It would be absurd, in the full stream of the 20th century, to imagine that any of the articles in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica can be either beyond the comprehension of women or unlikely to interest women. And since any method of selection is also a method of elimination, it may be illogical to suggest that any one class of articles especially merits their attention. But the difficulty is purely formal. For perhaps the greatest victory of the feminist movement lies in the demonstrated proposition that women can, in one field after another, establish their equality with men, without losing any of their superiority in the exercise of those arts to which they were formerly restricted. And this chapter, therefore, after describing the articles which relate to the present political and economic position of women, naturally turns to subjects such as domestic science and the adornment of the home, which in all ages and all countries have been considered to be the special province of women.
Women Contributors
If the question of women’s ability to do a full share of the world’s work any longer admitted of argument, there would be no more vivid way of coming to an appreciation of the versatility and range as well as the high quality of women’s intellectual capacity than by looking at the contributions by women to the Britannica itself. First in mass, and first in practical value as because it vastly increases the usefulness of the entire book, is the Index volume with its 975 pages, its 500,000 index entries, its classified list of articles covering nearly 70 pages and its list of contributors and their principal signed articles. This volume was the work of a large and carefully organized staff under the supervision of Miss Janet Hogarth (now Mrs. W. L. Courtney). The following is a partial alphabetical list of women contributors to the Britannica with the more important articles they wrote:
| Contributors | Articles |
|---|---|
| Adelaide Mary Anderson (Principal Lady Inspector of Factories, British Home Office). | Labour Legislation (in part). |
| Gertrude Atherton (Author of Rezánov, The Tower of Ivory, etc.). | Rezánov. |
| Mary Bateson (Late Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge; Author of Borough Customs, etc.). | Borough English. |
| Gertrude Bell (Author of The Desert and the Sown). | Druses (in part). |
| Isabella Bird Bishop (Author of Korea and her Neighbours, etc.). | Korea (in part). |
| Lady Broome (Author of Station Life in New Zealand). | Western Australia, History. |
| Margaret Bryant | Alexander the Great, Legends; Caesar, Medieval Legends; Charlemagne, Legends; Virgil, the Virgil Legend; etc. |
| Agnes Muriel Clay (Joint Editor of Sources of Roman History). | Agrarian Laws (in part); Centumviri; Curia; Decurio; Municipium; Patron and Client (in part); Senate. |
| Agnes M. Clerke (Hon. Member Royal Astronomical Society, Author of History of Astronomy, etc.). | Astronomy, History; Brahe, Tycho; Copernicus; Flamsteed; Halley; Huygens; Kepler; Zodiac; etc. |
| Mrs. Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes”) (Author of The School for Saints, etc.). | George Eliot. |
| Lady Dilke (Author of French Painters, etc.). | Greuze; Ingres; Millet, J. F. |
| Mme. Duclaux (Author of Life of Renan, etc.). | Renan. |
| Lady Eastlake (Author of Five Great Painters, etc.). | Gibson, John. |
| Lady Gomme (Author of Traditional Games of Great Britain, etc.). | Children’s Games. |
| Dr. Harriet L. Hennessy, L.R.C.S.I. | Gynaecology; Infancy; Intestinal Obstruction; Medical Education, U. S. A. (in part); Respiratory System, Pathology (in part); Tuberculosis, etc. |
| Lady Huggins (Author, with Sir William Huggins, of Atlas of Representative Stellar Spectra, etc.). | Armilla; Astrolabe. |
| Lady Lugard (Author of A Tropical Dependency, etc.). | British Empire; Bauchi; Bornu; Kano; Katagum; Nassarawa; Nigeria; Rhodes, Cecil; Sokoto; Zaria. |
| Kate A. Meakin | Morocco (in part); Tetuan; Sus. |
| Alice Meynell (Author of The Rhythm of Life, etc.). | Browning, Elizabeth Barrett. |
| Hilda M. R. Murray (Lecturer on English, Royal Holloway College). | English Language (in part). |
| Mrs. H. O. O’Neill (Formerly Fellow of Manchester University). | Peckham, John; Prebendary; Prelate; Prior; Procurator; Vicar. |
| Dr. Anna C. Paues (Author of A Fourteenth Century Biblical Version, etc.). | English Bible (in part). |
| Mrs. W. Alison Phillips (Associate of Bedford College, London). | Louis XVIII; Marie Antoinette, etc. |
