The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

THE DECLINE OF MILITANT FEMINISM
to be characteristic of her attitude to feminism. 8 She explained
that although equal pay might be a good idea, there were too
many obstacles in the way, such as the idea that men received
a ‘family’ wage. Rather than struggle for equal pay, she
suggested that women should campaign for the endowment of
motherhood, envisioned by Rathbone as a wage, rather than a
small allowance. Thus she betrayed the cause of spinsterhood
and the independent woman. She deserted a feminist option
because it was too difficult and embraced the simpler alternative
of emphasising woman’s mission of motherhood. It is particularly
surprising that Rathbone should opt to support the married
woman and mother at the expense of the spinster considering
that she was herself a lifelong spinster.
Mary Stocks described Rathbone, in no uncertain terms, as
having no interest in men and being hostile to the idea of
heterosexual sex. Mary Stocks found it necessary to emphasise
this point and it is important still when the strength of women’s
determination to choose for women emotionally and against
men is continually ignored or omitted from the history books.
Stocks pointed out that ‘colourful commentators’ had invented
male lovers for Florence Nightingale, Emily Brontë and Octavia
Hill because their determined spinsterhood and bonds to women
could not be understood. She said that there was not even the
suspicion of evidence on which male lovers could be invented
for Rathbone. Rathbone, Stocks explained, had little contact
with men at Oxford: ‘Nor does the minutest record of her
subsequent career offer any suggestion of susceptibility to male
attraction.’ 9 Eleanor met the woman she was to love and live
with for the rest of her life at Victoria Settlement in Liverpool.
Stocks described their relationship thus: ‘Elizabeth Macadam
became in due course the friend and companion of Eleanor’s
existence until death did them part, and at no subsequent period
was Eleanor lonely.’ 10
Mary Stocks was a member of Eleanor’s circle of women
friends who holidayed and worked politically together. It was
brave of Stocks in 1949 to make such a deliberate and moving
record of the relationship between Eleanor and Elizabeth. This
was after all a time when hostility towards lesbianism was
growing steadily stronger to the extent where Vera Brittain in
1940, as we have seen, felt forced to make a public renunciation
of her relationship with Winifred Holtby in Testament of
Friendship. 11
Eleanor Rathbone committed herself to the cause of
152