In 1975 Fenwomen was the first publication of the first British feminist publisher, Virago. Established as Spare Rib Books in 1973 by the Australian feminist Carmen Callil, Virago sought to counter publishers’ neglect of women authors and the dearth of books by, and about, women. It has since made a substantial contribution to women’s history (which barely existed in 1973), reprinting both neglected novels and other works detailing women’s experiences, such as Working-Class Wives, a vivid account in their own words of the lives of working-class women in 1930s Britain edited by Margery Spring Rice, first published in 1939.
Fenwomen was also a pioneering work of oral history, but it was not a reprint. It was the first publication by Mary Chamberlain, now Emeritus Professor of Caribbean History at Oxford Brookes University. It records the lives of the female inhabitants, aged five to 86, of a village in the Cambridgeshire fens, Isleham, re-named as Gislea in the book. Isleham (or Gislea) was chosen because Chamberlain moved there in 1972 as a young, recently married, woman. An active feminist, she recognised the opportunity to reveal the previously neglected lives of ‘ordinary’ women in a remote rural area which seemed to exist beyond the reach of the women’s liberation movement.
Gislea is located in a large area of flat fenland. In 1973 there was little work except on the land and the district was poor. Services were declining; the doctor’s surgery had closed and the bus connecting the village with the nearest health centre departed just twice a week. Married women worked when they could, supplementing their husbands’ low incomes. The dwindling bus service prevented men or women from seeking better opportunities elsewhere and few could afford cars. There was a general assumption that mothers of young children should care for them full-time, part of a value system that included intense disapproval of divorce, premarital sex, and single motherhood, informed by the village’s Christian faith: Anglican mainly among the better-off, nonconformity among the working-class.
Chamberlain presents the women’s lives thematically, beginning with girlhood. An 86-year-old widow lives alone in a cottage without running water or an indoor toilet, in a situation similar to several older interviewees. Her childhood was marked by poverty. She and other children picked and sold dandelion roots to supplement the family income. They rarely left the village. An 83-year-old widow stresses how much easier women’s lives have become with modern amenities such as washing machines. A 51-year-old woman reflects on her childhood, stating: ‘There was no joy in my life … only the love Mum and I had between us.’
The account given by Barbara, 16, suggests that opportunities were improving. Having done well at school she enjoyed working as a bank clerk in a nearby town, to which she was lucky to get lifts from a neighbour. It had been hard to get a job: several nearby firms refused to ‘take girls’. Debbie, 13, found it ‘so boring’ in the village: ‘There’s nothing to do there for people of my age.’ She expresses views that are characteristic of 1970s Gislea: she wants to marry at 19 and for her husband ‘to be the head and have the last word … but not boss me about’. When she has children, she says, she will expect the girls, not the boys, to help around the house. Other comments from girls aged five to ten describe similar gender roles at home. The village primary school teaches boys science and woodwork and teaches girls art, cookery, and other domestic subjects. In a chapter on work, girls aged six to ten reveal that most expected to marry, become housewives, and stay in the village. The only careers they suggest as possibilities before marriage are as nurses, hairdressers, or occasionally teachers. Exceptionally, one girl states her desire to be a horse-trainer – if it proved possible for a girl. If not, she wished to become a dentist. A young teacher describes her attempts to challenge gender barriers by teaching girls woodwork, and boys needlework and cookery. But even she does not think it ‘a good idea’ to train girls ‘to drive buses and things or have a career’: ‘Their aim is to get married and have a family.’
Chamberlain presents village life in detail covering politics (‘solidly Conservative’), recreation – very limited, apart from Women’s Institutes and church events – marriage, religion, and old age. Her chapter on outsiders conveys an inward-looking hostility to newcomers, who in turn express great difficulty making local contacts. The book challenges stereotypes of warm community life in English villages, describing the antagonism faced by residents who choose to resist the ‘intense pressure to conform’.
As Chamberlain describes in a new afterword, the book received a generally, but not wholly, favourable reception. The News of the World carried a report of how she had ‘unveiled a village’s love secrets’. The Cambridge Evening News described the book as ‘titillating anecdote’, attacking her as a ‘cheap little exhibitionist’ who had used the village ‘to gain money and attention for herself’. It attempted to identify the pseudonymous women quoted in the book, ‘causing considerable mischief and ill-feeling’. Chamberlain organised a village meeting to try to explain what she had actually written, but ‘the poison was in the system and few – at least at the time – were prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt, much less read the book and make up their own minds’. She no longer lives in the village but visited it in 2009 and 2025, finding its population increased, mainly due to middle-class homeowners in new houses, able to driveto work in nearby towns, often with few local contacts. In line with trends across the country, Isleham now contains more one-parent families, while religious belief has declined. Poverty has persisted, requiring the creation of a community food bank. Fenwomen’s reissue is both a chance to celebrate this pathbreaking work of history, and to consider which elements of gender inequality have, and have not, changed in the 50 years since it first appeared.
Pat Thane is Visiting Professor in History at Birkbeck, University of London.