Kathryn Gleadle

British Women in the Nineteenth Century

Acknowledgements Introduction PART 1: WORKING-CLASS WOMEN, 1800-1860 Work Politics, Community and Protest Families, Relationships and Home Life PART 2: MIDDLE-CLASS AND UPPER-CLASS WOMEN, 1800-1860 Work Politics, Community and Protest Families, Relationships and Home Life PART 3: WORKING-CLASS WOMEN, 1860-1900 Work Politics, Community and Protest Families, Relationships and Home Life PART 4: MIDDLE-CLASS AND UPPER-CLASS WOMEN, 1860-1900 Work Politics, Community and Protest Families, Relationships and Home Life Conclusion Notes and References Further Reading Index

Introduction: Space, Place and Gendered Identities: feminist history and the spatial turn

In the last two decades, historians have increasingly sought to understand how environments, ‘built’ and otherwise, architectural surroundings, landscapes, and conceptual ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ (the terms are not synonymous) have affected the nature and scope of political power, cultural production and social experience. The impact of Jürgen Habermas (whose hugely influential work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, was translated into English in 1989) is readily apparent in historians’ responses to these themes. Habermas’s attention to the ways in which the new urban spaces of eighteenth-century Britain created an oppositional counter-public was a defining text in encouraging historians to consider the precise significance of sites of cultural and political

CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH TONNA AND THE MOBILIZATION OF TORY WOMEN IN EARLY VICTORIAN ENGLAND

This article addresses the historiographical neglect of tory women in the early Victorian period. The existence of a vibrant culture of female conservative letters, combined with the widespread participation of women in ultra-Protestant pressure-group politics, is suggestive of the neglected contribution women made to the revival of grass-roots toryism during these years. In particular, it is suggested that a consideration of the distinctive features of premillenarian Evangelicalism enables a more discriminating approach to the impact of Evangelicalism upon contemporary women. By focusing upon the career of the prominent premillenarian Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, and her editorship of the Christian Ladys Magazine , it is argued that contemporary attitudes towards ‘female politicians’ were far more flexible, variable, and contingent than is frequently assumed. The associational activities with which many premillenarians were involved, combined with their attention to Old Testament models of publicly active women and the sense of urgency that distinguished their theology, frequently led its adherents to problematize and critique existing formulations of womens roles.

Revisiting Family Fortunes: reflections on the twentieth anniversary of the publication of L. Davidoff & C. Hall (1987) Family Fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850 (London: Hutchinson)

This article seeks to mark the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Leonore Davidoff & Catherine Hall’s Family Fortunes: men and women of the English middle class, 1780–1850. Given the enormous shifts in the historical discipline since its publication, it seeks to assess the work’s relevance for today’s audience. A consideration of the book’s initial reception provides a reminder of the intellectual climate in which it was published. Whilst this reinforces a sense of the distance the discipline has since travelled, the discussion also points to the richness and perceptiveness of many of those early reviews. The ‘viewpoint’ speculates upon the likely impact of recent developments within both gender history and the social sciences for future treatments of the book’s central themes.

The Imagined Communities of Women's History: current debates and emerging themes, a rhizomatic approach

This article reconsiders some of the emergent features of feminist history since 2001. It employs Deleuze and Guattaris notion of the ‘rhizome’—a root structure which grows in unpredictable and manifold directions—as a means to conceptualise the complicated intellectual shifts within the field. The article warns that in some respects there are signs that the progress of ‘womens history’ has begun to slow. The rhizome provides a radical metaphor through which to consider the continued, subversive potential of feminist history.

Global feminisms, c. 1870–1930: vocabularies and concepts—a comparative approach

ABSTRACT This ‘Viewpoint’ assesses some recent approaches to the study of feminisms across the globe during the c. 1870–1930 period. At a moment when historians are working towards the commemoration of womens partial enfranchisement in Britain in 1918, we consider the intellectual frameworks that most effectively celebrate this achievement whilst also situating the Act within its complex, global context. Reflecting on discussions held at a recent workshop at the University of Oxford, we advocate the effectiveness of a global and comparative methodological approach to question what ‘feminism’ meant to contemporary campaigners. The scrutiny of localised and national issues within comparative and global contexts illuminates the plurality of definitions, vocabularies, and categories relating to feminism that were being used (and rejected) during this era and raises broader questions for the study and practice of feminist history.

