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 with sustained engagement with the (male) establishment.