Prepared for the Twentieth-Century? The Life of Emily Bonnycastle Mayne (Aimée) 1872-1958

Book excerpt: Aimee Mayne was born into a life of apparent privilege and opportunity. However, as a woman born in 1872 and living through the first half of the twentieth century, these opportunities were severely limited by law, culture and tradition. This story is of a woman of the British upper-middle-class, whose life was full of colour – of living in India; of family relationships; of travel; of the Blitz. She kept diaries, and wrote an intimate memoir. This book explores her emotional conflicts, with a revealing analysis that includes revelations about a woman brought up in the late-Victorian period, encompassing her sex-life and the turmoil of an unhappy marriage. It is a study of a life that identifies how an upper-middle-class upbringing that included an attempted tertiary education, at a time when this was unheard of for most women, induced her into a marriage and life-style that was the antithesis of her early aspirations. Her life was to engender a sense of grievance that embittered relations with her family. While she took advantage of her travels to undertake a successful lecturing career, personal fulfilment was only to be found at the end of her life during the London Blitz in World War Two.