Women and the Women’s Movement before 1914

Abstract

Perhaps the most conspicuous effect of the research and writing about nineteenth-century women in recent years has been the undermining of traditional assumptions about the separate spheres inhabited by the two sexes in British society. The received wisdom of middle-class Victorians had woman as dependent, passive, the ‘Angel in the House’, separated from public life and confined to home, marriage and morality. It has become increasingly clear that this is based upon prescriptive literature which is often highly misleading as a guide to women’s lives. Even the official census showed that 55 per cent of single women and 14 per cent of married women were in paid employment in the Edwardian period. For the majority of women work, both inside and outside the home, was a necessary part of their lives, though not a continuous one. It is also clear that marriage was a significantly less common feature of Victorian women’s lives than it was to be during the twentieth century. At any point in time three in every ten adult women were single and one was a widow. The average age of marriage was rather late, and by the turn of the century avoidance of marriage appeared to be growing, albeit slightly. As a result of early male mortality married life often turned out to be a brief affair, and consequently the one-parent family led by a woman seems to have been common.