Gender Relations within the Chartist Movement

Abstract

Women’s involvement in Chartism was characterised by an ambivalence that has been traced from female Chartists’ own pose of radical wife- and motherhood (demonstrated in Chapter 4) through the movement’s agitation of women, which reinforced the female self-portrayal (also shown in Chapter 4), up to the various forms female commitment to Chartism assumed (outlined in the preceding chapter). This ambivalence necessarily followed from a concept of female political activism in which the primacy of women’s s responsibility for the welfare of their families was central. While both actuating and legitimising political commitment in times of crisis, the chiefly familial concern at the samen time circumscribed the scope of women’s activities as well as defining their position within the Chartist movement. The entry of women on to the political stage primarily as wives and mothers had repercussions on the relationship between male and female Chartists that will be explored in this chapter.