Foreign Notes and News

Foreign Notes and News

The Opening of a Women's Library in Paris

This brief news blurb published in 1872 by The Englishwoman's Review announces the establishment of a woman's library in the French capital Paris, and further requests that any reader interested in furthering the cause of women's education is encouraged to donate materials to the building of the library's collection. This article holds significance when compared with Margaret Oliphant's "The Library Window," in which the unnamed first-person narrator, best identified as a young, naive woman of marrying age, becomes infatuated with what she perceives to be a window in the university library across the street from her Aunt's residence. Oliphant takes care to note during the crafting of her story that the university library is tended to solely by male servants, which serves as a reminder to the story's audience that the access and utilization of the university library is restricted to male students/scholars. Women, though allowed to access college campuses, and in some cases receive levels of a university education, were barred from access to their university library's resources until well into the 20th century. In contrast to this, the development of a woman's public library in Paris some 11 years following the publication of Oliphant's short story highlights two features of the unique positionality of women in relation to their respective university libraries. The first of these may be viewed as a critique of women's inability to access a private, academic collection, yet their ability to engage with a public library system. By what standard are women's reading opportunities limited to the public collection of literature? And furthermore, if women are deemed acceptably literate enough to gain access to a public library, why should they be denied entry into the collection of a university? The second of these arguments serves to reinforce the regionalism of these complications; the library referenced in this news article is situated in Paris, and not in the UK, and calls upon donations from a women's newspaper to populate its shelves with literature. This serves both to represent the cultural differences between the two nations (and, one might suggest, argue that the UK could learn from the example set by France), and to dismantle the patriarchal social order of the UK. A library comprised of works donated by women and specifically for women in the wake of their segregation from traditional academia sends a powerful message of circumventing the social norm when the norm is on the wrong side of history.

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New York Public Library: 19th Century UK Periodicals, Series I & II

The Englishwoman's Review

Tuesday October 1, 1872

The Trustees of the National Library of Scotland

Originally: Newspaper Article
Digital Conversion: PDF

English

Newspaper