Unbridling the Tongues of Women - The University of Adelaide

Unbridling the tongues of women
detail a post-Freudian explication of stages in her interior growth and shifts in ideas
and relationships. Spence’s papers and writing constitute a predominantly external
record. But it is still possible to make acquaintance with the individual who, in the
later years of her life, won affection and esteem not only through her achievements,
but also by the impact of her person and personality.
In an age which depicted feminine beauty in terms of the fragile, fair, slender
and weak, Spence could not have been considered beautiful. She was short and
broad: photographs indicate that she was little more than five feet tall, plump in her
20s, later distinctly stout. Short-waisted, round-shouldered, and short-necked, with
a large jaw, heavy features and a prominent wart, she was undoubtedly considered
plain when she was young. But later photographs show, and her later friends remembered
her face ‘as one of grand and rugged strength’, dominated by grey eyes which
were ‘alert, eager and almost searching.’ 20 People found her colouring more appealing
as she grew older. She had fair skin and hair which offended her when she wore
it in carefully-arranged ringlets by being ‘red, but not auburn’. As she grew older
it turned a beautiful silvery grey. 21 Her lack of conventional beauty occasioned her
some distress when she was young. She confided to her diary,
I do believe my face is an honest one, and, vanity whispers, a pleasant one
to look upon. Yet who is pleased to look upon it but my own relations,
to whom looks are a matter of indifference. Children like my face, that
is one comfort. 22
But once she had determined that she was to be a spinster, she became as resolutely
indifferent to her looks as she was to her dress. Her biographer Jeanne Young
recalled, ‘It was the accepted belief among most people that “blue stockings” need
not worry about dress, and her appearance when she was first pointed out to me as
the “great Miss Spence”… tended to confirm this belief. Her niece was accustomed
to guarding against this appearance. When seeing Catherine Spence and Jeanne
Young off on a train she asked, laughing, ‘Please see that Aunt keeps her bonnet on
straight.’ 23 Spence’s dress, like her looks, troubled her when she was young: recalling
her first years in South Australia she reflected, ‘When a girl is very poor, and feels
herself badly dressed, she cannot help feeling shy, especially if she has a good deal
of Scotch pride.’ 24 She continued to be careless about her clothes, probably as much
because her financial resources were always meagre, as because she had other things
on her mind. Her dress became more conventional after her visit to the United States
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