ABSTRACT
Without examining the organizers and their activities there is, then, no understanding why a reasonably coherent educational system, rather than a jumble of unrelated institutions, developed or why the system developed as it did. Most of the prominent organizers of the women's educational reform movement seem to have come from the professional ranks of society. Almost all of the older professions were well represented. Some of the women active in the educational reform movement went on to assume yet more prominent public roles. Beginning in 1884, Oxford also gradually opened its examinations to women, and by 1894, women had been admitted to all of its Honours examinations for the B. A. degree. Even when one finds individuals acting in distinctly out-of-the-ordinary ways, it is not easy to assess the meaning of their actions. Along with her militant, belligerent attitude toward people and problems, there was another almost pinched side to her personality.
