Having seen a television documentary about Queen Victoria's daughters and how strong and independent they were, in spite of their mother's attempts to control them, I have begun to revise my thinking about the situation of women in the early part of the 20th Century.
As I mentioned previously, the play "Hindle Wakes" was written in 1910 and deals with the story of a young lady who works as a weaver in a Lancashire mill. She goes on holiday with a girl friend to Blackpool. I had never imagined that young, single ladies living with their parents would have been allowed to go on holiday alone at that time.
However, reading Katherine Scott's biography has also been an eye-opener. Katherine travelled extensively alone and lived in Paris in 1905, where she studied sculpture with Rodin.
So it seems to me now that it was not the First World War that began to set women free but the Industrial Revolution and the discarding of the distaff.
