20 SOMERVILLE MAGAZINE
Changing Our World For The Better:
Eleanor Rathbone at 150 In honour of Eleanor Rathbone’s 150th birthday, social historian and author of Bluestockings and Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, Jane Robinson, looks at the undercelebrated yet exceptional life and achievements of the first Somervillian MP.
Eleanor Rathbone campaigning for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS) in London, c. 1910. Credit: LSE Library
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ext time you visit Somerville, look up to your left after passing through the Woodstock Road Lodge. You’ll see something you might not have noticed before: an elegant clock. As our College lacks the tolling bells common to more ancient foundations, this timepiece was the first thing former generations of students checked as they entered the College, and the last as they left. It was an appropriate gift from alumna Eleanor Rathbone (1872-1946): never was anyone as skilled as she at cramming the hours and days with action. Her achievements were remarkable in her own era, and remain startlingly relevant today. Yet, like the clock, we hardly acknowledge her. On the 150th anniversary of her birth – and
given the world we inhabit now – Eleanor Rathbone deserves closer attention. She was the 10th of Liverpool MP William Rathbone’s 11 children; a reserved girl educated largely at home and expected to make a suitable marriage after coming out as a reluctant débutante at 17. Her Liberal father encouraged her to share his philanthropic interests, but only within conventional limits approved by her mother. Convention and limitation rarely held Eleanor back, however, which is why Somerville was such a good match for her when she arrived in 1893 to read Greats. As far as she was concerned, marriage could wait - preferably, for ever.
