ABSTRACT
This discussion of mid-Victorian girlhood experience will focus on six women. This discussion of mid-Victorian girlhood experience will focus on six women. Two of them, Constance Maynard, born in 1849, and Lilian Faithfull, born in 1865, came from upper-middle-class families. Sara Burstall, Molly Hughes and Sarah Marks were all from lower-middle-class families and all, in different ways, benefited from the educational opportunities that became available in the 1870s. Throughout her life, Constance Maynard’s personality exhibited two opposing sides. The path that led Lilian Faithfull to Somerville College, and then to a career in education, was smoothed for her by her own family, a fact that is surprising, given the nature of that family. The girlhood experiences of Molly Hughes, who was born in 1867, and who grew up in a middle-class household in the North London suburb of Canonbury, provide a number of sharp contrasts, as well as a number of similarities to those of Sara Burstall.
