gender identities 1830-1914 Flashcards
Mill’s opinion on the exclusion of women from everyday life
Everyone would disagree on its injustice, yet female disabilities are clung to “in order to maintain their subordination in domestic life; because the generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal”
Mill on female exclusion from the workplace
while women are equipped for jobs, women must be excluded in order to prevent an inferior woman from winning over a superior man- “desirable to believe, that they are incapable of doing it”, yet “women, and not a few merely, but many women, have proved themselves capable of everything”
Mill on if women are biologically inferior
“any of the mental differences supposed to exist between women and men, but the natural effect of the differences in their education and circumstances, and indicate no racial difference”
Women and men’s biological differences according to Mill
Women are sensitive to the present and thinks in terms of individuals. hence women give reality to the thoughts of men which think of things “as if they exist for the benefit of some imaginary identity”
Mill on female writers
“our best novelists in point of composition, and of the management of detail, have mostly been women: and there is not in all of modern literature a more eloquent vechile of thought than the style of Madame de Stael
Mill on women’s primary role as a wife
according to Wedgewood he “never seems to realise that there are other women beside wives” eg he talks of how women will struggle to act for causes that their husband disagrees “Women cannot be expected to devote themselves to the emancipation of women, until men in considerable number are”
Women and men as biologically different over time- Wedgewood and Darwin
‘sexual selection’
“some qualities, transmitted only in a latent form… are fully inherited only by children of the same sex…. Tending to make every generation of women in some sense more feminine, every generation of men in some sense more masculine”
female attendance at Church
more women attended than men. McLeod says “women positively chose religion” as while they were not part of its leadership, they were not actively excluded. According to Davidoff and Hall, this made “women more susceptible to religion”
St Paul’s Epistle on families in religion
‘household was the basic unit of society and so “Family celebrations should contribute to the building of the little kingdom of heaven on earth”
William Marsh
was labelled as too feminine, but described his religious conversion in masculine terms- undertook “higher commission in the service of the Great Captain of his salvation and fought under his banner” so he was an example “of real manliness consisting of all that is pure and tender and strong and lasting”- Davidoff +Hall
Gleadle in response to Davidoff + Hall in relation to female economics role
not restricted to the household- “new research has unearthed the diverse practices of female financial initiatives and the many opportunities available to women in independent investment and business enterprise”
Gleadle in response to Davidoff +Hall on women in the public sphere
women were borderline citizens. they were not complete separate spheres- “the authors tended to minimise instances of female public engagement” and she describes large amounts of female involvement in the anti-slavery campaign and battle against the corn laws
women as both unmarried and nonconformist
Davidoff + Hall- their lives would be meaningless and they would be in danger of being a ‘surplus’ with ‘unconfined sexuality’
Christian Lady’s Friend on women’s roles
1832- women were subordinate but not inferior. operated in “a different department and sphere of action “ who in the home could “wield their moral influence and save not only themselves, but men as well”
John Angell James
provincial minister who became well known from his 1812 speech at the Birmingham conference, said that the pastor’s wife should be “a bright pattern of all that tender affection… and cheerful obedience”
Congregational Magazine
articles and letters in 1837 that said “let your woman keep silent in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience”
exmaple of female involvement in church organisation
Saffron Walden possessed a widow who dealt with 165 applicants for relief in a single meeting
from 1782, women could vote by proxy on official positions
Vickery on the middle class and feminism
it was the clear ideas on femininity and masculinity which distinguished the middle class from the rest- “the separation of separate spheres was one of the fundamental organising characteristics of middle-class society”
Attack on Davidoff and Halls focus on the middle-class female role in the church
Clapham sect consisted of lesser gentry and so evangelicalism was not an exclusively middle-class project and women were given subsidiary roles and directed single-sex committees
Vickery on female economic role
Female professions in the domestic sphere eg laundry were not handed to men during industrialisation and neither were the roles of men and women in agriculture interchangeable so “the structure of the female labour market stayed the same”, however participation did decline
Tosh on men and the home
there was a growth in the manufacturing and commercial classes whose lives centred around the home and the “domesticated manhood was the ideal of the ‘moral force’” behind the Chartist movement and other advocates of the household franchise
Tosh on men moving away from leisure
the Conservative party were able to shift their electoral pitch from the “honest labourer who had earned the right to a quiet pint, to the honest labourer who had earned the right to a quiet home life”
economic changes in relation to gender ideals
‘family wage’ for the breadwinner so they could be the sole worker- wife could focus on domestic duties
decline in violence- shift in masculinity
“between 1850- 1914 trials for indictable offences declined by one-third”. Criminal registrar said in 1901 that what had occurred was “the substitution of words without blows for blows”
