Alicia Little, often had been referred to as Mrs. Archibald Little, was the wife of a British merchant, Mr. Archibald Little. Alicia Little’s maiden name was Alicia Helen Neva Bewicke which she shorted to A.E.N. Bewicke as her pen name.
Alicia Little was born in 1845 on Madeira Island off the Portugal coast. She was the daughter of Calverly Bewicke of Hallaton Hall, Leicestershire and
Mary Amelia Hollingsworthin40. Alicia Little had one older and one younger sister, three younger brothers, and was the second of the six children.41 There was not much information regarding the Bewicke family or Alicia Little’s life before she got married. Even so, in The Private Life of Old Hong Kong:
Western Women in the British Colony 1841-1941, Hoe mentioned that Alicia
Little was educated by her father at home.42 It was common for Victorian women to receive their education at home while Victorian men were being sent away to school. The educational difference between boys and girls wascaused and defined by the Victorian social consensus and expectations.
Therefore sons were sent away for higher education and experienced the world while daughters stayed at home to learn how to be a good wife and remained innocent and inexperienced to the outside world.
Alicia Little spent her time on Madeira Island and later returned to England at the age of 23. The reason for her returning was to find an eligible husband.
After returning to England, instead of engaging herself in the marriage market, Alicia Little published her first novel, Flirts and Flirts; or, A Season at Ryde (1868). Though Flirts and Flirts did not draw much attention and was barely mentioned in any literature publications. Flirts and Flirts was notable, however, for its length—two volumes and almost 300 pages each—and its topic. It is the story of a young beautiful woman, Kathleen O’Grady, and her mother, Lady Killowen. Lady Killowen was eager to help her daughter find a suitable
40 Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, (Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996),673
41 Elisabeth J Croll, Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands: European Women Writers in China (London: Winchester, MA: Pandora, 1989),24.
42 Susanna Hoe, The Private Lfe of Old Hong Kong; Western Women in the British Colony 1841-1941, (Hong Kong,Oxford and New York: Oxford university press,1990), 226.
husband regardless who or what she might hurt during the process. The story ended tragically with Miss O’Grady’s admirer committing suicide. Mrs. Little used an insider perspective to portray and criticize the Victorian marriage market, the ultimate goal of which was to find a proper marriage partner for young women. It was 500 pages full of descriptions of young Victorian women in search of suitable husbands.
Alicia Little’s first novel could be seen as her own interpretations and observations of the Victorian marriage market. Moreover, it might have been her way of avoiding that social tradition. Instead of marching into the social scene and looking for an eligible husband, Alicia Little started her career as a writer. During the Victorian age, upper and middle class women were expected to stay within the domestic domain. Therefore it was very difficult for these women to enter any kind of professions or to support themselves. Elaine Showalter depicted the Victorian middle class women’s professional market in this way:
Middle class women had very few alternative occupations to wiring in the nineteenth century. Other than teaching, their best possibilities were in the business end of publishing; many also worked as publisher’s reader and copy editors…Unmarried women were increasingly drawn to writing as a means of
support.43
Mrs. Little’s choice of career was common for the middle class Victorian women who desired to escape from the traditional role of women and wanted who wanted to be the “new women” as they referred to it. The prolific numbers
43 Elaine Showalter, A Literature of Their Own: British Women Novelists from Bronte to Lessing. Princeton, (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977), 46-47.
of her publications support the likelihood that Alicia Little was self-sufficient and independent through her career as a writer.
Little’s marriage was the divide that separates her writing career into two different stages. Before Alicia Little married Archibald Little in 1886, she used the name A.E.N. Bewicke as her pen name and had published nine
semi-fictional novels which were all about Victorian women. Please see Index 2, Mrs. Archibald Little’s works, 1868-1885.
At this stage, Little’s novels revolved around women’s given roles and their positions in society. She transformed what she had seen in the British upper-middle-class social life into a series of witty and sarcastic melodramas.
