Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910)
Forfatter af Clara Morison
Om forfatteren
Image credit: Portrait of Catherine Helen Spence [picture] [189-?].
National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an14617296
National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an14617296
Værker af Catherine Helen Spence
Tender and True 1 eksemplar
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Almen Viden
- Andre navne
- Spence, C.H.
- Fødselsdato
- 1825-10-31
- Dødsdag
- 1910-04-03
- Køn
- female
- Nationalitet
- Australia
- Fødested
- Melrose, Roxburghshire, Scotland, UK
- Dødssted
- Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
- Bopæl
- Melrose, Borders, Scotland
Adelaide, South Australia, Australia - Erhverv
- journalist
short story writer
historical novelist
feminist
women's rights activist
social reformer (vis alle 8)
autobiographer
governess - Kort biografi
- Catherine Helen Spence was born in Scotland to a large family. When she was 14, her parents took the family to live in Australia to improve their financial opportunties. They endured drought and rough living conditions on a wheat farm before moving to the city of Adelaide. There they prospered: her father was elected town clerk and her brother John Brodie Spence grew up to become a prominent banker and legislator. Catherine wrote short pieces and poetry that were published in The South Australian, and went to work as a governess at age 17. She became a journalist for the Adelaide Argus newspaper, writing under her brother's name. Her first book was the novel Clara Morison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever (1854). Her second novel Tender and True (1856) was a success, followed by Mr. Hogarth's Will (1865), which was serialized in the Adelaide Weekly Mail, and four others. Although many of her works were originally published anonymously Catherine Spence is now celebrated as one of Australia's first women journalists and one of the finest novelists of the country's colonial era. She was an advocate for better care for poor children, and wrote numerous essays and nonfiction works about social reforms. Although she never married, she adopted three families of orphaned siblings and also ran a children's school with her mother and sister. She also wrote about women's right to vote and employment, including A Plea for Pure Democracy (1861). While she was active in suffrage organizations, Australian women became the first in the world to win the franchise. She also traveled to Britain and the USA for lecture tours. Her autobiography, which was unfinished at her death, was completed and published posthumously. She was honored with her portrait on the Australian five-dollar note.
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I came across this autobiography from Democracy Sausage, and found a gem.
Catherine Spence had quite an amazing life for a woman in the Victorian era. She led a campaign for the adoption of preferential voting, which has since become the accepted norm in Australia - this was the link to the reference in Democracy Sausage. But she did much more. A published novelist, an active journalist, prominent in a range of social welfare areas - all in an era when a woman's place was firmly in the home.
As interesting as Ms Spence's life was, I was gobsmacked by the mortality rate mentioned in passing in the book. The number of children who didn't survive was staggering. As was the number of adults who died young, frequently leaving the widow or widower to make another marriage. These deaths were unremarkable to the author,but appalling in the context of improved health and survival rates of the current era.… (mere)
Catherine Spence had quite an amazing life for a woman in the Victorian era. She led a campaign for the adoption of preferential voting, which has since become the accepted norm in Australia - this was the link to the reference in Democracy Sausage. But she did much more. A published novelist, an active journalist, prominent in a range of social welfare areas - all in an era when a woman's place was firmly in the home.
As interesting as Ms Spence's life was, I was gobsmacked by the mortality rate mentioned in passing in the book. The number of children who didn't survive was staggering. As was the number of adults who died young, frequently leaving the widow or widower to make another marriage. These deaths were unremarkable to the author,but appalling in the context of improved health and survival rates of the current era.… (mere)
Born in Scotland in 1825, Catherine Helen Spence became one of Australia’s most prominent women activists. On her 80th birthday, the Chief Justice of South Australia Sir Samuel Way, offered this tribute:
Wikipedia goes further and calls her a leading suffragist, and Georgist, which (Wikipedia tells me)
In 1897 when she was 72, Spence took advantage of the ground-breaking female suffrage opportunities in South Australia and became Australia’s first female political candidate after standing for the Federal Convention held in Adelaide. (Read my review of Denise George’s biography of Mary Lee, SA’s indefatigable suffragist to find out how suffrage was achieved, and ditto for Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom to learn about other heroes of the suffrage movement).
