Women Trailblazers

It's twelve days to go until The Family Way is published, so I'm getting excited.

I'm also gearing up to respond to more people who tell me Molly could never have been a detective in her time. So I've been thinking more about what women actually achieved in Molly's time. Of course the expectation was the women stay home and raise a family. But in spite of this women were doing amazing things.

Do you remember that wonderful TV series called The Duchess of Duke Street? It was about a woman from very humble beginnings who goes on to found one of the best hotels in London. And it was based on a real woman who founded Brown's Hotel (still going strong--the hotel, not the woman).

Then there is Coco Chanel, whom I have written about. She came from an orphanage, learned to sew, started designing hats for ladies, then their outfits and went on to create a fashion house and perfumerie known all over the world. Not only did she start a fashion house but she designed business suits for women, and chic trousers long before anyone else in the world dared to wear them. Hooray for Coco.

And we mustn't leave out the scientists and inventors. Madame Curie who won the Novel Prize for science. Alice Hamilton was a distinguished physician who was the first woman on the medical faculty at Harvard. And Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace worked with Charles Babbage on the first mechanical computer in the mid 1800s, writing was has come to be accepted as the first computer program.

So Molly--feel free to be brave, adventurous, ambitious.  Molly is married now, so it will be interesting to see whether being a married woman restricts her from carrying on a professional career, won't it? Somehow I don't think she'll stay home and have tea parties.