SOURCE: Evans, Faith. “In Consort.” New Statesman 107, no. 2755 (6 January 1984): 23.

In the following review, Evans comments that Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire offers “excellent illustrations of its subject matter,” but laments the volume's lack of reference material and a conclusion.

Queen Victoria, quoted here in 1870, reminds us how little Britain's women leaders have done to promote their sisters' cause:

… this mad, wicked folly of ‘women's rights’, with all the attendant horrors on which her poor feeble sex seems bent … is a subject which makes the queen so furious that she cannot contain herself. God created man and woman different and let each remain in their position …

Most of Victoria's female subjects had little choice but to follow their paternalistic monarch's advice and remain prone. With some striking exceptions, those who travelled to her colonies invariably made the journey in a subservient or caring capacity: as governess, nurse...