Faith, Duty and Power of Mind: The Cloughs and Their Circle, 1829-1960.

Walker, Pamela J.

Faith, Duty and Power of Mind: The Cloughs and Their Circle, 1829-1960, by Gilian Sutherland. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2006. xiv, 262 pp. $70.00 US (cloth).

This engaging book is a biography of Anne Jemima Clough and her niece Thena Clough and a history of the origins and development Of women's education at Newnham College, Cambridge, where both women served as principal. What makes this book particularly interesting is the balance between the unique details of each woman's life and the ways each exemplified issues in wider women's experiences in higher education and the political life of a generation.

Anne Jemima Clough was born in 1820 to a family of Liverpool merchants with business in Charleston, South Carolina. Anne spent some early years in Charleston, and her family engaged with the bustling Atlantic trade in goods and people. The boys were sent to England to be educated at Rugby and Oxford, but Anne remained at home where she was educated and taught the domestic life of a middle-class woman. She did follow an ambitious reading list and studied Greek and Latin. She was aware that her father's precarious finances might make earning a living a necessity. When she was twenty-one, her father's business failed, and she began a small school for girls to contribute to her family's income. The correspondence of her father and brothers reveals their dismay that Anne was employed and might never marry. When her father died in 1844, the need for employment was even greater. Her brother Arthur, who had taken up a position at Oxford University, found her situation quite unfortunate. He wrote to their mother, "She will be going into horrid places here as there: and she will have little or nothing else to do ... I don't well see what better occupation one can expect for her than what she has at present" (p. 49). For Anne, however, her circumstances allowed her to find a vocation, friendship, and meaningful work, and she was able to create opportunities for other young women of her social class.

Anne Clough was part of a generation of women determined to change the economic and social restrictions on women. Like many women, she believed women's education needed critical reform. In 1866 she published her views on the subject. She argued that girls' schools were intended to resemble homes, but girls should instead attend large schools with higher academic standards offered by professionally educated teachers who had attended lectures from professors. She began to meet with other prominent women reformers, including Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Wolstenholme, Emily Davies, and several men from Cambridge and Oxford to establish a series of lectures on scholarly subjects. Those involved pressed forward with a plan to establish examinations for young women that would be the first step in attaining a place for women students at Cambridge University. Anne was asked to head a boardinghouse where women students could reside while preparing for these examinations. That institution would grow into Newnham College. She would serve as its first principal until her death in 1892.

Athena Clough, known as Thena, bore in 1861 to Anne's brother Arthur, arrived as a student at Newnham in 1881. The Newnham student body was by then larger and included students preparing for examinations in many subjects. She became Secretary to the Principal, her aunt, in 1888 and began her long career as an administrator. She became Principal in 1920. During her years there, Newnham College purchased land and built new buildings, hired faculty with research and teaching responsibilities, demanded that Cambridge University admit women to full degree status, and attempted to establish rules and practices that would secure women a solid position in academic life. The college attempted to enforce rules about chaperones and curfews, but Thena was diplomatic about how students responded to such rules. For example, she suggested to one committee that students be discouraged from using the ground floor windows to exit and enter the buildings, as it tended to destroy the flowerbeds and brickwork. She was also faced with the more serious problem of countering the persistent opposition of members of the university to permitting women to take degrees. In 1897, when women were again denied a place at the university, the male undergraduates attempted to break down the gates at Newnham and celebrated all night with bonfires. Their precarious position made it more difficult to attract faculty and students who could secure better positions at other universities. Finally in 1948, Cambridge permitted women to graduate and Thena, retired since 1923, saw the long-awaited victory.

This book is engagingly written and offers both insights into the personal lives of these two women and the wider social history of women's higher education. It does not, however, grapple with some of the larger questions in this history. For example, the author does not attempt to explain why Cambridge was different from other universities in its persistent refusal to admit women. What forces permitted and encouraged Cambridge men to exclude women when they had been admitted elsewhere? It also does not reveal much about the relationships between the women at Newnham. Martha Vicinus' Independent Women (Chicago, 1985) raised provocative questions about how feminism and Victorian femininity created a particular culture in women's institutions in this period, but Sutherland does not address such questions. It would similarly be valuable to know more about what other political issues the Cambridge women, particularly the two Clough women, regarded as important to the advancement of women.

The book also assumes knowledge of Cambridge University's particularities, and it is regrettable this was not corrected. This book will be of great interest to historians of women's education, Victorian feminism, and to those who enjoy engaging biographies.

Pamela J. Walker

Carleton University