Rachel Brewster
Director of Marketing and Communications
30 January 2025
“I seemed to hold two lives – the life of thought, and that of reality; and, provided the former was nourished with a sufficiency of the strange necromantic joys of fancy, the privileges of the latter might remain limited to daily bread, hourly work, and a roof of shelter.” ― Charlotte Brontë
It’s decision time at school. Our Year 13 students are weighing up university offers; Year 9 students are choosing their GCSE options and we’ve recently welcomed in Year 6s from many different schools for our 11+ creative assessment day. Planning our Futures Fair for later in the spring, we are inviting in representatives from all sorts of professions to inspire the next generation of young women leaving Wimbledon High School, as well talks on portfolio careers and the skills for living and working in a world of accelerating technical, social and political change that we cannot yet fully imagine.
As my father, sister and I clear our family home of 50 years it was therefore fascinating to find and reflect on an exercise book from my Great Aunt Doris titled Housewifery Book 1925. A record from a century ago, from another world, when the options for girls were stark and in many British families there was no choice to be made at all: daily bread and hourly domestic work. No thought or encouragement for studying or the chance to aspire for a life beyond that.
The exercise book documents the weekly lessons in cleaning and laundering for Doris Hobbes and her peers and charts my great aunt’s progress in putting these lessons into practice: ‘Work done, 1.5.24: Washing and scrubbing; Work done, 29.5.24: Ironed handkerchiefs.’
Aunty D, as I so fondly knew her, was a force of personality: thoughtful and reflective, curious about the world and way ahead of her time in green living (partly because she always led a rather frugal life). Like so many girls of her generation who had to go into a trade or service, Doris was denied the chance to go to senior school and left formal education aged 14. A skilled seamstress, she joined a dressmaking company, crafting beautiful dresses for women in a set that she would never join. She took pride in her work, to my knowledge never grumbled about her lot. Rather, she carried on with her learning in her spare time – a ‘life of thought’ enhancing that ‘life of reality’. Doris devoured books from her local library; interested in politics and current affairs, she listened religiously to the World Service, and as an avid Archers fan, to Radio 4. Her absolute love, though, was Radio 3 – she would close her eyes and conduct along to the music. An advocate for taking time to listen to all sides of an argument before making up her mind, Doris would I’m sure be horrified of the quick judgements of X/Twitter and instant gratification of Tik Tok reels, although as a lover of a good pint in her local, she may have chuckled at the chance to spread ‘pub talk’ and lively debate internationally across the ether in the early days of social media.
The last time I saw Aunty D was the day before my husband, young daughter and I headed to Western Australia, where we would live for a few years. She wished well her great niece and great great niece – two beneficiaries of a GDST education (Norwich High and Wimbledon High respectively). Intellectually rich as her life was, it is poignant to imagine how different her life could have been with similar opportunities. Tucked inside the exercise book are glimpses of other primary school lessons – notes from a classroom dictation on ‘St Paul’s Voyage to Rome’ and (I note sadly) another on the ‘Climate of Australia’. I would dearly love to go back and talk to her about those days, about how, with doubtless so many thoughts rushing through her head, she had to sit in that classroom week after week, to learn how to clean different surfaces, when to use caustic soda, how to starch and press a dress shirt. It’s sobering to consider and I’m sure Doris Hobbes would have much to say about countries still denying girls the right to an education.
Speaking to friends about the find has elicited gasps – ‘Housewifery’?? – often followed by a wry ‘though actually, some of that would have been quite good to know…’, which if Doris heard, she would doubtless have a view on. I like to think she would nod in approval at the bicycle maintenance classes we’ve run in school and be astounded by the creations brought to life by our A level Design & Technology Textiles students – the practical and creative alongside the chance for deep and fulfilling learning which I’m sure she would have loved. Aunty D was delighted her niece, my mother, was the first in our family to go to university in the 1960s, and thrilled for me when, in turn, I followed suit to study for a degree in languages. It hadn’t occurred to me before now, but writing this piece, I realised that hung side by side in our hallway are a framed antique map of Oxford, where I enjoyed my undergraduate years, and one of Doris’ elegant drawings from her time as a seamstress. The juxtaposition is a fitting reminder of the opportunities I had that she did not, of the decisions I could make, and of those that our current students are contemplating. There are rarely any bad choices; the privilege is in the choices themselves.