Nora Barlow - A Modern Cambridge Victorian And 'The Many Lives of Modern Woman'

Abstract

The audience and thesis of a book carry multiple implications for what will follow in the discussion. Inreading The many lives of modern woman (Gruenberg and Krech, 1952), I found the authors speaking to anumber of issues about which I was concerned. In particular they seemed to offer a kind of subtext to thelast chapter of the biography I am writing, Nora Barlow and the Darwin legacy (Smith, In process). If thatworks out, it is a major discovery or accomplishment. Further, when colleagues Sharon Lee and KellyMcKerrow sent a call for papers on women, leadership, and social justice, I thought the Gruenberg andKrech book spoke not only to the Barlow life but also to the Lee and McKerrow request. My intension andtask is the integration of a review of a classic book, and a view and commentary of the life of Nora Barlow,a privileged 19th Century woman. She was well to do and part of the intellectual aristocracy of England. Apart of her life concerned the issues of community leadership and for her, at a very personal level, attemptsat the resolution of the problems of equality and social justice. Finally in this essay review I present, and tryto integrate, a series of more autobiographical comments of the interrelationships between the book and my,and my wife's, personal lives. My hope would be that in accomplishing this complex task I would have abetter grasp of several important issues in social science and more personally, how I want to end thebiography of Nora Barlow.