ABSTRACT
To become an expert needlewoman should be an object of ambition to every British fair. As any careful reader of Victorian novels will be quick to observe, nineteenth-century heroines usually know how to sew. Sometimes skill with the needle defines a character. Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton, for example, adds to her family's meager earnings by working as a dressmaker's assistant. Victorian women writers assumed that their female readers possessed a sophisticated knowledge of dress culture. The national British system of education was born in the nineteenth century, but despite the changes that system initiated, girls of all classes were generally taught some type of needlework. Olive Schreiner, Ella Hepworth Dixon, George Egerton, Sarah Grand, and Gertrude Dix all employed dual literacy for seeming cross-purposes. A needle dipped in blood, or the impetus for intellectual musing. Olive Schreiner refused to give a firm answer, leaving that question for the New Women who would follow in her foot.
