New Books Network Interview: Joanna Miller

At a time when more women than men attend college, at least in the United States—and when college itself has begun to seem like an unattainable goal for many because of the financial burden it can impose on families—it can be difficult to remember that a century ago, a woman’s right to attend university was still in dispute. Long-held beliefs that intelligence, rationality, and academic focus were more characteristic of men than women had begun to crumble under the weight of what was then called the Great War (World War I, to us) and the extensive contributions that women made both at home and on the front to the defeat of Germany and its allies. Even so, as Joanna Miller points out in my latest New Books Network interview, the victory was, in the minds of many, supposed to restore the social order to its nineteenth-century form.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Many factors made the goal impractical—not least the massive casualties of the war, which shrank the pool of male survivors to unprecedented lows. The women who had given up their dreams to serve also resisted being shoved back into their boxes. And time moved on, as it inevitably does whether we like the results or not. Find out more about The Eights from the rest of this post, which also appears at New Books in Historical Fiction.

Joanna Miller’s The Eights follows four women attending the University of Oxford in 1920. They are not the first female university students in the United Kingdom, or even the first who can hope to attain a degree, but they are the first class of women who can, if they fulfill all the requirements, attain a university degree from Oxford.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, not everyone on the campus regards their presence as a plus. Views of women as lightheaded, emotionally unstable creatures incapable of mastering sophisticated thought or living without male guidance have begun to fade since the Great War of 1914–1918, but they continue to influence popular thinking. Unlike the men, women students live under strict restrictions against partying or even entertaining male visitors who are not blood relatives. Defy the rules, and they risk being “sent down” (suspended, in effect) or even dismissed from the program altogether.

So what brings the four heroines to Oxford? Each has her own story, much of which becomes obvious only later in the book. Beatrice Sparks, the daughter of a suffragette, considers herself unattractive and unlikely to find a husband; Ottoline Wallace-Kerr, known as Otto, is fleeing a family bent on marrying her off to the first man who asks; Theodora (Dora) Greenwood lost her brother, then her fiancé, in France and doesn’t quite know how to go on; Marianne Grey must make her own way in the world. Together, they are known as the Eights, because they live on Corridor Eight.

Although different in character, background, and interests, the four women bond, helping one another cope with the challenges that face them, individually and collectively. These include Oxford, of course, but also the lingering effects of the Great War, their personal situations, and the challenges that face most twenty-somethings as they struggle to define their place in the world. As they do, they draw us in and make us root for them to succeed—and what else would we want from a novel?