ABSTRACT
The most consistently reactionary views on the “woman question” were held by the Hubert Blands. Founding members of the Fabian Society, the couple played an important role in establishing the infant society. If G.B.S was a perceptive, if somewhat erratic, supporter of the women’s movement and Charlotte Shaw a late-blooming but enthusiastic feminist, Hubert Bland was the quintessential male chauvinist and his wife, Edith Nesbit Bland, an unabashed anti-feminist. Hubert’s revolt against Schopenhauer’s malignant view of the universe, his growing belief that the world is rational, was his first step toward socialism. Within a short time the “red-hot rhetoric” of Henry George had alerted Bland, as it had Shaw, to the importance of economic problems. In a notably philistine environment, Bland and Shaw were among the few early Fabians concerned with the arts. Yet, both held their commitment to the arts as separate and apart from their socialism.
