Cicely Hamilton
Cicely Hamilton was a multifaceted British author, playwright, and feminist known for her contributions to women's rights and her critical exploration of social issues. Born Cicely Mary Hammill, she had a challenging upbringing marked by familial estrangement and displacement, which influenced her views on societal structures. Hamilton began her career in the arts as an actress before transitioning into writing, where she gained prominence with her first major play, *Diana of Dobson's*. This work highlighted the plight of working-class women and critiqued the oppressive conditions they faced, ultimately becoming a significant feminist text of its time.
Throughout her career, Hamilton produced a variety of works, including novels and plays that reflected her commitment to feminism and the suffrage movement. Despite her public denouncement of homosexuality, she has been posthumously suggested to have been a lesbian, a facet of her life that remains a topic of discussion among scholars. Hamilton's writing often delved into the intersections of gender and politics, particularly during the tumultuous periods of World Wars I and II, where she expressed her belief that wars were largely driven by commercial interests rather than humanitarian concerns. Her unique insights and advocacy for women's rights remain influential, marking her as a significant figure in early 20th-century feminist literature.
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Cicely Hamilton
Writer
- Born: 1872
- Birthplace: Paddington, England
- Died: December 6, 1952
Biography
Cicely Mary Hammill, who changed her surname to Hamilton, wrote only obscurely about her early life in her autobiography, Life Errant. After her father, Denzill Hammill, left the Gordon Highlanders as a major general, he became a minor diplomat, serving as a vice consul in Bonny, West Africa, where he died. Apparently he and his wife, Maud, were estranged. Their children were farmed out to a foster family, then raised by relatives until they entered boarding school.
Hamilton’s writing career began when she supplemented her meager income as an actress with freelance journalism and the sale of her short stories. By 1903, after a decade of touring England with an acting company, she settled in London, hoping to advance her career as an actress and embark on a career as playwright. In London, she became involved with feminism and the women’s suffrage movement.
Her first full-length play, Diana of Dobson’s, focuses on the virtual enslavement of a working-class woman, impoverished and uneducated, who works under appalling conditions in a draper’s establishment. She is forced to live in a dormitory and to abide by the 127 rules imposed by her employer. This play details the escape fantasies of Diana Massingbred who, on inheriting a small legacy, spends it revolting against her imposed servitude. For the likes of Diana, however, the much-desired escape comes by way of conventional means: marrying, having children, living submissively.
This enormously successful play was presented regularly for the next twenty years. Unfortunately, Hamilton sold the rights to it for a lump sum payment of one hundred pounds. She recouped some of her lost royalties by turning the play into a novel, as she did with two of her other feminist plays, Just to Get Married and A Matter of Money. As her career advanced, Hamilton was more active as a novelist than as a playwright, and toward the end of her life, she produced a series of books about her foreign travels.
Circumstantial evidence suggests that Hamilton, a confirmed spinster, was a lesbian, although she always denied this possibility and publicly denounced lesbianism and male homosexuality as abominations. Her foremost interest was in feminism, in helping women to achieve equal rights and independence from men. An ancillary but extremely important interest was in obtaining women the right to vote.
Hamilton had unique social insights, which grew increasingly political in the face of World Wars I and II, which affected her profoundly. She was convinced that wars are fought for commercial rather than humanitarian reasons. Implicit in this belief is the notion that governments use their populations shamelessly and unconscionably to promote their underlying agendas. When she observed the exodus of enemy civilians in Belgium fleeing from danger, she identified as an insidious military strategy the use of civilians as auxiliary destructive forces. She also warned of the dangers of technological advances spawned by war.