Jessica Swale demonstrates a strong grasp of individual characterisation, balanced by her understanding of social change through history.

One of the most socially powerful of the main female characters believes we should fight first for improvements perceived as most likely to be achievable in the shorter term. Women's education is her chosen cause, which she insists on separating from women's political rights. History consistently proves this position inadequate. Women won the right to vote in 1918 and 1928, but weren't allowed Oxbridge degrees until 1921 and 1947. The token working class female student is also very realistically sacrificed for the benefit of middle class ideologies (that undermine feminist solidarity).

The play is also a witty theatrical entertainment, with relatable characters. ( )

Dedicated to the courageous Malala Yousafzai and ‘all those who dedicate their lives to our education’, Jessica Swale’s play looks at the experiences of five pioneering Girton College undergraduates in 1896. They are female undergraduates all with drive and ambition but never to be awarded degrees despite matching their male contemporaries’ achievements. The year 1896 was the momentous occasion when Cambridge fellows and graduates voted on whether to grant female graduates the right to graduate and this debate swirls round the girls’ heads as they work hard.

‘Gentlemen. The higher Education of Women. There are some women who choose to overlook their natural maternal instincts in favour of academia. Literary women. Scientists. ‘Blue stockings.’ But the fact of the matter is this. Women cannot dispense with the physiological limitations of their sex, however hard they try,’ Dr Maudsley lectures the male undergraduates. ‘Women’s nerve centres are fragile, pressure may weaken them, leaving them unfit for motherhood. In short, the higher education of women may be detrimental to their physiology, to the family, to the future of our society. Gentlemen, degrees for women... It’s a dangerous idea.’

The pull of the play is between the very strategic designs of Miss Welsh, Mistress of Girton, who is determined to have Cambridge permit her girls to graduate and have them attain intellectual parity and the growing demand for women to have the vote and explore an exciting world beyond books and microscopes. Decadent Paris is tantalisingly present in thoughts and conversations throughout their conversations. There is comedy and fun (the distractions of male undergraduates in libraries), the absurdities of chaperonage and the thrills of experimentation and intellectual exploration for these burgeoning New Women impatient for change. It is the courageous Tess Moffat, the premiere heroine of the play, who cannot sit listening to Maudsley’s genuinely held misogyny without challenging his opinions and despite threatening consequences for her. Jessica Swale’s first play was premiered at the Globe Theatre and to a woman and man they cheered and applauded Tess uproariously when she makes her stand. Today young women like Malala Yousafzai are carrying on Miss Welsh’s battle and Tess’s struggle to be educated and it’s one that still has to be won.