| Bertha S. Phillpotts (Formerly Librarian of Girton College, Cambridge). | Germany, Archaeology; Norway, Early History; Scandinavian Civilization. |
| Kathleen Schlesinger (Author of The Instruments of the Orchestra, etc.). | Bagpipe; Bugle; Drum; Harp; Horn; Organ, Ancient History; Pianoforte (in part); Spinet; Timbrel; Viol; etc. |
| Mrs. Henry Sidgwick (Hon. Secretary to the Society for Psychical Research, late Principal of Newnham College). | Spiritualism. |
| Mrs. Alec. Tweedie (Author of Porfirio Diaz). | Diaz, Porfirio. |
| Mme. Villari (English translator of works of Prof. Villari). | Savonarola. |
| Mrs. Humphry Ward (Author of Robert Elsmere, etc.). | Lyly. |
| Lady Welby (Author of What is Meaning? etc.). | Significs. |
| Jessie L. Weston (Author of Arthurian Romances, etc.). | King Arthur; Arthurian Legend; The Holy Grail; Guenevere; Lancelot; Malory, Sir Thomas; Map, Walter; Merlin; Perceval; The Round Table; Tristan; Eschenbach, Wolfram von. |
| Alice Zimmern (Author of The Renaissance of Girls’ Education, etc.). | Mary Carpenter. |
This remarkable list shows that women have contributed to the Britannica on subjects so varied as astronomy, medieval literature, medicine, sociology, linguistics, literary biography, art criticism, law and politics, political science and sociology, musical instruments, education, the Bible and ecclesiastical history, and philosophy.
Woman’s Advance
It may be noted as indicating the advance of women during the last century and a half that in the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which was published in 1771, the article on women consisted of the following eight words “Woman,—the female of man—see Homo.” In the present 11th edition, published nearly a century and a half later, one single article entitled Women in volume 28, beginning on page 782, is equivalent in its contents to 22 pages of this Guide.
What woman has accomplished in scholarship, literature, art and science has been done very largely in the last hundred years. In authorship and, to a greater degree, on the stage her activity dates back a little further. In Shakespeare’s time all women’s parts on the stage were taken by boys. In fact as the Britannica tells us (Vol. 8, p. 521) in the days of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare “No woman might appear at a playhouse, unless masked.”
It is only in comparatively recent times that the real “emancipation” of woman began; and this explains why the list of women famous in history is so much longer than any of the other lists given in this part of the Guide. Through earlier periods women attained power only by birth, by marriage, or by being “queens uncrowned,” but none the less powerful on that account, like Aspasia, Nell Gwyn, Jane Shore and the Pompadour.
There can be no question that during most of the world’s history, woman’s only place was in the home. And it is certain that no matter how far her emancipation may be carried the home will be a sphere for her. Her relation to her husband and her children, her right to a share of his property and of theirs—and to her own—as now more liberally granted and interpreted by law, are outlined in the Britannica. The status of women in early times is described in the article in the Britannica on women. It is, with variations in different places, everywhere a story of dependence. Even in Roman law a woman was completely dependent. If married she and her property passed into the power of her husband; if unmarried she was (unless a vestal virgin) under the perpetual tutelage of her father during his life, and after his death of her agnates, that is, of those of kinsmen by blood or adoption who would have been under the power of the common ancestor had he lived. Under English civil law a girl can contract a valid marriage at 12, a boy at 14. Under the common law “the father was entitled as against the mother to the custody of a legitimate child up to the age of sixteen, and could only forfeit such right by misconduct.” But the Court of Chancery sometimes “took a less rigid view of the paternal rights and looked more to the interest of the child, and consequently in some cases to the extension of the mother’s right at common law. Legislation has tended in the same direction.” In England women are still under two remarkable disabilities: “the exclusion of female heirs from intestate succession unless in the absence of a male heir; and the fact that a husband could obtain a divorce for the adultery of his wife, while a wife could only obtain it for her husband’s adultery if coupled with some other cause, such as cruelty or desertion.”