In her rebellious girlhood she had been nauseated by the conventional books for ladies. In 1846 she wrote many tart comments in the margin of a book called Passages from the Life of a Daughter at Home, a work in which the author urged women  dissatisfied with home life to submit graciously.

She felt early the impositions made upon women. Resenting the fact that she was expected to spend her time being nice to all the house guests, she writes, "How little women's occupations are respected, when people can think that a woman has time to spin out long theories with every young fool who visits at her house." After visiting Oxford she wrote in her diary, "I saunter about the church-yards and gardens by myself before breakfast and wish I were a college man."

When John Stuart Mill wrote asking her to join the National Society for Women's Suffrage, her reply was "That woman should have the suffrage, I think no one can be more deeply convinced than I. It is so important for a woman to be a 'person' as you say." The next year she joined the Society. In 1871 she allowed her name to be placed on the General Committee and became an annual subscriber to its funds. Among her writings is one entitled "Opinions on Woman Suffrage."

It was the conventions of the time regarding woman's sphere which prevented her marrying. In 1850 she writes "I had three paths among which to choose. I might have been a literary woman, or a married woman, or a hospital sister."

At the time of her training in Kaiserswerth she considered marriage very seriously. She felt a severe conflict between her life's purpose and a certain young man. All the pressures were against her work and for a "brilliant match." She was 28 and "getting on" her Mother and Parthe constantly reminded her. More important, Florence loved the man. But her keen powers of analysis applied to "affaires de coeur" as well as to those of state. She weighed the pros and cons; "I have an intellectual nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a passional nature which requires satisfaction and that would find it in him. I have a moral, an active nature which requires satisfaction, and that would not find it in his life. Sometimes I think that I will satisfy my passional nature at all events. .."

She realized all too well that a Victorian Union would mean only engulfment in domesticity and the parlor graces. Marriage would merely be the exchange of the bonds of her family for those of a husband. Her free spirit would have none of it. She writes, "I could be satisfied to spend a life with him continuing our different powers in some great object. I could not satisfy this nature by spending a life with him in making society and arranging domestic things. .." Marriage she felt should be "an opportunity for two people to be united together in some true purpose for mankind and God. "

As for children, Florence once said that she found it better for herself to take care of the children of the world than to bring in more.

She believed in a wider sphere of service than the home. " A profession, a trade, a necessary occupation, something to fill and employ all my faculties, I have always felt essential to me, I have always longed for." She wished for it in others as well.

With terrific invective she comments upon the position of women in the upper classes. In 100 pages of close print, with the spirit of an Ibsen, Florence blasts the current conception of marriage and home. The subjective motivation back of her outburst is apparent.

She rebelled against the life of luxury to which she had been born and which had almost stifled her powers. Even when her mother was 78 years of age, Florence remained critical of her and considered her  habits self-indulgent. What was to Parthe and her mother indispensable was to Florence impedimenta.

"Surely," Florence writes, "Woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, but listening to the 'what people will say' opinion, the voices from without? No one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without. You want to do the thing that is good, whether people call it 'suitable for a woman' or not. "

An analysis of Florence Nightingale's character seems to substantiate modern scientific research which concludes that there is no "female" or "male" character. At every stage of her life, from rebellious girl-hood to old age, Florence exerted the so-called masculine traits of aggressiveness and initiative. The softer virtues, the so-called feminine graces, were there, but they were subordinate to the "harder" ones.

One of the most interesting notes on the psychology of the sexes is the relationship of Florence and Sidney Herbert. As Strachey writes, "The man who acts, decides, and achieves; the woman who encourages, applauds, and from a distance inspires; the combination is common enough; but Miss Nightingale was neither an Aspasia nor an Egaria. In her case it is almost true to say that the roles were reversed; the qualities of pliancy and sympathy fell to the man, those of command and initiative to the woman. There was one thing only which Miss Nightingale lacked in her equipment for public life; she had not, she never could have, the public power and authority which belong to the successful politician. That power and authority Sidney Herbert possessed; the fact was obvious, and the conclusion no less so; it was  through the man that the woman must work her will. She took hold of him, taught him, shaped him, absorbed him, dominated him through and through. He did not resist - he did not wish to resist; his natural inclination lay along the same path as hers; only that terrific personality swept him forward at her own  fierce pace and with her own relentless stride." Herbert met the public and was, to all appearances, in the foreground; but it was the "gentle" Florence who compelled him to act. A more persistent power behind the throne never existed. According to Parthe she was "like a man," divest of "female" traits. Florence herself made such analysis. "Sidney Herbert and I," she writes, "were together exactly like two men -exactly like him and Gladstone."

Florence asked no special favors or consideration because she was a woman. She never used her "condition," shaky as it usually was, as an excuse for inaction. "I attribute my success to this," she once wrote, "I never gave or took an excuse. " She had ample opportunity to use woman's prerogative of changing her mind. Easily could she have retreated from the horrors she met at Scutari; she could have used wounded pride and the harsh treatment of the officials as excuses. As far as we know, such an idea never entered her mind. Leaving Scutari for the rigors of a Crimean winter, she writes, "I am ready to stand out the War with any man." Again addressing a discontented nurse, "Do you think I should have succeeded in doing anything if I had kicked and resisted and resented? Is it our Master's command? Is it even common sense ? I have been even shut out of hospitals. ..obliged to stand outside the door in the snow till night. ..been refused rations for as much as ten days at a time. And I have been as good friends the day after with the officials who did these things - have resolutely ignored these things for the sake of the work. What was I to my Master's work?"

By example as well as words, Florence proved that a person need not be barred from certain paths of life because she is a woman.

Florence Nightingale's part in the feminist movement has too long been minimized. Even Parthe wrote to a friend that "What Florence has done towards raising the standards of women's capabilities and work is most important."

Lord Stanley, an active public figure during her day, well recognized her contribution in this field when he wrote, "It is not easy anywhere, especially in England, to set about doing what no one has done before...Mark what, by breaking through customs and prejudices, Miss Nightingale has effected for her sex. She has opened to them a new profession, a new sphere of usefulness. I do not suppose that, in undertaking her mission, she thought much of the effect which it might have, on the social position of women. Yet probably no one of those who made that question a special study has done half so much as she toward its settlement. "

Sir Edward Cook voiced popular sentiment in the 19th century when he wrote, " A great commander was lost to her country when Florence Nightingale was born a woman. " But the facts speak to the contrary. The truth is that Florence Nightingale was no "lost commander" ; she was a veritable Napoleon who happened to be born a woman.