‘A Queer Uncertain Mind’: Charlotte Mew, Female Vocations, and the Ethics of Care

This chapter considers Mew’s ethics of care in the context of her writings about friendship, travel, and the professional role of women. It opens with her relationships with the Chick sisters, one of the most remarkable group of siblings born in the later decades of the nineteenth century. Six of the seven sisters benefited from higher education, and most of them went on to establish successful careers in a wide range of academic disciplines, including bacteriology, medical statistics, botany, and Old English. Next, it examines the semi-autobiographical narrative, ‘Notes on a Brittany Convent’ (1901), which amusingly traces the journey that ‘six unmated females’ take from London to St. Malo and thence to a Catholic hostel. Mew’s ‘notes’ draw implicit contrast between the modes of caregiving experienced by the nuns who inhabit the convent and the modern women who challenge their religious beliefs. The final section of the chapter turns to Mew’s story ‘Mademoiselle’ (1904), which exposes the dilemma facing an ageing professional woman who wishes to believe that she remains a source of sexual attraction to her younger (fickle) male lover. Taken together, these works reveal how Mew reconciles expectations around female caregiving with her commitment to validating women’s professional and intellectual aspirations.