Playing at Soldiers: British Loyalism and Juvenile Identities during the Napoleonic Wars

This article focuses on British childrens play as a medium through which to examine the construction of loyalist identities during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The display of juvenile patriotic identities was a significant feature of the neighbourhood political cultures formed in response to the invasion threat. Turning the spotlight on the ‘cultural presence of children’ demonstrates the extent to which the young were not simply passive recipients of socialisation processes, but could be significant agents in the constitution and reproduction of cultures themselves.

Introduction: The Petticoat in Politics: Women and Authority

In December 1832, the borough of Ripon in Yorkshire was contested for the first time for over one hundred years. In the aftermath of the Reform Act expectations were high that the proprietorial influence of the Aislabie family of Studley Royal could be thrown off and that the election would launch a new era of democratic politics.2 The Liberal candidates centred their campaign on the unnatural and illegal influence of the owner of the Studley Royal estate and proprietor of many burgage plots in Ripon. However, this traditional claim of ‘old corruption’ was given an alternative spin because it was a woman, Elizabeth Sophia Lawrence, who had sole control of the estate and therefore could influence borough politics. In a series of speeches, one of the Liberal challengers, Richard Crompton Staveley, utilised a particularly evocative image to draw attention to the role of this female, political power: At your request, I now stand before you (ladies, I am sorry to say it) to do away with petticoat influence. Men could no longer bear it, that one immense blue petticoat should cover the whole town of Ripon and exclude from its inhabitants those bright rays of light and liberty which are now shining forth in all their glory from one end of the borough to another.3 The petticoat as a metaphor for women’s authority over men had been a favourite symbol in political propaganda from the early eighteenth century.

Infant Mortality and Working-Class Child Care, 1850–1899, by Melanie Reynolds

important contribution to the recent debate on the role of women in the development of financial markets. The examination of women’s work through the lens of debt litigation also has some limitations. The range of economic activities that comes into view is limited. Obviously, we learn a lot about merchants and merchandisers because engaging in debt and credit was central to their daily activities. Similarly, there is ample attention for women working as wineand book-sellers as these commodities can be easily detected in the sources. But how should their remarkably activity in these trades be explained? Did women in the book trade most often work in cooperation with their husbands or as widows because it was a typical artisanal trade to which women usually only got access through marriage and not individually? It is difficult to assess the relative importance of women’s work in these trades or to explain the observed patterns as we lack an overview of the employment opportunities in Scottish towns. The examination of the economic roles of men in relation to marital and social status—rightfully suggested by Spence for future research as the ‘obvious companion to this study’—will certainly contribute to a further explanation and contextualisation of the experiences of working women that Spence here has brought so vividly to the fore.

Masculinity, Age and Life Cycle in the Age of Reform

The 1867 Reform Act created a polity in which, for 50 years, age and householding status were frequently more important than class in determining British mens right to vote. In the debates leading up to the act, both age and householder status were deployed to manage fears of greater democratisation. This essay traces some of the associative connections parliamentarians made between the sexual and family status of potential voters; their relationship to their fathers or sons; the kinds of houses in which they dwelt; and their personal decisions to delay or undertake marriage. The claim that the new male voter was distinguished for his ‘independence’ has been much discussed. However, it is suggested here that it was equally the figure of the settled citizen which emerged as significant during parliamentary debate. This was a category which could be interlaced with a stream of connected ideas concerning attachment to the ‘hearth’, the community, and to Anglo-Saxon heritage itself. During the age of reform, calls to raise the age of suffrage frequently surfaced. This contributed to a climate of opinion which legitimised arguments denigrating the political abilities of the young and which helped to make possible age-related political structures. Analysed alongside debates over the merits of an education clause in 1866 and the amendment to enfranchise lodgers the following year, the essay considers how class-specific distinctions of age and life cycle helped to uphold an enduring model of hegemonic masculinity, centring on the mature, householding male.