According to Croll, Alica Little’s novels were never some light romance which you would read while having tea. As an author, instead of making
happily-ever-after fairy tale stories, Little presented more real stories with a bit of a dark twist. As a social observer, Little used her novels as the means to discuss her concern for the legal and social disabilities that the Victorian women were often facing.
Little also heavily criticized the Victorian mothers who often educated their daughter in proper behavior and how to dress gracefully in order to find a socially appropriate husband even when they knew nothing more about the man than his family fortune and their appearance44. Under the general social convention, finding a wealthy husband became a very important part of young women’s life. As for young men, they simply had to be ‘gentlemen.’ One of the recurring motifs throughout her writing was the importance of meaningful work.
In her stories, there were often characters who were doomed to live a
44 Croll, Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands, 24-25
miserable life regardless their gender, simply because their lack of diligence.
Little’s publications attracted a considerable amount of attention. Onwards!
But Whither? A Life Story was the one that made her well-known but the book
was not critically acclaimed. The British Quarterly Review commented, “The improbabilities of this story are extreme, and the style in many portions of it is stilted and inaccurate; and as the ‘Study of Life’ or of an oddly-assorted groups of lives, it is obscure and indefinite.”45 Little’s next work Margret Traversreceived great reviews. The Sunday Times commented, “An excellent novel! It is thoroughly fresh, interesting, and entertaining, and has incident enough to keep up unflagging attention,” and The Academy commented, “written with a good deal of power.”46
The Englishwoman’s Review praised Miss Standish and by the Bay of Naples with a similar review. “These stories are written with
a vigour and spirit that awakes the reader's interest and carries him on to the end with unflagging attention.”47Mother Darling, Little’s last novel at this stage was the most mentioned
and controversial. It was allegedly based on her eldest sister Caroline’sunfortunate marriage. The story was about an obedient young woman married to a stylish wastrel who had an affair and moved his mistress back home. In the end of the story, the young woman not only lost her marriage, property, and fortune; she also lost the custody of her children. Little’s intention was to create a little book that could raise the public attention to such matters and support the Married Women’s Property rights. According to Thurin, the publication of
45 Anomalous. ‘Onwards! But Whither? A Life Study. By A.E.N. Bewicke,’ in The British Quarterly Review Volume 63, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1876. P.253.
46 Mrs. John Kent Spender, ‘Both in the Wrong’ in The Academy and Literature Volume 14, 1878. 31
47 Anomalous. ‘Miss Standish and By the Bay of Naples By AEN Bewicke.’ in The Englishwoman’s Review Volume 14, 1883.
this novel made a considerable impact on the cause48.
Little was also an activist in the feminist movement during 1870’s and 1880’s. According to the Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, Little “was lecturing, writing pamphlets, and organizing parliamentary campaigns for passage of the Women’s Property Act, and for women’s suffrage.”49 Little was also the sectary of the London Ladies’ Association50. Due to her enthusiasm, she was given the opportunity to speak in front of the annual congresses of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science on the topic of
supporting the law which would provide women with greater rights for custody and guardianship of children51.
Little’s choice of career and her devotion to the women’s rights movement showed that she was not an average Victorian woman. Her personality and professional aspirations may also have contributed to her late marriage.
Mrs. Archibald Little’s twenty years in China (1886-1907)
In 1886, the forty-one-years-old Alicia Helen Neva Bewicke married Archibald John Little who was forty-eight years old. Their marriage changed both of their lives completely. For Mrs. Little, not only did she emigrate to China;
she also switched the focus of her writing career from the Victorian women’s movement to her life and travels in China. With Mrs. Little’s encouragement support and company, Mr. Little managed to navigate the Yangtze river and
48 Susan Schoenbauer Thurin, Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907.
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999), 164
49 Historical Dictionary of the British Empire, 673
50 Scott Benjamin, A State Iniquity: Its Rise, Extension and Overthrow, (London:Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & co.), 1890.418
51 Ibid.
settle in the western part of China.
