Charlotte Carmichael Stopes was the first woman in Scotland to gain a university qualification. She devoted her life to the study of Shakespeare and to the promotion of women in public life. Though Charlotte is largely forgotten, her daughter Marie is well known as a passionate advocate of sex education and women’s rights. In this study Green asserts that Marie’s success can only be understood in relation to the achievements of her mother. The careers of the two women are further used to argue that scholarly success in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was only possible through sustained engagement with the (male) establishment.

"'Green performs a valuable service in rescuing Charlotte Carmichael Stopes from the condescension of posterity, exploring her milieu of the late nineteenth-century women's movement, and positioning her better-known daughter Marie more firmly as very much a second-generation feminist. It provides illuminating insights into the shifts of focus between successive generations of feminism in the context of this specific mother-daughter relationship.'"