However, Spence was a late convert to the suffrage cause. In Chapter 9 of her autobiography, ‘Meeting with J.S. Mill and George Eliot’, she is dismissive about female suffrage as a priority and #ouch! arrogant about her own claim to vote compared with her ignorant, apathetic sisters ...
To see my thoughts about this terrific book, visit
https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/22/further-thoughts-ever-yours-c-h-spence-edite...
and
https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/18/ever-yours-c-h-spence-edited-by-susan-magare...… (mere)
The most distinguished women they had in Australia… There was no one in the whole Commonwealth, whose career covered so wide a ground. She was a novelist, a critic, an accomplished journalist, a preacher, a lecturer, a philanthropist, and a social and moral reformer. (Introduction, p.11).
Wikipedia goes further and calls her a leading suffragist, and Georgist, which (Wikipedia tells me)
is an economic philosophy holding that, while people should own the value they produce themselves, economic value derived from land (often including natural resources and natural opportunities) should belong equally to all members of society.
In 1897 when she was 72, Spence took advantage of the ground-breaking female suffrage opportunities in South Australia and became Australia’s first female political candidate after standing for the Federal Convention held in Adelaide. (Read my review of Denise George’s biography of Mary Lee, SA’s indefatigable suffragist to find out how suffrage was achieved, and ditto for Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom to learn about other heroes of the suffrage movement).
However, Spence was a late convert to the suffrage cause. In Chapter 9 of her autobiography, ‘Meeting with J.S. Mill and George Eliot’, she is dismissive about female suffrage as a priority and #ouch! arrogant about her own claim to vote compared with her ignorant, apathetic sisters ...
To see my thoughts about this terrific book, visit
https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/22/further-thoughts-ever-yours-c-h-spence-edite...
and
https://anzlitlovers.com/2019/01/18/ever-yours-c-h-spence-edited-by-susan-magare...… (mere)
Over at his blog The Australian Legend, Bill is hosting a week (15-21 January) dedicated to the first generation of Australian women writers which he defines as those writers who came before the 1890s and the Sydney Bulletin ‘Bush Realism’ school, although many of them continued writing into the first part of the 20th century, though as he notes, most Australian writing before 1850 consists of letters and journals and novels only began to be published after that. What to read for this ‘week’ was an easy choice for me, because I’ve had Mr Hogarth’s Will (1865) on my TBR since Sue at her blog Whispering Gums recommended it to me, and it has turned out to be utterly absorbing reading.
Catherine Helen Spence (1825-1910) migrated to Australia in 1839 aged 14, in the wake of her father’s financial difficulties, and as Dale Spender notes in the introduction, Australia turned out to be the right place for the restoration of the family’s fortunes. As Luke Slattery showed in his novel Mrs M, Australia’s egalitarian ethos in the colony enabled social mobility even during the convict years whereas enduring class consciousness and snobbery about family ancestry in British society solidified divisions which could not be transcended. There was no way ‘up’ but there were plenty of ways ‘down’, the most obvious of which was financial embarrassment (as we see in the novels of Dickens).
But as Mr Hogarth’s Will shows with striking clarity, there were structural reasons for a decline in family fortunes. Inheritance law and custom meant that amongst the propertied classes, an eldest son inherited almost everything, while second and successive sons went into the military, the cloth or disappeared into some sort of administrative role in the far away colonies. Going into business was not gentlemanly. It was not done. And the absence of all these eligible young men in faraway places meant that there were numerous young women educated for the prospect of marriage but with little chance of achieving it. For them, if an inheritance annuity was not forthcoming, the only employment option was to be a governess.
