Marie Stopes: and the Sexual Revolution by June Rose

by June Rose

Drawing on family and personal letters and papers, a diary and Marie Stopes's unpublished novel, June Rose throws new light on the interweaving of the public and personal life of a fascinating and formidable woman.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, Womens

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

June Rose spent five years exploring the private world of Dr Barnardo's, matching archive material with the memories of staff and children which is documented in her book For the Sake of the Children. Her first excursion into the charitable world, Changing Focus, was written to mark the centenary of the R.N.I.B. Since then her two acclaimed biographies, The Perfect Gentleman, the life of James Miranda Barry, a nineteenth-century woman doctor who masqueraded for forty years as a man, and Elizabeth Fry, the life of the Quaker prison reformer, reflect her concern with social questions.

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Marie Stope founded the first birth control clinic in the UK in 1921. She also wrote sex manual ‘Married love’ in 1918. It was the first book where not only the technicalities of the sexual intercourse were discussed but also female orgasm and contraception. However, Marie Stopes was fond of Eugenics and many of here deeds and opinions are racist or controversial.

The most relatable quote from the biography is, of course, Marie’s statement about her exam in German.

“Of all the gruesome, beastly enough to make you cry sort of things, the exam, lasting two wretched hours in German is the worst,’ she confided to Winnie.”

Some facts and quotes that impressed or amused me are below. The book really helps to appreciate how greatly women’s role in society improved and how fierce women had fought for it.

“… there is nothing that helps so much with the economic emancipation of woman as a knowledge of how to control her maternity,” Marie Stopes wrote sixty years ago…”

“The lawyers of the nineteenth century have decided that the word ‘man’ always includes ‘woman’ when there is a penalty to be incurred but never includes ‘woman’ when there is a privilege to be conferred.”

“In the 1850s, opportunities for women’s employment were bleak but pioneers had begun to address the deplorable state of girls’ education. By the time Charlotte reached her teens there were four progressive schools in England offering girls a proper secondary education.

“In 1867, when Charlotte was twenty-six, her yearning for a higher education was fulfilled, at least partially. A Society for the University Education of Women was founded in Edinburgh. Sympathetic professors offered extra-mural courses of lectures for clever young women.”

“There was,’ she argued, ‘no demand in the schools for a separate University for women… Indeed I have never met with a woman who for herself wanted a Women’s University…’”

“Fujii was subtle in his compliments, telling Marie that he thought German women dressed very badly and that the English must be a better and prettier dressed race.”

“She managed to present a confident front, sailing about in her gown, which she found a great moral support. ‘I feared possible ructions from the men but they are perfectly good and don’t mind my lecturing to them and ragging them about their work. I don’t think they are awake to the fact that a little revolution is going on quietly…“

“Although she was in love with Fujii, she could never bear to let go of those who were fond of her.”

“Frau Resvoll, the only woman professor in Norway, was prominent in the women’s cause. But at the time, unlike her mother, Marie was not active in the Suffrage Movement. She said openly that although she sympathized with their aims she did not want to jeopardize her professional position, and was contemptuous of the militant, breakaway wing of the Suffragists, the Women’s Social and Political Union.”

“In October 1905, Christabel Pankhurst, a student at Manchester, had barracked a Liberal Party meeting in the city, unfurling a VOTES FOR WOMEN banner. She was charged with obstruction, imprisoned and threatened with expulsion from the University.”

“He is ballast and I am the sails in our work generally, but without ballast I am likely to tip over.”

“In her early years at Manchester, although tacitly and implicitly a feminist, she had opposed the militant tactics of the Women’s Social and Political Union, the breakaway faction of the Suffrage Movement, afraid, as her letters make clear, that open involvement might hinder her scientific career.”

“She had been critical of the militant branch of the Suffrage Movement in the early years in Manchester, but had joined their ranks in 1912 and now carried banners in the street, and expected, even hoped, to go to prison for her activities.”

“Maude was a Socialist while Marie, innately Conservative, became a revolutionary only when her own interests were involved.”

