social and legal inequality as with women’s bodies. She was convinced that the most pressing inequalities facing women were overwork and economic deprivation leading to ill health, and that all of this was caused by too-frequent childbearing. Smyth considered it her mission to educate women about their bodies, and at the age of forty-five she became one of the first medical students at the University of Melbourne. She passed her first examinations but had to abandon the course after she lost her savings in the depression of the 1890s.
For much of her life Smyth managed a greengrocery and confectionery business with her husband, but after his death she changed the business into one combining drapery and pharmaceutical products. She began advertising and selling contraceptives for women, including an early diaphragm whose main attraction was that it could be used without a male partner’s knowledge. Her wares were not cheap by the standards of the day: ‘Best Female French Preventatives and Contraceptives 10/6, English 5/6 . . . French Preventatives {Male} 10/6 and 15/6 per dozen . . . Ingram’s Improved Seamless Enema and Syringes, Highly polished, 12/6 . . . Ladies’ Silk Stockings all sizes from 8/6 upwards . . . Baby Charms and Comforters’.11
In 1888 Smyth launched the Australian Women’s Suffrage Society, dedicated to the right of every woman to advice about and access to reliable contraception. She gave lectures on ‘Love, Courtship and Marriage’ and wrote booklets on women’s health and birth control. She was an imposing speaker, being six feet (183 centimetres) tall and voluminous in figure, with blue-shaded spectacles.
Smyth did a great service for women of her time by encouraging open discussion about women’s health – such issues were usually only mentioned in hushed tones between women and their friends and doctors. Her booklet ‘What Every Woman Should Know: Diseases Incidental to Women’, published in 1895, was a very popular source of information that had previously been relatively inaccessible to many.
Encouraged by the success of her lectures and writing, Smyth did not complete her medical degree. In 1897 she prepared for an extensive Australian and overseas tour, but she died just before she was due to leave. The Australian Women’s Suffrage Society did not survive her for long.
Smyth, Dugdale and other prominent feminists relied on audiences in city assembly rooms and suburban town halls to spread their messages. Public meetings were excellent venues for gatherings that were considered subversive: women who did not want to make their affiliations known were much more likely to be anonymous in a large crowd, though they might be less able to establish individual contacts. However, as pro-suffrage groups increased in number and membership, drawing-room or cottage meetings became more frequent. Less affluent women did not have to explain to their men where they were going, possibly inviting ridicule, because they were at home, allegedly entertaining friends.
One of the most prominent suffrage societies at this time – although it had not been set up as such – was the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). An offshoot of its American parent group founded in 1874, the WCTU aimed at creating a ‘sober and pure world’ by following the principles of evangelical Christianity; it recommended abstinence from alcohol and condemned sex outside marriage. It was set up in Victoria in 1885 by Mary Leavitt and within two years had twelve branches; by 1891 there were no fewer than fifty-seven. The WCTU basically rejected the claim that alcoholism was a personal weakness or failing, regarding it as a cause and consequence of larger social problems. This view was most congenial to Isabella and Vida Goldstein, who were and remained staunch supporters of the WCTU and great advocates of temperance.
The WCTU had a broad influence socially. It was involved in reforming labour conditions, abolishing prostitution, promoting public health and sanitation and, very notably, women’s suffrage. The American Mary Love, who had come to Australia as a recent widow to stay with the family of her sister-in-law and who became president of the Victorian organisation, travelled right around the colony setting up new branches: her tirelessness as a traveller and success in meeting with local groups could very well have influenced the way Vida organised her campaign for the Senate some years later.
As Love travelled, she gradually refined and developed her views about women’s suffrage. At first she said women needed the vote so they could influence men to choose parliamentarians who would control the liquor traffic, but soon she was claiming that women would be more effective in doing this directly than men could possibly be. At their 1890 convention the WCTU resolved:
That as men and women are alike in having to obey the laws, this meeting declares its conviction that they should also be equal in electing those who make the laws and further that the ballot in the hands of women would be a safeguard to the home, in which the interests of women are paramount, as what is good for the home is also good for the state, the enfranchisement of women would be conducive to the highest national welfare.12
Vida and Isabella could hardly have said it better themselves.