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Introduction to Unbridling the tongues of women: a biography of Catherine Helen Spence by Susan Magarey
Susan Magarey's Unbridling the tongues of women (Sydney, Hale & Ironmonger, 1985) is the only the second published biography of Catherine Helen Spence, since Jeanne Young's Catherine Helen Spence: a study and an appreciation in 1937. Susan Magarey's book is an interesting and important assessment of Spence's life from a feminist perspective. The full text of the introduction is reproduced here with kind permission of the author. Should you wish to reproduce any of this material in a publication, please contact the author for permission at susan.magarey@adelaide.edu.au The book is held in state and university libraries across Australia and no doubt more widely, and is available on interlibrary loan through the document supply services of libraries around the world.
Susan Magarey is Professor in the Departments of English and History at the University of Adelaide and has been a significant social commentator with a feminist perspective, based in Canberra then in Adelaide, since the 1970s. As well as a biography on Spence she wrote an introduction to a new edition of Spence's novel Clara Morison (Adelaide : Rigby, 1971). Her latest book is Passions of the first wave feminists (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2001). She is the foundation editor and current editor of Australian feminist studies, the leading journal of feminist scholarship. Other books she has edited or co-edited include:
- A bibliography of Australian women's history 1990
- Writing lives: feminist biography and autobiography c1992
- Debutante nation: feminism contests the 1890s 1993
- Gender & ethnicity 1993
- Women in a restructuring Australia: work and welfare 1995
- Social justice: politics, technology and culture for a better world 1998
- Human rights and reconciliation 1999
In Unbridling the tongues of women, Susan Magarey shows Spence as an early feminist and sets her in her social and historical context:-
"Catherine Spence's feminism was woven from far more strands of thought and activity than those which led to the successful campaign for female suffrage in South Australia. . . One of the purposes of this book is to explore . . . not only the forces shaping Spence's life, and not only what she made of the constraints and opportunities that she encountered, but also the relationship between that story and the story of South Australia. . . . .An exploration of Spence's life will, I hope, suggest one new approach to South Australia's history, indeed, to the history of Australia."
Text of the introduction
The introduction is over 10 pages of text, and the original footnotes have not been included on this website.
Read the introduction on this website