“In a letter to The Times dated 6 April 1914 she ostensibly protested against the ban the London County Council had introduced, preventing married women from practising medicine. She argued cogently that the disqualification would stop some”

“She used her own life as the raw material to wreak change in social attitudes with startling courage and with equally startling indifference to other people’s feelings.”

“Marie was interested in breeding, initially through her botanical research, and she gradually realized that Aylmer Maude would not make the ideal partner to produce the best strain for the Race.”

“Early in July 1915 Marie Stopes went to Fabian Hall in London to hear Margaret Sanger, a birth control pioneer from America, speak of her fight to bring a knowledge of birth control to the masses in New York.”

“Like writers of the calibre of Shaw and H. G. Wells, Marie was inspired by the simplistic notion of human perfectibility. Personally she was convinced that theories derived from research into the plant and animal kingdom could be applied to the complexities of the human situation. Her attitude to the problem was entirely academic, reinforced by her own studies into the evolution of primitive plants. The First World War had advanced the cause of the Eugenics lobby, since it had revealed widespread disease and disability among the lower classes. Marie believed passionately that if such people could be persuaded not to breed, society would benefit. She told the National Birth-Rate Commission in her evidence in 1919 that the simplest way of dealing with chronic cases of inherent disease, drunkenness or bad character would be to sterilize the parents.”

“He and others felt strongly that those who believed in birth control should stand together. Marie, by contrast, had convinced herself that she alone should head the battle to save the race. Communists, anarchists, those earlier pioneers who had challenged the existing laws, were all bad for the cause. She saw herself as the spotless saviour, the only one who could persuade public opinion.”

“I have received an interesting series of papers and correspondence from Australia, where under the name of ‘Scientific Motherhood’ some high-minded women have been endeavouring for some time to found an institute for the scientific insemination of women war-deprived of mates, so that though husband-less, they may have the joy and sacrifice of child-bearing under properly protected conditions.“

“When little Harry was born, Charlotte told Marie that she had a beautiful baby, but ‘not so beautiful as my baby was’. Marie remembered that all her life. It was, she said, the first time her mother ever paid her a compliment.”

“In April 1930 Marie wrote personally to Pope Pius XI, pleading for his help in promoting contraception.”

“Little Harry was not allowed to read any books, since Marie believed that reading encouraged second-hand minds, but he heard plenty of stories and was prompted to write.”

“Humiliated and ashamed, Humphrey had suggested that since he could no longer make love to her, she should take a lover, so long as they could stay together.”

“In South Africa, Australia and New Zealand she had clinics affiliated to hers and longed to see them throughout the Empire. However, she drew the line at helping a Russian professor who asked her for assistance because of her hatred of ‘Bolshevism’.”

“And in 1935 a group of American academics listed Married Love as sixteenth in a list of the twenty-five most influential books of the previous fifty years, ahead of Einstein’s Relativity, Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams and Hitler’s Mein Kampf.”

“At fifty-eight, she was, she said and believed, psychologically twenty-six. To stay healthy she was convinced that she needed sexual intercourse, that the male hormones were vital to her well-being.”

“Despite the fact that Douglas embodied two of Marie’s prejudices, Roman Catholicism and homosexuality, she was delighted with the friendship. She admired his poetry and was attracted by his title.”

“Despite her earlier letter to Hitler (and Lord Alfred Douglas and other right-wing friends had persuaded her that Hitler would not invade Poland), once war was declared she became ferociously patriotic.”

When she came home, she sent the Foreign Secretary a brief summary of her life and career. She had discussed with him the possibility of joining the Cabinet and pointed out that her breadth of contact and variety of expert qualifications might make her ‘of real use as a woman statesman … I am convinced,’ she continued, ‘that there ought to be a woman in the Cabinet and very soon she would be of value.’”

“Intellectually she would have been a great asset, but the vanity which she had never learnt to conceal, and her dogmatism, obscured her judgement.”

“Marie kept a close eye on his health, morbidly afraid of infection and insisted on Harry wiping the cutlery when out for a meal ‘even at the Ritz’.”