Which is what happens to Jane and Alice (Elsie) Melville in Mr Hogarth’s Will. The eccentric Hogarth, despite the remonstrances of his lawyer, made a Will which effectively disinherited them so that they would not be courted for their fortune, and left his estate to a formerly unacknowledged illegitimate son called Francis. It was Mr Hogarth’s intention that the young ladies should be independent and work for their living, but he has not had them educated with what was essential to become governesses to other young ladies. These subjects were called The Accomplishments’ (playing piano, singing, drawing, painting, needlework, French &c); he has had them taught the ‘mannish’ subjects of Latin and Greek, mathematics, agricultural chemistry and mineralogy. Admirably educated for teaching boys, or for book-keeping, accountancy or other administrative work, Jane searches for work everywhere but the doors to employment are closed because of her gender. Alice, meanwhile, is that staple ‘delicate’ young woman of 19th century literature. Sweet, pretty and fragile, she feels the loss of their middle-class expectations more keenly than the plain and practical Jane, i.e. Alice weeps a lot and goes into a decline. Alice has grown up having allowances made for her ‘delicacy’, so in their present change of circumstances all that is expected of her is that she should try to do something not too taxing such as needlework or writing sentimental poems. Stoic Jane shoulders this burden willingly but things seem all the harder for her because she is confronted with the reality while sheltering Alice from it.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/15/mr-hogarths-will-by-catherine-helen-spence-b...… (mere)
Catherine Helen Spence (1825-1910) migrated to Australia in 1839 aged 14, in the wake of her father’s financial difficulties, and as Dale Spender notes in the introduction, Australia turned out to be the right place for the restoration of the family’s fortunes. As Luke Slattery showed in his novel Mrs M, Australia’s egalitarian ethos in the colony enabled social mobility even during the convict years whereas enduring class consciousness and snobbery about family ancestry in British society solidified divisions which could not be transcended. There was no way ‘up’ but there were plenty of ways ‘down’, the most obvious of which was financial embarrassment (as we see in the novels of Dickens).
But as Mr Hogarth’s Will shows with striking clarity, there were structural reasons for a decline in family fortunes. Inheritance law and custom meant that amongst the propertied classes, an eldest son inherited almost everything, while second and successive sons went into the military, the cloth or disappeared into some sort of administrative role in the far away colonies. Going into business was not gentlemanly. It was not done. And the absence of all these eligible young men in faraway places meant that there were numerous young women educated for the prospect of marriage but with little chance of achieving it. For them, if an inheritance annuity was not forthcoming, the only employment option was to be a governess.
Which is what happens to Jane and Alice (Elsie) Melville in Mr Hogarth’s Will. The eccentric Hogarth, despite the remonstrances of his lawyer, made a Will which effectively disinherited them so that they would not be courted for their fortune, and left his estate to a formerly unacknowledged illegitimate son called Francis. It was Mr Hogarth’s intention that the young ladies should be independent and work for their living, but he has not had them educated with what was essential to become governesses to other young ladies. These subjects were called The Accomplishments’ (playing piano, singing, drawing, painting, needlework, French &c); he has had them taught the ‘mannish’ subjects of Latin and Greek, mathematics, agricultural chemistry and mineralogy. Admirably educated for teaching boys, or for book-keeping, accountancy or other administrative work, Jane searches for work everywhere but the doors to employment are closed because of her gender. Alice, meanwhile, is that staple ‘delicate’ young woman of 19th century literature. Sweet, pretty and fragile, she feels the loss of their middle-class expectations more keenly than the plain and practical Jane, i.e. Alice weeps a lot and goes into a decline. Alice has grown up having allowances made for her ‘delicacy’, so in their present change of circumstances all that is expected of her is that she should try to do something not too taxing such as needlework or writing sentimental poems. Stoic Jane shoulders this burden willingly but things seem all the harder for her because she is confronted with the reality while sheltering Alice from it.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/01/15/mr-hogarths-will-by-catherine-helen-spence-b...… (mere)
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But she did much more, in spite of the limitations placed on the role of women in 19th century Australia and the British Empire more broadly. In reading about her, I found that had written this book, and was able too locate an electronic version.
The book is very Victorian, but a delight to read. She tells a good story - of the life of a young Scottish women sent to the colonies in the 1850s and the reader learns much of early colonial life, the impact of the goldrushes and much more. But the most striking aspect for me was the crazy gender roles. An intelligent, ambitious woman has so few opportunities open to her.
A great window on society in early Australian colonial history.… (mere)