Women and Leadership in Nineteenth-Century England

270 Pages·1992·28.02 MB·English

by  Lilian Lewis Shiman (auth.)

WOMEN AND LEADERSHIP IN
NINETEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND
Women and Leadership
in Nineteenth-Century
England
Lilian Lewis Shiman
Professor of History
Nichols College. Dudley. Massachusetts
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN 978-1-349-22190-5 ISBN 978-1-349-22188-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-22188-2
© Lilian Lewis Shiman 1992
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1992
All rights reserved. For infonnation, write:
Scholarly and Reference Division,
St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue,
New York, N.Y. 10010
First published in the United States of America in 1992
ISBN 978-0-312-07912-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shim an, Lilian Lewis.
Women and leadership in nineteenth-century England / Lilian Lewis
Shiman.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-07912-3
1. Women-England-History-19th century. 2. Women social
refonners-England-History-19th century. 3. Women-England
-Social conditions. I. Title.
HQ1599.E5S54 1992
305.42'0942--dc20 91-43786
CIP
To the women of my family,
in memory of 'Auntie'.
She endured, and she cared.
Contents
Preface xi
INTRODUCTION: THE WALLS OF JERICHO 1
The Old Society 1
The New Society 3
Women in the New Society 5
PART ONE 1750-1850: THE VOICE OF THE LORD 11
Daughters of Eve 11
1 They Sat Not Still 13
The Protestant Reformation 13
Women and the Sects 15
Society of Friends and other Nonconformists 16
Women and the Sects in the Eighteenth Century 18
2 The CaU to Preach 20
The Methodist Revival 20
Opposition to Women Preachers 22
The Wesleyan Connexion and other Methodist Sects 26
Independent Women Preachers 29
Domestic Religion 30
3 Class and Politics 33
Traditional Upper-class Political Leadership 33
The Middle-Class Takeover 35
Working-Class Women and Reform 37
4 The CaU to Social and Political Action 43
The Church of England Evangelical Movement 43
The Anti-Slave Movement 46
The Anti-Com Law League 50
The Early Temperance Movement 53
vii
viii Contents
PART TWO 1850-1875: THE SOUND OF THE HORN 59
Gender Separation 59
The Anglo-American Connection 61
5 The Two Spheres 64
Club Society 66
Respectability 68
The 'Inferior' Sex 70
6 Economic Disabilities 72
Surplus Women 72
Employment of Working-Class Women 74
Employment and Education of Middle-Class Women 82
Economic Dependence 85
A Money Economy 87
Women in Public Life 88
7 Religious Revival 91
Denominational Rivalry 91
A Growing Female Involvement in Church of England 94
Religious Revivalism: A New Awakening 99
Independent Missions 102
The Gospel Temperance Movement 103
Women and the Churches 106
8 Reform Leadership 108
Julia B. Wightman: A Temperance Pathfinder 109
A Call to Ladies 111
Role Models 113
Women Missioners in Army and Navy:
Sarah Robinson and Agnes Weston 115
PART THREE 1875-1900: THE GREAT SHOUT 121
The Franchise 121
A New Frame of Reference for Women 122
The Key to All Reform 123
Contents ix
9 Speaking Out 125
Onto the Platform 126
Conventions of the Public Platform 128
First Rung on the Ladder 129
An 'Unwomanly' Triumph 135
10 'This Revolt of the Women' 138
The Contagious Diseases Acts 138
The Ladies National Association for the
Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts 140
Josephine Butler's Leadership 143
A Successful Women's Campaign 147
11 A National Temperance Movement 151
The Good Templars 151
Temperance Networking 152
A National Women's Temperance Organization 154
A Public Voice 156
The Woman Question and the British Women's
Temperance Association 159
ANew Administration 160
The Battle of 'the Two Presidents' 163
1892-1893: An Unhappy Year 165
A Split Movement 168
12 For Church, Crown and Empire 171
A Changing Franchise 171
Local Government 172
National Conservative Politics: The Primrose League 173
Dames of the Primrose League 174
The League and The Woman Question 179
The Dames' Success 180
13 Raised Voices for Justice 182
The Liberal Associations 182
The Women's Liberal Associations 182
The Women's Liberal Federation 184
Women's Suffrage: 'A Burning Question' 188
A Year of Strife 194
x Contents
A Splinter: The Women's National Liberal Association 198
The Women's Liberal Unionist Association 199
CONCLUSION: WITH OVERWHELMING VOICES 202
'Educate, Organise and Agitate' 204
Notes 206
Bibliography 243
Index 254
Preface
It is the duty, and the joy, of a historian to bring out of obscurity those of
the past who have made significant contributions to the development of
our civilization. It is a duty to one's own time, furthering its quest for
self-understanding. And it is a duty to theirs, helping it to live again in
common memory.
In interpreting past to present, the most difficult task is to be faithful to
both. The all-too-human tendency, from which historians are by no means
exempt, is to mythologize the past, to project present concerns into it. The
scholar must constantly be on guard against this, seeking to understand and
communicate not only past actions, but also the worldviews that motivated
them. Past values must not be confused with present ones; every society
has its own priorities.
The history of women in nineteenth-century Britain is only now being
understood. Concealed by a mythic mantle of domesticity, for the most
part they lived out of the public eye. Even those well known in their
own time have been largely ignored by historians; and it is interesting
that the women perhaps best known as eminent Victorians - most notably
Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale - were not leaders in the battle
for women's rights.
That a group has been historically invisible does not mean that they did
not exist, or that they achieved nothing. Trees fall in the forest even if there
is no one there to hear them. The historian must raise the question whether
there was a lack of achievements by women or merely a failure to publicize
and preserve them. We know that some Victorian men quite consciously
sought to suppress accounts of female activism as a bad example for
their wives and daughters. Considerable effort is needed therefore to learn
about women who sought meaningful public lives despite societal pressure
against them. While for many their attainments fell far short of their hopes,
they helped to open doors through which succeeding generations of women
moved to a wider and richer life.
In selecting the women and their activities that are described in this work,
my concern has been to emphasize those who, by individual reputation
or organizational contribution, had the greatest impact on the women's
movement that eventually emerged. There are many women and many
activities that have not been included; I hope that this will not be taken as
a mark of indifference to their accomplishments. Some of the women have
xi