Educating Ida: Gilbert and Sullivan Among the New Women

Gilbert and Sullivan's eighth Savoy opera Princess Ida (1884) is best understood against the backdrop of women's higher education emancipation in nineteenth-century Britain. Careful work has been done tracing correspondences between its source texts, but not only a descendant literary figures. She peer pioneering women Girton College, Cambridge whose biographies attest to challenges faced by pursuit an at end nineteenth century. This association allows her students be positioned as precursors that fin-de-siècle phenomenon, New Woman. Often dismissed uncomfortable relic Victorian male chauvinism, political ideological complexity behind recognised here identified one moment continuous literary, cultural social history.