Unbridling the Tongues of Women - University of Adelaide

247 Pages·2010·3.16 MB·English

by  Susan Magarey

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Photograph by Mick Bradley
Susan Magarey AM, FASSA, PhD, was made a member of the Order of Australia
for pioneering Women’s Studies as a field of academic endeavour.
Her publications include four books: the prize-winning biography of Cathe-
rine Helen Spence, Unbridling the tongues of women (1986) now being re-published;
Passions of the first-wave feminists (2001); Looking Back: Looking Forward. A Century
of the Queen Adelaide Club 1909-2009 (2009); and, with Kerrie Round, Roma the
First: a Biography of Dame Roma Mitchell (2007, second, revised, imprint 2009). She
has edited eight collections of articles – including Women in a Restructuring Austra-
lia: Work and Welfare (1995) with Anne Edwards, and Debutante Nation: Feminism
Contests the 1890s (1993) with Sue Rowley and Susan Sheridan – and was for twenty
years (1985-1995) the Founding Editor of the triannual journal Australian Feminist
Studies.
She is the Founder of the Magarey Medal for Biography and a member of
the Board of History SA. She is writing a history of the Women’s Liberation Move-
ment in Australia. For fun, she swims, gardens, cooks and listens to classical music.
She describes her life in the words of Australian poet Jennifer Maiden: ‘Ambivalent,
ambidextrous, ambiguous, androgynous, amorous, ironic’. In her next life she will
be a trapeze artist.
Catherine Helen Spence. Image courtesy of the State Library of South Australia, SLSA: B3675.
Unbridling the Tongues
of Women
A biography of
Catherine Helen Spence
SUSAN MAGAREY
Published in Adelaide by
University of Adelaide Press
Barr Smith Library
The University of Adelaide
South Australia
5005
[email protected]
www.adelaide.edu.au/press
The University of Adelaide Press publishes externally refereed scholarly books by staff of the Uni-
versity of Adelaide. It aims to maximise the accessibility to its best research by publishing works
through the internet as free downloads and as high quality printed volumes on demand.
Electronic Index: this book is available from the website as a down-loadable PDF with fully search-
able text. Please use the electronic version to complement the index.
____________________________________________________________________________
© Susan Magarey 1985, 2010
First published 1985 Hale and Iremonger, Sydney
Republished 2010 by University of Adelaide Press with a new Introduction
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criti-
cism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced, stored in a re-
trieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior written permission. Address all inquiries to the Director at
the above address.
________________________________________________________________
Subject Keywords
Women authors - Australian Biography - Women in Public Life Australia - Women’s rights Australia
History
For the full Cataloguing-in-Publication data please contact National Library of Australia:
[email protected]
ISBN 978-0-9806723-0-5 (electronic)
ISBN 978-0-9806723-1-2 (paperback)
Book design: Céline Lawrence
Cover concept: Fiona Cameron. Drawing by Hugo Shaw.
Paperback printed by Griffin Press, South Australia
Preface
During her long life Catherine Helen Spence sought to make her voice heard
in a world dominated by men. She penned editorials, delivered sermons and
spoke at public meetings both in Australia, in the United States and in Britain. Both
by her own example and in her support for women’s cause, she sought ‘to unbridle
the tongues of women’. Although she was well-known in her day, indeed renowned
as the ‘Grand Old Woman of Australia’ at her death in 1910, knowledge of her life
of achievements slipped in subsequent years. When in 1985, Susan Magarey pub-
lished her prize-winning biography of Spence, Unbridling the Tongues of Women,
Spence had become largely forgotten. Unbridling did more than recover the story of
Spence’s life and work, it suggested new approaches to Australian history. It was the
first biography of a first-wave Australian feminist written by a second-wave feminist
historian. As such it inspired and set an example of feminist biography and history
which has seen a great outpouring of feminist historical and literary scholarship in
biographies of Australian feminist activists and of Australian women writers; Spence
herself was of course both a writer and a political activist. Unbridling must also be
located as an influential early text in the development of Australian feminist history
in the last three decades. In this and her other work, Susan Magarey has achieved
much in the on-going campaigns to ensure that women’s voices and perspectives are
heard in public debate.
v
Unbridling the tongues of women
It is important that women’s issues and women’s history be kept to the forefront
and it is highly timely that this book should be re-published now. Susan Magarey’s
new introduction sets the original study in the context of more recent research on
Spence. It will bring to a new generation of readers the importance of unbridling
women’s tongues.
Margaret Allen
17 September 2009
Gender Studies
University of Adelaide
vi
Introduction to the New Edition
Catherine Helen Spence was a powerful and persuasive public speaker. She had,
in a sense, been practising speaking for most of her adult life. She recalled
a moment in the 1850s when she was in her late twenties – a wonderfully back-
handed moment – when she began to sing while she was doing the ironing. Her four
year-old nephew ‘burst out with “Don’t sing, auntie; let me hear the voice of your
words.”’ So she abandoned melody and recited Wordsworth. But this was, as she
herself was to observe, exercising her gifts exclusively for ‘home consumption’. Law
and custom, she continued,
have put a bridle on the tongues of women, and of the innumerable
proverbs relating to the sex, the most cynical are those relating to her use
of language. Her only qualification for public speaking in old days was
that she could scold, and our ancestors imposed a salutary check on this
by the ducking stool in public, and sticks no thicker than the thumb for
marital correction in private.
Historian Marilyn Lake has observed, ‘Oratory was a masculine performance; wom-
anliness demanded a soft voice and winning smiles’. Perhaps Catherine Spence was
the exception which proved the rule.
vii