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Does anyone know at what point the idea that women could train for a career for their own sake, rather than solely due to economical necessity, became acceptable? Was the attitude different for more high class professions like lawyer or doctor? |
patmac wrote: |
I
Me: "I don't want to teach." Headmistress: "Oh! Secretarial or nursing?" |
JayB wrote: |
- and back then boys didn't have the option of nursing. |
JayB wrote: |
Of course, there wasn't the range of jobs that there is now, for girls or boys. .... and only bbc radio, unless you wanted to go to Luxembourg or bob around on the North Sea. |
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I couldn't think of anything worse than to just go home after school and not do anything. I would be so bored. I can certainly understand Joey not looking forward to it |
JayB wrote: |
Would Jem and Madge have stood in Jo's way if she'd had a sensible plan for her life after leaving school? |
Alison H wrote: |
Joey actually says as early as Jo of that she plans to be an author, but she then seems to forget about it until she's left school and is writing a story to amuse Daisy and only then decides to try writing a proper book.
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'And for you there will certainly be work at the Sonnalpe. Or do you keep to the old plan, and go to Belsornia as lady-in-waiting to Elisaveta?’
Jo shook her head. ‘No; not now that Sybil has come. And Dick and Mollie come home on furlough this summer; and when they return, they will leave Bride behind at Die Rosen. I couldn’t go away and leave my sister with all those babies to look after. Elisaveta can get any number of girls to maid-of-honour her; but Madge has only me.’ ‘Elisaveta will be disappointed,’ said Simone, with a thought for the young Crown Princess of Belsornia, who, three years before, had spent two happy terms at the Chalet School as a schoolgirl. ‘Elisaveta knows how we are situated,’ said Jo. ‘After all, she comes here for a holiday most years, and I shall see her then. It would be much harder, really, in Belsornia. Court etiquette produces a certain amount of constraint, however fond of each other you may be. And they’ll be thinking of a husband for her before long. I’d rather have it as it is, I think.’ |
Jenefer wrote: |
I think Joey should have been encouraged to go to university and study History with a view to teaching afterwards. At the time, she was not planning to get married so did she expect to be supported by Jem for the rest of her life. |
jennifer wrote: |
I don't think Joey would have done well at university. She's good at specific areas (history, writing, singing) but doesn't have a particularly strong work ethic, and has never had to buckle down and actually work hard at something she disliked (art, math, science). I'm not sure a university would do a CS style coddling of her emotional volatility either - I can just see a professor excusing her from class to go lie down because she's been over excited and is looking tired. |
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I've just been reading the Sue Barton nurse books that have recently been republished by Image Cascade Publishing. And in Visiting Nurse, Sue is talking to another older nurse: she asks her, you are Mrs. Egan, not Miss? And Mrs Egan says "that's right. Lots of girls here get married, you know, and stay right on. You hate to give up the work once you're in it." Sue asks if her husband minds and Mrs. Egan says that he thinks its swell. Visiting Nurse was first published 1938 and I think it's the first girls book I've read from that time where a women working outside the house after marriage is thought of as a good thing. |
Theresa wrote: |
She wouldn't have to study subjects she didn't like and her flair for languages actually is demonstrably remarkable in the early years, as opposed to her voice which I have always just imagined as 'very good' rather than 'astounding'. A bit of a break from all the coddling would have done her good as well. |
Róisín wrote: |
And even when school stories do come to her naturally, she finds it hard to transfer to adult historical novels - but she does get there eventually, after spending a couple of years studying the pure history around the topic on Miss Stewart's advice) |
LizzieC wrote: | ||
I don't remember that. Which book did it appear in? Was it a HB-only event? |
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