How did Miss Mawer write? I mean, physically? Where did she write, and what did she use?
In 1929 Virginia Woolf said that for a woman to write, she needed her own money and her own room. I think she was talking about fiction, but in this blog post, I am considering the art of writing in general. I am not writing fiction, and Miss Mawer – on the whole – didn’t write fiction.
Miss Mawer would have been 36 years old at the time Virginia Woolf made her statement, and she was well established in both her teaching and her writing careers. Miss Mawer had written magazine articles and two books: one a book of poems for movement, the other a book setting out her method of mime. But did she have a room of her own?
Undoubtedly, I think she did. Miss Mawer was married for a short time during World War One. Her husband died in action and she was never able to establish a full and settled family life with him. Her second marriage came in 1930 and lasted until 1948, when Mark died. So for much of her life, Miss Mawer was alone and her room would have been her own by circumstance, rather than choice.
But would she have had the independent financial means, as recommended by Virginia Woolf? Miss Mawer would have been forging her path in life against a background of disadvantages for women. She was fortunate to have been born into a family with a good financial income, and a father who approved of education for girls and allowed her to attend a good school. Miss Mawer could easily have found well-paid employment in a variety of areas, and did indeed decline a good job at the start of her career. She preferred, instead, to engage in further study – this time under Miss Elsie Fogerty at the Central School.
Following her passion did come at a financial cost, and Miss Mawer worked as a secretary for a short time, simply to make ends meet. From then onwards, though, she seems to have made her own money from her artistic endeavours – though there never seemed to have been a great deal of it and on one occasion, later in life, she was gifted a large amount of money from Miss Ginner.
The patriarchal system in which Miss Mawer lived and worked placed restrictions on women which undoubtedly inhibited creativity as much as the lack of a room or money would do. However, we are slowly but surely finding out about more and more women who were productive, Miss Mawer being one of them.
I have no doubt at all that women were as capable as men in the artistic sphere, but either they were not allowed to show their talents publicly, or if they did, their efforts were not recorded. (Who was doing the recording? Men.) So I applaud Miss Mawer for screwing her courage to the sticking post and not failing.
As for me, do I have financial freedom and a room of my own? Indeed I do. The finance and the room are equally small, but they exist. I think Virginia Woolf may have failed to mention a third requirement, though – a supportive partner. Of all the famous men that you have heard about throughout history, I will bet my bottom dollar that the vast majority of them had someone else as the wind under their wings – and in most cases, that would have been a wife.
Irene Mawer, through necessity and circumstance, stood alone through much of her life. Supporting herself financially, creating her own space for working, while at the same time dealing with all the routine tasks of everyday living. I haven’t found any writing from Miss Mawer which mentions Virginia Woolf, but I have no doubt that she would have been aware of her. I wonder how the two would have viewed each other…