Terry Prone: To call a woman ‘ambitious’ is to accuse and condemn, even now

Ambition in women had emerged as unacceptable and as deeply threatening to men towards the end of the 19th century with the arrival of the typewriter, writes Terry Prone

US socialite and divorcée Wallis Simpson in 1936, a week before the UK's King Edward VIII abdicated to marry her. Picture: Fayer/Getty Images

WE’RE not supposed to speak ill of the dead. Every now and then, though, it’s difficult to find anything but ill to speak of the dead. Take Wallis Simpson.

Mrs Simpson was the woman for whom the then Prince of Wales fell, hook, line, and crown in 1936. Edward VIII wanted this twice-divorced American to be his queen, and, thwarted by the rules, sat in front of a microphone to tell the plain people of the UK (and of the wider British empire) that, without the support of the woman he loved, he could not continue to be king and was abdicating.