Daughters of 1919

This chapter traces not only commonalities in the generational experience of Mary Midgley, Philippa Foot, Elizabeth Anscombe, and Iris Murdoch, but also differences in their educations, upbringings, and relationships to organized religion. They were all children of the post-Armistice baby boom, growing up in a world profoundly shaped by the Great War, a “morbid age” preoccupied with worries about the decline and fall of Western civilization. And they all belonged to the first generation to benefit from enhanced professional opportunities and legal protections for women. The chapter recounts, among other stories, Anscombe’s intense, dramatic conversion to Catholicism, which alarmed her parents; Foot’s (Bosanquet’s) rebellion against her patrician upbringing, leading to her decision to attend Oxford; Murdoch’s idyllic childhood and “Spartan” but beloved boarding school; and Midgley’s (Scrutton’s) more relaxed school experience and early fascination with all manner of small, wild creatures.