The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
men on the grounds of their moral inferiority. In the 1921 article
she goes to great lengths to prove that she does not, and never
did, hate men, and states that ‘one sex should honour and
reverence the other’. 1 This is a rather different position from
the political celibacy she advocated before the war. By 1927,
Christabel, who was still passionately opposed to the sexual
abuse of women, interpreted the cause of sexual violence as the
‘devil’ rather than men. Writing about the reason for the rape
and mutilation of a 12-year-old girl she explained: ‘little girls
are still at the mercy of lust, of murderous perversion… God’s
answer is that the world lieth in the “evil one” and that sin and
iniquity will abound until the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ 2
Even that strong spinster theorist, Cicely Hamilton, had by
1921 lost the force of her feminism. In a Weekly Dispatch article
entitled ‘Women who repel men’ she blamed an assault on
Newnham women’s college by male undergraduates, in which
the gates of the college were damaged, on the women’s reluctance
to compromise and be amenable to men. She advised the women
to play down their independence. It could be that strong
spinsterhood was a more difficult position to take immediately
after the war because of the outburst of virulent indignation
and hostility which had greeted the increasingly independent
behaviour of some spinsters within the war period. There had
been opposition to the spinsters before the war, but not anything
to match that which greeted them afterwards, as we shall see.
Few of the stalwarts of the prewar period seem to have been
active in the feminism, of the 1920s. What then, was the new
shape of feminism at this time? David Doughan, of the Fawcett
Library, who is well informed about a period of feminist history
which is seriously under-researched, has described 1920s
feminism. 3 He suggests that feminists were concerned to look
as sober and respectable as they could, that big flashy campaigns
were out, constitutionalism was in, and feminists used
parliamentary lobbying to achieve legal equality through
complex legislation in specific areas. There was still some public
campaigning, for example on equal pay, but lobbying was
dominant. The lobbying was done by specialist organisations
such as the Equal Pay Campaign Committee, Women for
Westminster, the Married Women’s Association, the Association
for Moral and Social Hygiene, the National Union of Women
Teachers, the National Association of Women Civil Servants,
the Open Door Council and the Housewives’ League. These
lobbied for single issues, or on behalf of specific interests, they
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