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I approached Power and Protest – Frances Power Cobbe and Victorian Society with some trepidation, worried that I would discover whole areas of 19th century marital law that I should have addressed in my dissertation. Although to my mind Frances Power Cobbe’s crowning glory was influencing the 1878 Matrimonial Causes Act to protect women from violent husbands, this achievement is given scant attention. I don’t know whether it was simply a rather minor part of her career, or whether the biographer’s interest in Cobbe is based entirely on her anti-vivisection campaigns. Anyway, Cobbe’s philosophy was that just as men owed a responsibility to protect weaker females, all humans ought to show more respect for animals and not attempt to subjugate them. Her arguments were very compelling and she did achieve some success in changing both attitudes and the law. As with many political movements, however, there was little unity and a great deal of in-fighting. There has been limited progress since then and vivisection is still widely practised, with no end to the conflict between science and morality.
The biography is extremely well-written and the author marshalls a wide range of material encompassing complex religious and philosophical detabate and makes it eminently readable. However, she lets herself down with a slightly clumsy handling of Cobbe’s sexuality. If she needs to be labelled at all, I think it’s fair to assume that she was a lesbian, given she spent 30 years in a devoted relationship with another woman. We don’t really need to surmise as to whether they had sex. Neither should a modern biographer ascribe lesbianism to the presence of a strong father figure. That criticism aside, it was an excellent read.
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