ABSTRACT
Opportunities for educated woman were very circumscribed in the 1890s. After coming down from Somerville College in 1897, Margery Fry was faced with a perennial problem of students finishing university: what to do with the rest of her life. As Carol Dyhouse explains, the formal posts offered to women in universities were for 'lady tutors', who were expected to provide 'special protection and chaperonage' to women students while also – arguably – protecting the masculine traditions of the older universities from women. When new civic universities which welcomed women students – at least officially — on equal terms were established at home and abroad, more of these gendered employment opportunities in higher education became available to women graduates. In the Edwardian era marriage was very much the expected career for women, even for those with a university education, who therefore had increased their chances of an independent life.
