Women in public life
The symbolic importance of the vote to generations of feminists and subsequent
historians has meant that women’s broader political culture[1]
and history has been obscured[2].
The possession of the vote qualified women finally to enter the purely masculine
and public world of national politics from which they had
so long been
excluded. Women’s interest in securing access to political rights was
not
limited to the campaign for parliamentary suffrage. Feminists agitated on a
range of issues that affected public policy from education through official
attitudes to prostitution. These pages examine the
public dimension
of feminist activity in which they arguably made the most significant advances
in the nineteenth and early twentieth century[3].
Gender
was not nec
essarily the primary factor determining women’s loyalties and
interests[4].
There were other loyalties, most obviously to
class
and
community.
Nineteenth century England was a society in which class boundaries were
increasingly complex. A landed class maintained its personal hold on the
institutions of national government but acknowledged and compromised with the
industrial strength of the manufacturing middle classes. The professional and
upper middle classes grew in importance as shapers and leaders of public
opinion. Yet the expansion of the middle classes at all income levels down to
the suburban clerk confused the social aspirations and political loyalties of
women and men. Such shifts meant the gradual ending of long-established social
and political attitudes and resulted in the creation of different male and
female patterns of political and social agendas.
Nineteenth and early twentieth century women employed the language of their own experience, of motherhood, of domestic labour, of religious commitment, whether their links were primarily with other women or when they were operating in male-dominated social institutions or political movements. While challenging injustice, many drew their considerable strength from what they regarded with pride as their most fulfilling tasks, as wives and mothers. Yet many, whether working women or middle class campaigners sought and end to political inequality and recognition as political beings.
[1] Dorothy Thompson Women in the Nineteenth Century, The Historical Association, 1990, Jane Rendall Women in an Industrialising Society: England 1750-1880, Blackwell, 1990, Paula Bartley The Changing Role of Women 1815-1914, Hodder & Stoughton, 1996, Annette Mayer Women in Britain 1900-2000, Hodder & Stoughton, 2002, Karina Honeyman Women, Gender and Industrialisation in England, 1700-1870, Macmillan, 2000, Kathryn Gleadle British Women in the Nineteenth Century, Palgrave, 2001 and Susie Steinbach Women in England 1760-1914: A Social History, Weidenfeld, 2004 are good, short introductions to the background of the subject. June Purvis (ed.) Women’s History Britain 1850-1945: an introduction, UCL, 1995 is an outstanding collection of essays. Pat Thane ‘Late Victorian Women’, in T. R. Gourvish and Alan O’ Day (eds.) Later Victorian Britain 1867-1900, Macmillan, 1988, pages 175-208 and Suzann Buckley ‘The Family and the Role of Women’, in Alan O’ Day (ed.) The Edwardian Age: Conflict and Stability 1900-1914, Macmillan, 1979, pages 133-142 provide useful summaries of current thinking. Joan Perkin Victorian Women, John Murray, 1993 is longer but contains useful information on the 1880s and after. Jane Lewis Women in England 1870-1950: Sexual Divisions and Social Change, Harvester, 1984 is a more specific work. Catherine Hall White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History, Polity, 1994 is a valuable collection of her essays with a valuable essay on feminism and history. Martha Vicinus has edited two invaluable collections of essays on women in the nineteenth century: Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age, Methuen, 1972 and A Widening Sphere: Changing Roles of Victorian Women, Methuen, 1975. Sara Delamont and Lorna Duffin (eds.) The Nineteenth Century Woman, Croom Helm, 1978 is also a valuable collection of papers. Christine Bolt The Women’s Movements in the United States and Britain from the 1790s to the 1920s, Harvester, 1993, Richard J. Evans The Feminists: women’s emancipation movements in Europe, America and Australasia, 1840-1920, Croom Helm, 1984 and Jane Rendall The Origins of Modern Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860, Macmillan, 1985 are valuable for comparative history. Martha Vicinus Women in English Social History 1800-1914, Garland, 1987 is a detailed three volume bibliography while June Hannam, Ann Hughes and Pauline Stafford British women’s history: A bibliographical guide, Manchester University Press, 1996 is a broader and in one volume.
[2] The term ‘feminism’ was not coined until the 1890s and was not used widely until after the First World War. This does not mean that feminism did not exist before the 1890s. Indeed, feminist ideas can be traced back to the seventeenth century though most historians have argued that the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft in 1792 marked the birth of feminism in Britain. She argued that women should have the same rights as men. Although her writings never gained a popular following, they continued to be central to all the criticisms of male domination made in the nineteenth century.
[3] Women’s participation in public life is explored in Patricia Hollis Ladies Elect: Women in English Local Government 1865-1914, Oxford, 1987 and in the collection of documents Patricia Hollis (ed.) Women in Public: The Women’s Movement 1850-1900, London, 1979 and in Pat Jalland Women, Marriage and Politics 1860-1914, Oxford, 1986. Jane Rendall (ed.) Equal or Different: Women’s Politics 1800-1914, Oxford, 1987 contains a variety of papers on the politicisation of women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[4] On this issue see Dorothy Thompson Outsiders: class, gender and race, London, 1993.