Barbara Caine

Feminist biography and feminist history

Abstract This article seeks to explore the relationship between biography and the many new developments evident in feminist history. Taking as its particular focus the history of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English feminism, it looks at the divergence between an approach to biography which assumes it to be concerned with the lives of exceptional individuals and an interest in the history of feminism which has ceased to regard it as being the story of heroic victories on the way to womens emancipation. The growing interest in the lives, experiences and activities of past feminists who were not the leaders of major national campaigns suggests a new approach in general to the biographies of feminists – exploring how they lived and understood the broader situation of women

Victorian feminism and the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft

Abstract Victorian feminists rarely mentioned Mary Wollstonecraft and when they did attempted to distance themselves from her rather than to claim any connection with her. This avoidance did not mean that they knew nothing about her. On the contrary, private correspondence and the few published references to her suggest that she was well-known throughout the century, but more for her scandalous private life, as recounted by William Godwin, than for her ideas. This article explores nineteenth century responses to Wollstonecraft, arguing that while her ideas were not acknowledged, her life served as a constant and sometimes unwelcome reminder of the ways in which personal rebellion and feminist commitment were connected. It uses these responses to her in order to explore some of the difficulties involved in establishing a feminist tradition. Finally it looks at the rehabilitation of Wollstonecraft in the 1890s.

Vida goldstein and the english militant campaign

Abstract Although most feminism develops within a national context and draws on particular national myths and beliefs, this article argues that the international dimensions of feminism need also to be recognised. This was particularly so for Australian feminists who, as colonials, had a complex relationship with England. In some ways the early granting of womens suffrage reversed the normal roles between colonies and imperial power, as Australian women often came to England to help their less fortunate sisters with their struggle. But exposure to the militant campaign brought them into contact with a range of feminist ideas and relationships which often caused them to re-think their own position and brought to light conflicts and tensions which had not previously been exposed.

Feminism, suffrage and the nineteenth-century English women's movement☆

Abstract The nineteenth-century English womens movement has usually been studied in terms of its attempts to increase the access of women to the public and political spheres. This approach to the movement ignores the immense concern amongst its members with the private and domestic lives of women. Within the movement there were widely differing views as to how reform in the private sphere and in the public sphere should be integrated. This concern is most clearly evident in the many discussions of marriage which accompanied not only the campaign to reform the legal status of married women, but all the educational, suffrage and employment campaigns as well. These differences came to the fore in the early 1870s in the controversy aroused by the Contagious Diseases Acts. The split within the suffrage movement over this issue reflected differing views as to whether political rights or sexual and moral questions ought to be the primary concern of the movement.

Prisons as Spaces of Friendships in Apartheid South Africa

This article explores the importance of friendship in enabling people to survive the appalling conditions of imprisonment in South Africa under the apartheid regime. It argues that, despite their concern to isolate people in prisons, the regime ultimately fostered important social links within them. The bonds established between prisoners on Robben Island are well known, but the article looks again both at the gift for and the approach to friendship evident in the life of Nelson Mandela, and contrasts the approach to friendship of some of the women incarcerated in prisons with that of some prominent men.

'A South African revolutionary, but a lady of the British Empire': Helen Joseph and the anti-apartheid movement

This article explores the life, and the political activity, of anti-apartheid activist Helen Joseph. Largely ignored since her death in 1992, Joseph was a leading figure in the struggle against apartheid from the early 1950s until 1962 when she became the first person placed under house arrest in South Africa under the Sabotage Act. Beginning with a discussion of the way in which Joseph presented her political life in her autobiographical writings, the article considers what this political involvement meant to Joseph in personal and emotional terms, and explores the close and complex relationships that underlay her political commitment and activity.

Mothering feminism/mothering feminists: ray strachey and the cause

Abstract The framework of motherhood raises interesting and important questions for feminist biography and for the history of feminism. Representations of motherhood have played an important part in defining particular kinds of feminism. But while images of sisterhood and close female friendship are integral to many recent discussions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminism, cross-generational relationships between feminists and their mothers are only just beginning to be explored. In this article the author seeks to deal with both of these issues in a specific case study of Ray Strachey, exploring her feminist commitment and activity in terms of her relationship with her own mother, and with the other maternal figures to whom she was close. It is also argued that her complex negotiations with maternal figures affected the way in which she established a feminist tradition, and indeed depicted the whole history of British feminism in her major book, The Cause

The making of Catherine Cookson's autobiography

Catherine Cooksons Our Kate, is undoubtedly one of the most widely read English language autobiographies ever written. It is loved by her fans and has also been drawn on quite frequently by historians seeking details of early-twentieth-century life amongst the very poor, and especially by those concerned with the fate of illegitimate children. The production of this work was complicated and lengthy, however. It took Cookson twelve years to write Our Kate, and she discarded many drafts before settling on the final version of her story and of her depiction of herself. This article explores the process Cookson went through in writing her autobiography and the ways in which she managed ultimately both to create a very distinctive persona and to use it to develop and expound her social, religious and moral values and beliefs in their most authoritative form.

A feminist family: the stracheys and feminism, c. 1860-1950

Abstract This article explores the importance and meaning of feminism within one prominent British family across two generations, spanning the later nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. It discusses the changing nature of feminist activism, the ways in which suffrage and feminist activities could become full-time occupations for some women and looks at the links between personal or personal relationships that this sometimes entailed. Focusing on the younger women in the family, however, it also shows how feminism came to be seen as antithetical to modernity and as having little to offer those who sought personal and sexual emancipation in the period after the First World War.

From ‘Dearest Mama’ to ‘Dear Mother’: changing styles in early twentieth-century letters from daughters to mothers

In this article, the author looks at two sets of letters sent home to mothers by travelling daughters in the early twentieth century. Both sets of letters come from the Strachey family: one from Philippa Strachey written during the visit she made to India in 1901, the other from her niece, Elinor Rendel, during the period she spent with the Scottish Womens Hospital on the Eastern Front in the First World War. But the letters come from two different generations of women and there are very marked differences between them in style and in content. Both women used their letters as ways to express and to negotiate independent lives while still remaining close to their families, and the author suggests that the differences in their epistolary style serves as much to reflect contrasting approaches to expressions of sentiment and to the appropriate style for writing letters as they do to suggest different relationships between them and their mothers.