- Title:
- An atonement for ambition and passion: the experiences of British Victorian educational pioner, Constance Louisa Maynard (1849-1935)
- Creator:
- Phipps, Pauline A.
- Date Created:
- 2004
- Degree Awarded:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Subjects:
- education gender
- Geographical Focus:
- Britain London
- Supporting Materials:
- n/a
- Description:
- This study examines the life of Constance Maynard (1849-1935), a relatively unknown but influential educational pioneer. Maynard’s founding of Westfield College in 1882 is noteworthy because it afforded women new opportunities to gain Bachelor’s degrees from the University of London. When Maynard retired from Westfield in 1913, women had entered professional careers like teaching and medicine. This study, based on my reading of Maynard’s unpublished Green-book (1866-1935), Diary (1871-1935) and Autobiography (1915-27), together with her published texts, is a descriptive and interpretive biography of her public and private life experiences as an educational pioneer. Scholars have made recent revelations about how religion influenced women’s self-empowerment and social gains. However, little has been written about the impacts of faith and ambition on Victorian women’s passion, in general, and in particular, on those who suppressed desire to embrace suffering as evidence of moral purity. This study offers a preliminary analysis of the unique way in which one Victorian woman sought to reconcile faith, passion and ambition. It traces Maynard’s conflicts between ambition and religious duty, and between rationalism and religious passion. I am also interested in defining and exploring Maynard’s sexuality and in connecting it to her religious belief. In so doing, I hope to offer more insight into Victorian sexuality.
Source
- Preferred Citation:
- Phipps, Pauline A.. 2004. "An atonement for ambition and passion: the experiences of British Victorian educational pioner, Constance Louisa Maynard (1849-1935)", Department of History, Carleton University
- Link to this page:
- https://cuhistory.github.io/grads/items/hist_159.html
Rights
- Rights:
- Copyright the author, all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.