Basics Flashcards
To learn what was taught in the lecture about gender and women
What was the view on History and Historians in the 19th Century?
- The C19 was viewed as a ‘historical century’
- History was viewed as true historical knowledge
- It became a professionalised especially in the final decades, at the same time other fields were become professionalised like arts and medicine
- It was viewed as elite training
How was history used in the 19th century?
What did Bishop Stubbs say was the purpose of history?
- It provided a model for contemporary politics and arguments of national progress
- Bishop Stubbs said the purpose of history is ‘a science that teaches us lessons that are applicable to present politics’
What was history like in the 19th century, especially for women?
- It was deeply gendered, especially in western historical enquiry
- Women were seen as a-historical beings as man’s other
- Women were associated with reproduction and nature
- Women may have been interested in history but were excluded
- Women were viewed as incapable of historical discoveries
- Women were viewed similarly to the lower classes
When did women start being allowed to be involved in history?
- Not until they were allowed the vote in 1928
What was the focus in history in late 19th and early 20th century?
- There was a concern that citizens needed to be educated about their history
- Sources used related to historic male lives through printed religious records
- Male focused political, ecclesiastical and legal history
- There was a changing notion of male citizenship and individual agency
With the emergence of Journals in the late 19th century, what’s an example of a journal?
What was the aim of that journal?
- The English Historical Review (1886)
- The was ‘calm and scientific spirit’ which would interest ‘thinking men in historical’ study
Just because women weren’t historical academics were they involved in history?
- Women were in historical stories, books and paintings in society
- Women aside from queens played an important role in medieval and history to keeping the family together, passing on traditions - they were important to the C19
What did books, paintings and tapestries portray women as in the 18th century?
- Portray women as virtuous, lives as lesson and symbols of uniform femininity
How did women participate in history?
- Women used tapestries and paintings to portray public events to provide their own comments on their society
- In the C19 they would perform narratives in schools and local communities
Who are two historians that look at gendered history and women’s participation in history?
- Bonnie G Smith
- Billie Melmon
What biographies were written in the 19th Century about women?
- Sisters Agnes & Elizabeth Strickland: The Lives of the Queens of England (1840-48)
- Lives of the Queens of Scotland (1850-59)
- Lives of the Tudor Princes (1867)
What type of women were focused on in stories of history in the 19th century?
What impact did they have?
Were they popular and what effect did this have on historical scholarship?
- Focused on exceptional women
- Women history was popular
- Historical scholars often looked down on popularity
- Whilst also stressing the need for scholarly research on women
- But it did put women into history and gives women for the first time strong powerful role models
In the mid 19th century was there an expansion in women’s history?
What’s an example of it?
- A little
- Julia Kavanagh wrote ‘Women in France during the Eighteenth Century’ in 1850 and argued that women had power in the 18th century France but that ‘historians in the period have never fully or willingly acknowledged its existence. Their silence cannot efface that which has been’
What did women call themselves when writing history in the 19th century?
What did they avoid writing about?
- Many women called themselves amateurs
- They avoided direct observation/analysis of inequalities between genders
- Instead it offered a nostalgic better version of the past
When did women start going to uni?
- Women were trying to enter the academy to become professional historians
- Small numbers if middle class women being given admission to university
- It wasn’t a neat progress but some women in the late C19 were going to uni to study
- Women at Cambridge University weren’t allowed to get a degree until 1947
What were some women doing in academic history in the late 19th and early 20th century?
- Some academic women were engaging in various fields
- Many connected with the suffrage movement