“As an expert on sex she claimed that Harry was physiologically ten years Mary’s junior and that the couple were sexually unsuited: ‘on Eugenic grounds I should advise against the marriage were they strangers to me. My personal observation of the children makes me sure they cannot give each other lasting happiness…’”

“That same month she tried to embroil Humphrey in her crusade, pleading that marriage to Mary would constitute a Eugenic crime against the nation, the family and his children. By marrying Mary, Harry would ‘make a mock of our lives’ work for Eugenic breeding

“Despite her scientific training, Marie’s capacity for self-delusion had, in this case, taken on perilous proportions. ‘The doctors say I am dying but I refuse to believe it. I am going to Germany to a clinic where I will have an operation,’ she confided to Keith Briant in a letter.”

“On 10 October 1957, she made out a final will, leaving the bulk of her estate, her copyrights and her house to the Royal Society of Literature, her Clinic to the Eugenics Society and generous bequests to the British Museum. The personal element in her life was largely neglected.”

“What is most extraordinary in her will is that Marie Stopes, the feminist fighter, virtually ignored her two young granddaughters, Catherine and Helena. They were to receive ‘such furs, laces, scarves and trinkets as my son selects for them’.”

“In July 1958, almost forty years after Marie had first revealed her ‘message’ to the Anglican Bishops at the Lambeth Conference, the Conference acknowledged the necessity for birth control and vindicated Marie Stopes’s ‘obscene’ ideas in words that might have been dictated by Marie herself.
‘The procreation of children is not the sole purpose of Christian marriage; implicit within the bond of husband and wife is the relationship of love with its sacramental expression in physical union … the responsibility for deciding upon the number and frequency of children has been laid by God upon the conscience of parents everywhere…’”

[lucy snow · Rating 4 out of 5]

a very detailed account of the life of marie stopes from beginning to end. it was a brilliant insight into her relationship and family dynamics, as well as the context of all her published work.

this will be a really valuable resource for my diss, and im sure i will refer back to it constantly lol.

this was very well written and concise, and conveyed marie's stubborn personality and great achievements hand in hand. she is a strange woman

[Chandrashekar Gangaraju · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yet another proper eccentric, who I felt led quite a sad life. An incredibly brave woman who did so much for female sexuality. Don't think she would have lasted a day in today's world with social media pouncing on every single politically incorrect comment - a cliché that I suppose would apply for almost anyone who lived their prime in early 20th century and makes me think that debates in our society are becoming so predictable with a narrow range of dogma that people like Marie Stopes will be immediately shunned into obscurity. The past is a foreign country indeed. Some of the things she did due to her paranoia and hubris are just unbelievable. I think it is difficult for one woman to do what she did even now in the third world. The author I felt did justice in terms of getting the right amount of detail and balance.

[Julie Berzins · Rating 3 out of 5]

Story of Marie Stopes' life and her journey into the evolution of birth control. Growing up in a society where it was not the "norm" for a girl to be educated in tertiary studies or into her chose field - science, Marie broke the molds and worked hard to attain her credentials in botany. The book indicated that Marie was uneducated in human biology well into her adult life, which is something I find hard to believe given she was such a curious bookwork and studied the reproduction of plants - but not of humans? Overall, she doesn't appear to be a very likable person - very self-absorbed, indulgent and thinks too highly of herself and too lowly of others. She seemed to champion reproductive rights and birth control based on a scientific but not human understanding. It was fortunate she chose a method that worked well for many. Since she was so against abortion, I wonder how her name became associated with the abortion clinics of today as I am sure she would roll in her grave. I will need to read more into this.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not terribly written but slightly unimaginative. I've read biographies that tend to read a little more slick and can transport you back in time to the moment you are reading about and this book just doesn't do it. However, I found it very interesting to learn more about Marie Stopes. She was an intensely dislikeable woman who somehow managed to lead mighty changes in the first part of the last century - her achievements are somewhat overshadowed by her vulgar character in this book though.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautifully writen book which is clearly well researched. the book show us the othr side o this famous woman her flaws as well as her achievemnets. highly recommended.

[Gill Mclauchlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read, to learn about this pioneering woman.

[CLAIR Withers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic book about a woman who changed some ideas about women. She had a tough life.