Notable Events

Turnbull Library Record, Volume XXII, Issue 1, 1 May 1989, Page 62

Notable Events

Women’s Words: A Guide to Manuscripts and Archives in the Alexander Turnbull Library Relating to JVomen in the Nineteenth Century, compiled by Diana Meads, Philip Rainer and Kay Sanderson (Wellington, 1988), was launched in the Library on 22 November 1988. The guest speaker was Raewyn Dalziel, Associate Professor of History, University of Auckland. The following is an edited version of her speech. Women’s Words publishes for the first time a listing of all the catalogued manuscripts and archives relating to women in the nineteenth century that are held by the Alexander Turnbull Library. The publication of this book is a further recognition by the Turnbull of the importance of documenting women’s past. Earlier steps have been the active collection of material relating to women; the creation of a card catalogue covering this material; Patricia Sargison’s listing of published material, Victoria’s Furthest Daughters', and a special issue of the Turnbull Library Record on women’s history. My own interest in women’s history was late in developing. Although when I did my degree at Victoria University I did some papers in social history,

women’s history as such was unheard of. Even when I was a post-graduate student in London in 1970-1971 there was litde discussion of women’s history. However, I had scarcely arrived at the British Museum on a short research trip in 1973 when I ran into Anna Davin, whom I had met two years before. She didn’t say ‘Nice to see you back’ or ‘Where have you been?’ or any of the things you might expect. Instead her first words were What are you doing about women’s history in New Zealand?’. As far as I knew very little was being done. Pat Grimshaw’s book on the suffrage had been published in 1972 but I knew of no one currently working on what might be called women’s history. Soon after I returned to New Zealand, however, I was asked to give a winter lecture at Auckland University. 1975 was to be the beginning of the United Nations decade for women and the lecture series was to be on women in New Zealand. My contribution was to be on the history of women. In 1974 I began reading women’s manuscripts in the Turnbull.

One of the major difficulties was access. The way things were catalogued often concealed where women’s manuscripts were located. Much of this information was stored in the minds of librarians not the most convenient place for such information to be kept. One of my major informants was June Starke who would frequently ask me if I knew such and such a source or tell me about a particular collection. Access has continued to be difficult. In 1983 I decided to go through the papers of Donald McLean, knowing that he had a number of women correspondents. I didn’t dream of finding a marvellous series of letters between McLean and Susan Strang, his future wife. These unfolded a tragic story of their meeting, courtship, brief marriage, Susan’s pregnancy, confinement and death. I have since often wondered how the course of New Zealand history might have been different if Susan had lived and McLean had become a bush farmer as he planned. I might add that Susan wasn’t too keen on becoming the wife of a bush farmer.

The letters, diaries and records of nineteenth century women open a window on an intensely personal and domestic world. Some argue that we are not justified in using this window as it opens on to a private life. I don’t agree with this view. Far too much has been made of the nineteenth century dichotomy between private and public. Personal and domestic concerns were not necessarily, nor even usually, private in the nineteenth century. The boundaries between the domestic world and the world of business, politics and the market were very fuzzy indeed. Domestic life was directly and indirectly affected by legislation, the economy and politics. In turn domestic life affected these other areas. One only needs to think of the impact of changing fertility to realise how true this was. Women were an integral part of the community; what they did and how they did it is crucial to an understanding of the past. The records of women tell very human and often very moving stories. The women of the nineteenth century may have lived in a world technologically less sophisticated than ours but their emotional and mental world was equally complex.

I have found old favourites and new names. One old favourite is Martha Adams, a Nelson settler of the 1850 s. Martha recorded in her diary visiting Mary Griffiths. Mary had divorced her husband in England on grounds of his cruelty, although I think there are some doubts as to whether the divorce

had actually taken place. Martha wrote ‘As we conversed she had occasion to say “as I have no husband to please I can suit my own convenience,”’ a reasonable point of view one might suppose. However, Martha continued ‘I looked at her to see how she could say such words, expecting to see the tell-tale feeling on her face that could not be suppressed: but she was calm and unmoved! Alas! at that moment my heart ached for her! How must the fountains of love have been broken up, to render her capable of uttering unmoved such wordsV Mary, in fact, later remarried and, as Mary Muller, wrote the first articles calling for New Zealand women to be given the vote.

Other old favourites are Grace Hirst, the New Plymouth entrepreneur, and Mary Swainson, who as a young girl wrote the family letters home to England. A new name which looks interesting is that of Lizzie Ovenden, a young widow who came to New Zealand in 1867 to carry out an arranged marriage, was widowed again within two years and passes out of sight in 1874. Another is Flo Derry, with her spirited defence of New Zealand girlhood and her preference for ‘rowdy colonials’ over English youth. One of the strengths of the publication is that it goes beyond listing, in itself a huge task, to provide details of the lives of those who appear. There are some surprises here. I did not, for instance, know that Adeline Absolon was probably the lover of Dillon Bell before becoming the wife of Dr Thomas Ren wick.

Women’s Words shows the extraordinary range of the Turnbull’s collection. There are entries for Queen Victoria (her instructions to the Governor in 1840, so not particularly revealing about her life), Lady Grey with her morbid dislike of Auckland, the music-hall singer Fanny Clifton, and the alcoholic Martha Browne. There are a number of entries relating to Maori women, especially letters from Maori women within collections. There is material relating to England, the United States, the Pacific, Australia and doubtless to other countries as well. It is instructive to note that it was the interest of an American scholar that prompted the Turnbull to undertake the compilation and publication of this guide to its collection. This raises the question of whether research scholars in New Zealand are demanding enough of their scholar librarians. The Turnbull librarians have shown that they can do it —we should ask for more. I hope that Women’s Words leads to an increased interest in the collections and further research into the history of the nineteenth century. Such work will help us understand the dynamics of living in New Zealand as experienced by all people.