Megan Smitley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079665
- eISBN:
- 9781781703069
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079665.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Social History
Middle-class women made use the informal power structures of Victorian and Edwardian associationalism in order to participate actively as citizens. This investigation of women's role in civic life ...
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Middle-class women made use the informal power structures of Victorian and Edwardian associationalism in order to participate actively as citizens. This investigation of women's role in civic life provides a fresh approach to the ‘public sphere’, illuminates women as agents of a middle-class identity and develops the notion of a ‘feminine public sphere’, or the web of associations, institutions and discourses used by disenfranchised middle-class women to express their citizenship. The extent of middle-class women's contribution to civic life is examined through their involvement in reforming and philanthropic associations as well as local government. Feminist historians have developed increasingly nuanced understandings of the relationship between ‘separate spheres’ and women's public lives, yet many analyses of middle-class civic identity in nineteenth-century Britain have conformed to over-rigid interpretations of separate spheres to largely exclude an exploration of the role of women. By examining under-used Scottish material, new light is shed on these issues by highlighting the active contribution of women to in this process. Employing a case study of women's temperance, Liberal and suffrage organisations, this analysis considers the relationship between separate spheres ideology and women's public lives; the contribution to suffrage of organisations not normally associated with the Victorian and Edwardian women's movement; and the importance of regional and international perspectives for British history.Less
Middle-class women made use the informal power structures of Victorian and Edwardian associationalism in order to participate actively as citizens. This investigation of women's role in civic life provides a fresh approach to the ‘public sphere’, illuminates women as agents of a middle-class identity and develops the notion of a ‘feminine public sphere’, or the web of associations, institutions and discourses used by disenfranchised middle-class women to express their citizenship. The extent of middle-class women's contribution to civic life is examined through their involvement in reforming and philanthropic associations as well as local government. Feminist historians have developed increasingly nuanced understandings of the relationship between ‘separate spheres’ and women's public lives, yet many analyses of middle-class civic identity in nineteenth-century Britain have conformed to over-rigid interpretations of separate spheres to largely exclude an exploration of the role of women. By examining under-used Scottish material, new light is shed on these issues by highlighting the active contribution of women to in this process. Employing a case study of women's temperance, Liberal and suffrage organisations, this analysis considers the relationship between separate spheres ideology and women's public lives; the contribution to suffrage of organisations not normally associated with the Victorian and Edwardian women's movement; and the importance of regional and international perspectives for British history.
Megan Smitley
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719079665
- eISBN:
- 9781781703069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719079665.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
The study highlights the feminine public sphere that represents a locus of middle-class women's public lives and elite women's contribution to a middle-class identity rooted in public service. ...
More
The study highlights the feminine public sphere that represents a locus of middle-class women's public lives and elite women's contribution to a middle-class identity rooted in public service. Notions of women's complementary nature, feminine moral superiority and an evangelical interest in actively pursuing the conversion of others—ideas which might have been mobilised to justify the sexual division of labour and an idealised female domesticity—could have been subverted by middle-class public women to encourage the formation and expansion of women's reforming associations in the 1870 to 1914 period. Furthermore, a belief in the social and moral importance of the maternal and domestic was integral to middle-class women's culture, and the women's temperance movement illustrates the importance of gender and social class to the feminine public sphere. Female temperance reform was further influenced by middle-class women's participation in the public world of voluntary philanthropy, and the movement of women from charity to social reform cross-pollinated women's associations with similar reforming strategies. This study's fresh perspective on women's public lives further emphasises the breadth of the constitutional suffrage movement.Less
The study highlights the feminine public sphere that represents a locus of middle-class women's public lives and elite women's contribution to a middle-class identity rooted in public service. Notions of women's complementary nature, feminine moral superiority and an evangelical interest in actively pursuing the conversion of others—ideas which might have been mobilised to justify the sexual division of labour and an idealised female domesticity—could have been subverted by middle-class public women to encourage the formation and expansion of women's reforming associations in the 1870 to 1914 period. Furthermore, a belief in the social and moral importance of the maternal and domestic was integral to middle-class women's culture, and the women's temperance movement illustrates the importance of gender and social class to the feminine public sphere. Female temperance reform was further influenced by middle-class women's participation in the public world of voluntary philanthropy, and the movement of women from charity to social reform cross-pollinated women's associations with similar reforming strategies. This study's fresh perspective on women's public lives further emphasises the breadth of the constitutional suffrage movement.
