Why did women become school mistresses?

[Yak]

This is something I wondered even when I was a child. Were the mistresses in schools like St Clare's and Malory Towers teachers because they had a vocation or simply because they needed to support themselves and did not have many other options? I would imagine that they were all well educated but also did not have independent means. Were some of them hoping to one day marry? Did Miss Theobald and Miss Grayling, for instance, give up the idea of marriage because they felt that they had to be headmistresses?

[timv]

I'm not quite clear on the dating of the changes to the legal position, but I know that originally there was a ban in law to married women teaching - or doing many other jobs. This was the case in Edwardian times , when Enid was at school, and it was lifted in the First World War to enable more women to help fill in for men who had gone off to fight; after the War, men returning from the armed forces pressurised the government to reinstate the ban so that they would be able to get their jobs back. There was some, typically ambiguous legislation - not as new a phenomenon as you would think - to get round this and allow women who already had jobs to keep them by saying that women could not be sacked on account of their sex as it was discriminatory, but in practice there was a ban until the late 1930s, probably until the Second World War brought in a new need for more women teachers and clerical (and especially factory) workers . The full right of married women to equal employment rights (but not equal salaries) came in as a wartime measure in 1939 but was only formalised in law in 1945/6, I think . (My mother was working as a teacher both before and after her marriage in 1942, in wartime.)

There was also a prevailing social attitude, which would seem shockingly old fashioned these days but which I have encountered as a 'given' in some school stories of the 1920s and 1930s, that married women 'should' be financially reliant on their husbands and so 'did not need' to work except in special cases of hardship. It was men's responsibility to 'keep' their wives. Hence to this mindset it was more logical to allow unmarried women to have better or sole access to jobs and there was 'no need' to give married women the same access to jobs; and this would feed into expectations by both school story book authors and parents , as reflecting real life pre-1939, over who would be women teachers. In Elsie J Oxenham's 1930s books she even has (well-off middle-class) female characters arguing that giving up your job when you marry is a generous act as it opens more jobs for those unmarried girls who need to earn money; the basic unfairness of it is not challenged.

The use of 1930s social norms in literature would still affect books written in the 1940s, eg St Clares; and in other authors where we do have some detail about women teachers' careers in this period, eg Elinor Brent Dyer's earlier Chalet School books (which cover Continental school practice as well as English, as the early books to 1938 are set in Austria) English and overseas teachers always give up their careers on marrying. So does the CS Headmistress and founder, Madge Bettany, though by this point she has enough money from the school and her husband ia a rich doctor who runs a TB sanatorium.

Married women teachers do appear in a few of the books which I have read about the First WW situation, but none for the 1920s and 1930s; and I have read that in some places in the UK local councils and male teachers' unions refused to accept female married teachers after 1919 and protested about patriotic male teachers who had signed up in 1914 not getting their jobs back if married women kept them. Some Conservative Party and Anglican activists and councillors also opposed it as 'undermining' the institution of marriage, and Heads and school governors were unwilling to stand up to this sort of pressure for fear of boycotts. There were some cases of married women being told to vacate their jobs to make way for returning male ex-army teachers and being challenged to take the schools to court if they objected - which they could not usually afford to do.

It does show how much society has changed, and the prevalence of a Victorian/ Edwardian social mindset in many quarters even in the 1920s and 1930s; attitudes only changed slowly. (Enid seems to have used some real Edwardian teachers from her own time as a schoolgirl in some books, eg Mamzelle at St C , so these women would be portrayed as how she remembered them from pre-1914 not as contemporary 1940s teachers from when the books were written.) This is the social background to the way that Enid shows her teachers operating , which we really only get by hints not by direct references; and most of the St Clare's teachers would have been middle-aged by the '1940s' when the books are set, apart from a few younger ones like the 'arty' and pretentious Miss Quentin (who would probably have been middle-class and have had some money of their own).

[Yak]

Thanks that was interesting. Re Miss Quentin, I presume that she was just using teaching as a sort of stopgap - same as Miss Wilcox in St Clare's - and had no real vocation for it. Miss Theobald and Miss Grayling, however, seem genuinely dedicated to their jobs and I can't imagine that they are only doing it out of a need to keep themselves.

[GloomyGraham]

I'm not a woman and grew up much later than the mistresses in Enid's books.

But when my schooling ended, I chose teaching and went to college to study for it. Later on I realised I really didn't really want to teach - it was more that I didn't really have a dream job so teaching was just really just something to do to continue my education while I made up my mind.

I did adult education a dozen or so years later and was considered very good at it, so maybe I did like some elements of teaching, just not the 'substitute parent' role lol.

In the era of Enid's books, it seemed like there were only a few options for women - teaching, nursing or some kind of office work.

[Yak]

For middle class women yeah - I can't really see someone like Miss Roberts working in a factory or mill.

[Boodi 2]

Many years ago when I was at school in Ireland (I finished in 1975!) most (but not all) of the female teachers were single, probably because at that stage the infamous "marriage bar" was still in place, which as mentioned above, meant that women working in the banks, civil service and as teachers had to retire on marriage. I think it was removed in the mid-1970s (I stand open to correction on that one as I am not 100% certain). in the 1990s I became a teacher myself in a sort of roundabout way (i.e. as a calligrapher, for which I hold a teaching qualification) and while I mainly worked in adult education I did give a few calligraphy classes in schools as an extra activity and in one of my classes the pupils insisted on calling me "Miss", despite the fact that I was married, so obviously the idea of single/non-married teachers was deeply ingrained!!!

[Katharine]

When I was at school we always called female teachers 'Miss', regardless of their marital status, and male teachers were 'Sir'.

My children were often unsure whether their female teachers were 'Miss or Mrs' when discussing them at home.

Recently in one of my university seminars, one of the younger students called the lecturer 'Miss', although it's more normal to call them by their first names. I'm not actually sure what the formal way of addressing them would be as their title would actually be 'Dr' rather that Miss/Mrs/ Ms.

Just to complicate matters, I'm also studying German at the moment, and have 2 female tutors. They are both married to English men, so I'm not sure if their titles would be Frau or Mrs, unless of course they also have a PHD. So much easier that we call them by their first names.

[Hannah]

I would always use the title in the language I'm using at that very moment - so I'd say "Frau Meier, ich habe eine Frage" but might say "Mrs Meier, I've got a question" to the same person at another moment.

[Katharine]

That's interesting. Several years ago there was a French lady who was on a local committee. Several times I heard her referred to as 'Madame.......' She lived over here permanently and had an English husband, so I could never understand why she wasn't called 'Mrs'.

[Anita Bensoussane]

That reminds me of Noel Streatfeild's Ballet Shoes, in which Posy's dancing teacher is called 'Madame Fidolia' or 'Madame' even though she has lived in London for twenty years (and is Russian, not French!)

There's also Madame Cholet the Womble! She's never referred to as Mrs. Cholet.

There are often Mam'zelles in school stories, including Enid Blyton's, but as they're teaching French it's not surprising that they're called by their French titles. When I was in school, one of our French teachers asked us to address him as 'Monsieur' even though he was English. He gave us all French versions of our names, which we used in his lessons.

[Nair Snehalatha]

I think they were just tailor made for the profession.Miss Jenks, Miss Roberts were such dedicated teachers