In Edwardian England, "there was no escape for a woman except to marry the least odious man the family proposed," Anita Leslie, author of "Jennie: The Life of Lady Randolph Churchill," told an audience of 80 last night at the Cronkhite Graduate Center.

Leslie spoke at this semester's first Radcliffe open forum, a speech series designed to "bring women of accomplishment into what is basically a male-dominated community."

A debutante who was introduced to London society in the '20s and "hated it," Leslie discussed the difficulty women faced in attempting to overcome social stereotypes at the turn of the century.

"Jennie Churchill was the most intelligent, vital woman of her day," Leslie said, "but what could she do but sparkle? If one follows her life as closely as I have, one can almost feel her fretting. She really longed to be a career women, but there were no careers for women then."

Leslie said that Jennie's niece, Clare Sheridan, who was Winston Churchill's only female cousin, was able to "battle out of the same world that held Jennie in its clutches." A sculptress and journalist who journeyed to Moscow and lived in the Kremlin during the Russian Revolution, Clare "was the first great romantic career women."