Cui Xiuwen, 崔岫聞

Covering the period from the beginning of the twentieth century to the outbreak of the First World War, this entertaining account describes the lives of women in all classes of society: the entertainments they watched, the clothes they wore, their education and the effect it had on women’s magazines, the work they did and the rise of the ‘office’ as the Mecca for working women. The author also considers the changing attitudes to contraception and to sex. This period, particularly its latter part, saw the rejection of old leaders and old habits. In politics, in the trade unions, and especially in the women’s movement, the refusal of a so-called reforming government to accede to moderate demands resulted in the rise to power of militants. While primarily about Britain the book also studies women in Germany, France and the United States where Mr Crow offers a particularly revealing account based around Owen Wister’s society novel Lady Baltimore. His method is to interweave the life stories of women, famous and not so famous, with a lucid and highly readable account of the society in which they lived and the social changes that affected their lives and to which they themselves contributed.… (more)