The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

17.2 | The Pioneer Club, Cork Street, London.
The Feminist Remapping of Space in Victorian London
the “Queen Anne” style employed at the Pioneer Club was perceived as most
appropriate for the modern independent woman and for her femininity. The
decorated interiors and their generous spaces were considered by contemporary
observers to be elegant, refined, and suitably domestic for their female
occupants. At the same time, other signifiers of class and rank, such as the
oriental carpets and old oak furniture found in the houses of the rich in the
West End, were used or referenced by the club and were valuable for creating
a respectable (classed) identity. 35 Both the deeply contested position that
these feminists took up in the late nineteenth century and the protection the
new boundaries provided are represented in the motto inscribed on the
drawing room walls: “They Say—What Say They? Let Them Say!” This inscription
expressed feminist defiance within the Pioneer’s fashionable, decorative
interior, which smacked of modernity but negotiated their radical,
outspoken sentiments and position through traditional signifiers of the
dominant class.
Often modeled on the club’s founder, Mrs. Massingberd, the identity
of a feminist public woman was also produced and reproduced at the Pioneer
Club through dress codes, demeanor, and bodily presentation: 36 short
hair, upright posture, tailored frocks, badges (inscribed with their membership
numbers), the use of nicknames, and abstinence from alcohol were
the norm.