Psychological Androgyny, Romanticism and the Radical Challenge to Hegemonic Masculinity in England, 1790–1840

Abstract

This chapter analyses the seldom-studied notion of psycho-sexual equality which arose amongst radical, rational dissenters between 1790 and 1840, opposing increasingly rigid notions of masculine hegemony. Fears and insecurities occasioned by revolution, war and industrial expansion were leading to ever more conservative and polarised notions of sexual character. Influenced by a resurgent German-led Platonism, radicals instead argued that Man was in mind and soul androgynous. Any mental differences between the sexes were merely arbitrary products of social engineering. With this in mind, this chapter explores a crucial and largely neglected area of radical reform and intervention: education. It argues that educational reform served as the platform upon which a more pragmatic and, to some, more insidious, English radicalism emerged in the early nineteenth century.