How Did Women Participate In The Private Sphere In Victorian England

The ‘separate spheres’ ideology – that men were naturally suited to a ‘public sphere’ while women belonged in the ‘private sphere’ of the home – is the dominant model of gender relations in the nineteenth century, especially for examining the middle classes, but the reality was not as rigid as it appears. It would be inaccurate to argue that there were not legal and societal restraints upon women’s participation in the public sphere in Victorian Britain, however, neither would it be accurate to argue that all women in Victorian Britain spent their lives sequestered in the private sphere. Women’s lives were not entirely confined to the home, and women did participate in the ‘public sphere’, which here will refer to engagement with the market
and national politics. Beyond this, the very nature of the home as the ‘private sphere’ can be questioned, as can women’s supposed dominance in this sphere. It is clear that the boundary between the private and public sphere was permeable rather than binding, and further, that the hold this ideology had over individuals varied between economic classes. Though separate spheres ideology was not all-encompassing in the everyday lives of Victorian men and women, it is important to note the ways that, in social convention and law, separate spheres was, for some, a reality. The public sphere was regarded as the realm of men, suited to their innate masculine characteristics, while it was believed that for a woman to participate in public life would be to corrupt her innate morality. Women were encouraged into the home by society, which emphasised her position as “wife and mother, and the angel of the home”, and to neglect these responsibilities was to bring shame and censure not only to herself, but to her family. ‘Separate spheres’ was rigorously promoted through mediums including religion – as the quote above from Reverend John Milton Williams illustrates - and literature, and to a large extent was accepted. The language of separate spheres was adopted even by those seeking to challenge it, such as the invocation of the authority of motherhood by feminists in the campaigns against the Contagious Diseases Act. The social stigma was sometimes reinforced by legal restrictions on women’s participation in the public sphere. While some women were able to vote in local and municipal elections, the 1832 Reform Act legally excluded women from parliamentary politics in England, and this exclusion lasted throughout the Victorian period, prohibiting women from performing duties of citizenship. In addition to being barred from aspects of political life, women also faced restrictions in economic life. Under the laws of couverture, through which a woman existed in law only under her husband once married, women went through what Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall referred to as “a kind of civil death”, losing all agency over her life, including the right to own property and earn her own money. Davidoff and Hall suggested that this lack of agency diminished women’s business prospects even as single women, due to the risks they posed as business partners – for, if they married, their property would no longer be their own – and the fact that their inability to earn money made them poor credit risks. These obstacles were not insurmountable to women’s participation in public life, but this shows that men and women were, to a certain extent, pushed into separate spheres of existence, and women could not necessarily participate in the same ways that men could. It is widely accepted that with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the separation of work from home, women were pushed out of work and into the private sphere. While it is true that most women during the Victorian era were not in paid employment outside of the home, this did not mean they were not working. For working-class women, the Industrial Revolution brought little change in their working habits. Although the middle class attempted to push their domestic ideology onto the working class, they did not realistically expect women to stop working. In a study on working-class women and waged employment, Andrew August argued that waged work was an accepted and regular part of life for poor women in London, and challenged the arguments of historians such as Patricia Branca and Eric Hobsbawm that women only worked in times of severe economic distress. August found that poor women worked most when their domestic burdens were lightest, which was also when they faced the least economic distress. This is a study focused on London, and so patterns of poor women’s work may have varied regionally, but it is clear that there were poor women were working in the Victorian period. It is hard to argue, then, that working-class men and women were living in separate spheres. Waged work was not only confined to working-class women either. There is considerable evidence that single and widowed middle-class women in particular often engaged in some form of paid employment. Employment could often be the only way for unmarried women to support themselves, and additionally offered a measure of independence from their families. Eleanor Gordon and Gwyneth Nair found that teaching and dressmaking were the principle occupations among single middle-class women in Edinburgh, while Davidoff and Hall found that 79% of teachers in Birmingham in 1851 were women. Women also successfully ran businesses. A poster for Miss Cranston’s Lunchrooms demonstrates the possible success women could have as business-owners. After successfully establishing a “tearoom empire”, Catherine Cranston was able to expand her self-run business, even after her marriage, throughout the late Victorian period in Glasgow, becoming highly successful for providing a respectable public space for women. That Catherine continued to operate under “Miss” perhaps demonstrates the Victorian disdain for middle-class married women in employment, but nevertheless, she continued to work and find success. Though women were always a minority in the workforce during the Victorian period, the separate spheres ideology did not prevent all women from participating in the public sphere through paid work. It has also been highlighted that the nature of the work women frequently did was hidden from the census records used by academics studying female work patterns. Women’s work was often temporary, seasonal or part-time, and this kind of work was not recognised on censuses. August even suggested that some working-class husbands may have concealed their wives’ work to avoid social stigma. Many have also pointed out how married women in the middle classes often assisted their husbands’ work as secretaries, assistants, or even co-authoring works such as in the case of John Stuart Mill and his wife, Harriet Taylor Mill. Women did not always receive credit for this work, but Peterson argued that these contributions were meaningful. The proportion of women actively contributing to the labour market is therefore difficult to estimate, but regardless it is clear that women worked in the Victorian period. Though this work was often related to the perceived norms of women’s responsibilities, such as needlework, and women were barred from certain professions such as the law or the church, many women found ways to enter into the public sphere of work. Neither was the realm of politics completely off-limits to Victorian women.
Though legally prohibited from voting or standing in national elections, campaigning was another way for women to involve themselves. Campaigns surrounding the abolition of slavery, the corn laws, and of course female issues such as women’s suffrage and the Contagious Diseases Act all featured women in active and leading roles, and the national scope of such campaigns cannot be doubted. These campaigns sometimes led to changes in law, such as the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act in 1886 after a sustained campaign led by Josephine Butler. Though men often played an important part in these campaigns as leaders, organisers and supporters, and of course male lawmakers were instrumental, women nonetheless were able to take leading roles alongside men in these issues. Women were able to manipulate the ideology of ‘separate spheres’ to relate public sphere issues such as women’s health to their duties as wives and mothers. For example, in 1889 Millicent Garrett Fawcett argued for votes for women on the basis that “we want to see the home and the domestic side of things to count for more in politics”. By using women’s domestic responsibilities as the basis for their political arguments, women could justify a public position for themselves. However, women were not only confined to those issues relating to domesticity. For aristocratic women, as K.D. Reynolds has illustrated, interest and indirect participation in politics was fundamental to their roles. Reynolds argued they could exert influence over elections through offering patronage and campaigning alongside their male relatives. This view is endorsed by Peterson, who attested that aristocratic women “certainly” involved themselves in national politics, and further suggested that upper-middle-class women could perform a similar role. It is clear that, though excluded from voting, women were not excluded entirely from the political
sphere. Participation was easier for middle and upper-class women, but working-class women also participated in political campaigns including the social purity campaign.