Professions for Girls

1910

Truby King Collection HD 6059 G7 BH41

London: T. Fisher Unwin

The increase in industrialisation at the turn of the 20th century meant women were more frequently working outside the home. With his very definite ideas about women as mothers, King was worried that they were not taking their motherhood duties seriously enough. To him, this lapse was detrimental to society. He also thought that girls who ‘overstudied’ at school would become ‘flat-chested and unfitted for maternity’ (Olssen, 1981), and that ‘overstudy’ in both boys and girls could cause insanity. T. W. Berry’s Professions for Girls, therefore, seems an incongruous addition in King’s library.