Routledge Revivals
A Widening Sphere
First published in 1977, this book is a companion volume to Suffer and Be Still. It looks at the widening sphere of womens activities in the Victorian age and testifies to the dual nature of the legal and social constraints of the period: on the one hand, the ideal of the perfect lady and the restrictive laws governing marriage and property posed limits to womens independence; on the other hand, some Victorian women chose to live lives of great variety and complexity. By uncovering new data and reinterpreting old, the contributors in this volume debunk some of the myths surrounding the Victorian woman and alter stereotypes on which many of todays social customs are based.
A Widening Sphere
Changing Roles of Victorian Women
Edited by
Martha Vicinus
First published in 1977
by Methuen & Co. Ltd
This edition first published in 2013 by Routledge
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Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
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1977 Indiana University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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A Library of Congress record exists under ISBN: 76026433
ISBN 13: 978-0-415-83706-4 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-203-40241-2 (ebk)
A Widening Sphere
CHANGING ROLES OF VICTORIAN WOMEN
Edited by Martha Vicinus
METHUEN & CO., LTD.
First published in 1977 by Indiana University Press
University Paperback edition first published in 1980 by
Methuen & Co., Ltd.
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
1977 Indiana University Press
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Main entry under title:
A Widening sphere.
Includes index.
1. WomenGreat BritainHistoryAddresses, essays, lectures. 2. WornenGreat BritainSocial conditionsAddresses, essays, lectures. 3. FeminismGreat BritainAddresses, essays, lectures. 4. Great BritainSocial conditions19th centuryAddresses, essays, lectures. I. Viciuus, Martha, 1939-
HQI 1596.W44 301.4120941 76-26433
ISBK 0-416-74350-1 Pbk (University paperback 721)
Contents
Martha Vicinus
Lee Holcombe
Sally Mitchell
A. James Hammerton
Judith Walkowitz
Christopher Kent
Rita McWilliams-Tullberg
Carol Christ
Sheila Ryan Johansson
F. Barry Smith
Barbara Kanner
Acknowledgments
The editor would like to thank MaryJo Wagner, Editorial Assistant of Victorian Studies (197475), who assisted in the early stages of preparing the anthology, and Gail Malmgreen, who read through the introduction with a scrupulous eye for unexamined assumptions and awkward phrasing. Our discussions of the nineteenth century over many years has been a major influence on my understanding of Victorian women.
Sexuality in Britain, 18001900: Some Suggested Revisions, by F. Barry Smith, is a revised version of a paper first published in The University of Newcastle Historical Journal, II (1974), 1931.
Judith Walkowitz is grateful to the Rutgers Research Council for grants which facilitated research for this essay. In particular she would like to thank Daniel J. Walkowitz for much of the material on Southampton women and Portsea Hospital, and Susan Tracy, who helped to compile statistical data from the manuscript census. Thanks also to Mary Hartman and Rudolph Bell for their critical comments on the essay.
Rita McWilliams-Tullberg would like to thank the authorities of Girton and Newnham Colleges, Cambridge, for permission to use their archives and Trinity College, Cambridge, for permission to examine material in the Wren Library. Research for this article was financed by the British Academy Thank-Offering to Britain Fund Fellowship. This chapter is based in part on material gathered for a history of women at Cambridge University. The full story can be found in Rita McWilliams-Tullberg, Women at CambridgeA Mens University, though of a Mixed Type (London: Victor Gollancz, 1975).
Barbara Kanner expresses her appreciation to the interlibrary loan staff of the UCLA Research Library, especially to Edith Fuller. Thanks are due also to Kanners library assistant, Steven Halasey.
New Trends in the Study of the Victorian Woman
IN 1869 JOHN STUART MILL DESCRIBED IN The Subjection of Women THE rigid slavelike stereotype of the nineteenth-century wife and mother. But he also spoke of the enormous potential of women, which he saw being realized in the period when he wrote. His sense of their widening sphere of moral and social activities was not wholly a product of his own idealism. By the 1860s the woman question had become one of the most important topics of the day. Job opportunities, marriage laws, female emigration, and education were only some of the issues debated at the time. Women themselvesand particularly middle-class womenwere increasingly concerned with what their roles were, and what they should be. Spokeswomen of every political persuasion felt called upon to write about the woman question. The stereotypes we formerly thought characterized the typical Victorian woman upon closer examination prove to be less rigidthough no less pervasive. The constant debate in support of or attacking these stereotypes, thoroughly documented by Barbara Kanners two bibliographies,* is some indication of the Victorians concern with the imperfect enforcement of social values and ideals in a rapidly changing world.
It is difficult now to evaluate how satisfied Victorian women were with their lot. A woman who was discontented would most likely seek an individual rather than a group solution to her predicament. Clearly the limited choice of employment and low pay for all classes of women meant that marriage was the most attractive option. But the Even the most contented could not help but be affected by the intense debate on the position of women that swirled around them. By the 1860s middle-class women in particular were taking on an increasingly large number of tasks that might require public agitation. A small band of activists hoped to widen the definition of womens proper sphere. They argued that just as women had an obligation to educate their children in morality, so too did they have the wider responsibility to educate society on moral issues. As far back as 1845 the conservative author of widely sold books on female deportment, Sarah Stickney Ellis, urged young women to form some opinion on the evil of slavery. Pioneers of the womens movement did not argue so much for the similarity of women to men as for the existence of womens special skills in regard to children, health care, education, and domestic morality. Such talents, when appropriately applied, not only would give the family a happier and better life, but also would help to eliminate the most grievous wrongs of society. Philanthropy had traditionally been womens particular concern, and its definition during the nineteenth century was broadened to include virtually every major social problem. It is from the narrow base of womans special duties and obligations that women in the nineteenth century came to expand their fields of action and their personal horizons.
