Also published as A Mortarboard for Priscilla, this is another find from the read boxes, in this case from my childhood. I lost the original, which was a gift, and tracked down a replacement online about five years ago, making this reading of it at least my third.
The book opens in Melbourne, Australia, in 1894 – ten year old Priscilla, the fourth child in a family of eight, is waiting with her older sisters and brother for the arrival of her aunt’s beau, who has a newfangled horseless engine. Risking punishment from their straight laced merchant father, Prissy encourages her siblings to go with her to see the automobile first hand. This meeting with grazier’s son Mr Bassington will change her life.
Aunt Kate is the girls’ tutor (thirteen year old Nick goes to nearby Scotch college), but Prissy is already outstripping her, and eager to attend the Presbyterian Ladies’ College around the corner. Her father has very fixed ideas about what is and is not appropriate for girls, and has forbidden the notion, much to Prissy’s dismay. With the subtle assistance of soon-to-be Uncle Charles, Mr Harding is persuaded that a higher education of young women, at least in the colonies, is acceptable, perhaps even desirable.
But when Prissy decides that she wants to study medicine her father cannot be swayed. Aware that women medical students are considered outrageous by society as a whole, met with scorn and ridicule by fellow students and lecturers, and only able to work at one of Melbourne’s hospitals, Mr Harding threatens to remove Priscilla from her school if she even mentions the topic again.
Nicholson paints a compelling portrait of Australian life at the turn of the last century. She has cast a tenacious, determined, and charismatic character against a backdrop of great societal change. When I read this as a teen I was inspired by Prissy’s strength of will and determination, and certainly saw similarities between her conflict with her father and my conflict with mine (though over significantly less worthy issues, it must be said).
The characters, even Mr Harding, are clear and their motivations understandable; the plot is compelling; and the insight into a time so close to, yet remove from, our own is fascinating.
I think that we take so much for granted the equality women in modern Western society have that we forget how those advances came about, the courageous women who came before us. This novel would be interesting anyway, but this aspect makes it, to me, unmissable. – Alex
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