‘And Women Must Weep’ Study Guide

Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson was born in 1870 in Melbourne, Australia. During her childhood, her father suffered from financial and health struggles, and her family moved from town to town in Australia. After her father’s death, Richardson attended a boarding school, the Presbyterian Ladies’ College in Melbourne, where she excelled in music. Later, Richardson studied music in Leipzig, Germany, to become a professional pianist. But after she married in 1895, she began a literary career instead, publishing articles and translations of Scandinavian literature. She moved to London in 1903 with her husband, took up the male pseudonym Henry Handel Richardson, and published her first novel, Maurice Guest, in 1908. Much of Richardson’s writing drew from her own life experiences. Her second novel, The Getting of Wisdom, was inspired by her time at the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, and her successful trilogy, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, was based on her family history, which she returned to Australia to research. After Richardson’s husband died, Richardson moved from London to Sussex. She published a volume of short stories called The End of a Childhood and Other Stories in 1934 and her last novel in 1939. Richardson died in 1946 in England.

When Richardson published her novels and short stories, it was common for women to write under male pen names so that they and their work could be taken seriously. At the turn of the 20th century in western society, women did not have the same rights as men. Formal balls like the one Dolly attends in “‘And Women Must Weep’” reflected this gender inequality. Historically, balls were opportunities for upper-class young women to be introduced to male suitors when they were eligible for marriage. Marriage was often women’s only option, and women’s value depended on their connections to men. During Richardson’s active career, women’s rights groups were fighting for equality, and Richardson’s own sister was involved in the suffragette movement. The spreading of feminist ideas likely influenced Richardson to highlight girls’ and women’s intimate experiences in her fiction.

Richardson enjoyed plays by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, who is considered a founder of modernist theater and realism. She was also interested in the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s unembellished, realistic prose. Richardson’s appreciation for realism in literature influenced her writing and encouraged her to tell honest stories about familiar, everyday experiences based on her own life. Furthermore, most of Richardson’s writing centers on girls growing up in rural Australia. Her collection of nine short stories, including “‘And Women Must Weep,’” is titled, “Growing Pains: Sketches of Girlhood.” Like “‘And Women Must Weep,’” these stories are snapshots of girls’ adolescent life, as well as the humiliations that can come with transitioning into adulthood. Richardson’s novel The Getting of Wisdom also features similar subject matter to “‘And Women Must Weep.’” This book presents another girl’s coming-of-age in Australia and the pressures she faces in a patriarchal society. In Richardson’s time, other women writers were exploring girls’ passage into womanhood through fiction too. Katherine Mansfield, an important New Zealand writer of the modernist movement, published the short story “Her First Ball” in 1921. As its title suggests, Mansfield’s story is also about a young girl attending her first formal dance and discovering that grown-up society isn’t as wonderful as she thought it would be.