Marie Stopes may well prove to have been one of the most important and outstanding influences of the twentieth century ā a judgement with which, one surely feels, she would have been in complete agreement. Margery Pyke , 1962 Family Planning Association1
The year 2018 is the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Marie Carmichael Stopesā ground-breaking book on sexual relationships, Married Love , which was released on 26 March 1918, selling 750,000 copies by 1931. Its opening sentence of āEvery heart desires a mateā sets the lyrical tone for her sexually explicit advice and this language helps to explain its popularity.2 Married Love is doubly important, for as well as resonating with the modernist mood of the age it gave impetus to Marieās pioneering work for the birth control movement. The evidence agrees with the controversial statement at the chapter heading made by birth controller Margery Pyke shortly after Marieās death in 1958. Margery believed that Marie was one of most influential women of the twentieth century but correctly acknowledged that Marie was a most complex personality.
This introductory chapter demonstrates how Marie was one of the most well-known figures in the inter-war years and traces the resurgence of interest in her work. Reference is made to the valuable existing studies of Marie and it is shown how this study has access to new revealing archival material and oral interviews. Themes are introduced which run throughout this book such as Marieās modernism , her innovative work, her willingness to circumvent rules, her mixture of fact with fiction, and the scientific contradictions in Marieās work. Controversial issues are raised such as Marieās relationship with Eugenics . The organisation of the book is shown in the chapter outlines which are given in this introductory chapter. The timeline at the start of this book helps to place Marieās actions in context, and the pen portraits at its end shed further light on the lives of her friends, many of whom had had been involved in the suffrage campaign.
As early as 1914, when still a comparatively young woman, Marie maps out the proposed stages of her life; āI planned to spend twenty years on scientific research, then twenty years on philosophy, and then twenty years in the direct service of humanity, meanwhile writing one poem to embody a lifetimes experience of the University and when the poem was finished ā¦to die.ā3 She broadly fulfilled these ambitions in an age where women had to strive to succeed and when they had not yet been granted universal suffrage.4
When reviewing Marieās legacy the sociologist Professor Laurie Taylor argues that she was an idealist who had quite fortuitously been handed the means for realising her ideals.5 The evidence from this book does not support his assertion of passivity, as Marie always chose her own destiny and the conflicts she fought. The relaxed portrait of Marie taken in 1914 with her favourite cat depicts a conventional gentle woman, but this research reveals a determined and, at times ruthless, pioneer.
Marie pursued a varied career in three separate but inter-connected areas: as academic scientist , a writer on sexual issues and a birth control pioneer . For the first two decades of her working life Marie pursued a scientific career which later benefitted her sexually revolutionary and birth control campaigns. Her academic achievements encouraged detailed research methods, communication skills, organisational ability, confidence in pursuing an original path of reasoning and the courage to embark on novel course of action.
Marieās academic specialism was palaeobotany which was then a popular area of biology and which she explains in her books as studying the remains of the āwhole series of plants, mostly extinct, that have lived upon the earth through millions of yearsā.6 Marie, by circumventing the university rules, was awarded a brilliant first degree in the record time of two years at University College London . As a post-graduate student she was the first woman to be awarded a PhD at the University of Munich Botanical Institute . She then became the youngest Doctor of Science in England. She was extremely significant, setting the course for others, as the first woman science lecturer to be appointed to the University of Manchester . In her brilliant academic career Marie undertook research in Germany and later organised academic expeditions to Japan and Canada.
Marieās careers of sexual revolutionary and birth control pioneer were to follow these extraordinary achievements. At the age of 38 years when many people had a settled career, Marie turned away from academic life to begin a new career as sexual revolutionary. Personal circumstances, such as the break-up of her marriage to a fellow academic, led Marie to turn away from academia, and she began discussing sexual relationships in her book Married Love . The publicity of Married Love , together with appeals for help from its readers led to Marie organising a campaign for birth control. She then undertook the practical action in founding this countryās first birth control clinic in a poor part of London. Her actions encouraged the foundation of other birth control clinics in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The issue of birth control became Marieās most important legacy.
Birth control was a significant issue for politically active women in the 1970s and I was interested how this was adopted as a campaigning issue for women like Marie who lived in the early twentieth century. My work reveals that many of those involved in the fight for womenās suffrage subsequently became involved with the birth control campaign. Mrs Cooke , writing in 1923, certainly connected these two campaigns, āWhat does it avail a woman that she has the franchise if she cannot call her body her own.ā7 This post-suffrage research led to my doctorate and a subsequently published book in which I came to recognise the work of Marie Stopes as having particular importance.8
The 1920s and 1930s have often been considered inauspicious times for feminism when contrasted with the drama of the suffrage movement but this view has being reassessed by academics such as Professor Pat Thane , Kingās College London.9 The campaigns for birth control led by Marie shed an important new light on inter-war feminist activity. In 2004, Hera Cooke rightly makes the point that āFertility change has largely remained the province of demographers whose interest is in population change. As a result arguments about the causes of shifts in fert...