Little’s marriage is interesting and worthy of further comment for several reasons. Getting married at the age of forty was not a common Victorian behavior. The average marriage age was twenty-one. Under rigid Victorian social convention, it was hard for women to follow their dreams outside of family life. Alicia Little’s marriage might be understood as a rational decision.
By marrying Archibald Little, she gained the opportunity to venture out to the romantic East where she could live with less of the Victorian feminine constrain.
With the difficulty of finding a partner that would permit a freer life style, it was understandable that she got marriage at such late age.
Shortly after their wedding, the Little’s started their journey to China. After two months on the ship, they arrived at Shanghai. Mrs. Little imagined
Shanghai as “Everyone almost knows what Shanghai is like. It has been admirably described over and over…with the rows of European houses….only a little dearer in London.”52 When she arrived in Shanghai, she found it very different than she had imagined.
“Now, darkened by the smoke of over thirty factories, it is flooded by an ever-increasing Chinese population, who jostle with
Europeans in the thoroughfare, till it seems as if the struggle between the two races would be settled in the streets of Shanghai, and the European got driven to the wall.”53
Even though Mrs. Little first impression of Shanghai was very different than what she had imagined it would be, the most disappointing fact was the darken and over-crowed streets. For Mrs. Little, China should be “the land of
52 Mrs. Archibald Little, Intimate China 1-2.
53 Mrs. Archibald Little, Intimate China 2
the blue gown,” and Shanghai of all cities should be cleaner, with more western style housing than what she had seen. However, like Mrs. Little described her imaginations “got driven to the wall.” Mrs. Little commented that Shanghai’s China town “enjoys the reputation of being very dirty and
disgusting.”54
Later the Little’s traveled and settled down in Chunking(重慶), which is located at Sichuan province(四川省) in the far western region of China. The British Empire had just granted access to Chunking a little over a year earlier; therefore, there were not many European residents, not to mention settlements. Without the foreign community, Mrs. Archibald Little’s life in Chunking was quite different than that of average European ladies. She studied Chinese, taught Chinese children English, took photographs, and traveled extensively up and down the Yangtze river with her husband. She explored different parts of interior China, which was normally inaccessible to expatriated women other than missionaries.
In Chunking, Little made friends with a few Chinese families and gained access to a closer look at the Chinese women’s way of living, mannerisms, value system and customs, which were less known to the European
community. The reason for the lack of information on these matters was because of Chinese social convention. China, like England, also had strong and powerful social roles and expectation for women. Chinese women were expected to stay within the household domain and be limited from all public spheres. Even when paying a call to a Chinese family, Western men were only allowed to stay in the outer quarter where the dining room was. The more private living area was in the inner quarters. Western men were excluded from
54 Mrs. Archibald Little, The Land of the Blue Gown, 43
the Chinese home life and Chinese women were excluded from all the public affairs. As a result, there were only descriptions about Chinese women’s
bound feet, female infanticide, prostitution, etc. 55 Other womanly experiences were unknown and ignored. The lack of British women travelers led to the lack of familiarity with Chinese women. Therefore, Mrs. Little, as a western woman, had a great advantage for gaining access to Chinese household domestic space.56
During her time in China, Mrs. Little travel extensively to different parts of China including Mountain Omi(峨嵋山), Peking(北京), Tibet(西藏), Mongolia(蒙古), Hong Kong(香港), Gold Diamond mountain, Lichuan(利川), Peiho(白河碉堡), Tientsin(天津), Chefoo(煙台), the great walls(長城),Ninpo(寧波), Wuhu(蕪湖), Ichang(宜昌), Fengtu(酆都), Macao(澳門), Swatow(汕頭), Hankow(漢口), Wuchang(武昌), Canton(廣東), Amoy(廈門), Foochow(福州), Hangchow(杭州), Soochow(蘇州) . Little published her travels around China in various newspapers and magazines, and was invited to give lectures before the Geographical Society57. During her twenty years in China, she was president of Tien Tsu Hui(天足會), Anti-footbinding Society of China and Vice-President of the women’s Conference at Shanghai58.