Women’s StudiesIn:. Forum, Vol. 5, No. b, pp. 537-550, 1982. 0277-5395/82/060537-1413.

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Printed in Great Britam. F: 1982 Pergamon PressLtd.

FEMINISM, SUFFRAGE AND THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY

BARBARA CAIKE

Sydney University, NSW 2006, Australia

Biographical note
Barbara Caine is a lecturer in History at the University of Sydney. She has been working on the history of feminism
for about the last 6 years, concentrating on different kinds of feminism+specially in the nineteenth century. She is
currently working on Frances Power Cobbe as a study in conservative feminism and on a family study of the Potter
sisters as a way of exploring how the lives of middle-class women changed in the late nineteenth century.

Synopsis-The nineteenth-century English women’s movement has usually been studied in terms ofits
attempts to increase the access of women to the public and political spheres. This approach to the
movement ignores the immense concern amongst its members with the private and domestic lives of
women. Within the movement there were widely differing views as to how reform in the private sphere
and in the public sphere should be integrated.
This concern is most clearly evident in the many discussions of marriage which accompanied not
only the campaign to reform the legal status of married women, but all the educational, suffrage and
employment campaigns as well. These differences came to the fore in the early 1870s in the controversy
aroused by the Contagious Diseases Acts. The split within the suffrage movement over this issue
reflected differing views as to whether political rights or sexual and moral questions ought to be the
primary concern of the movement.

Although there are a number of studies of the various campaigns fought by the nineteenth-
century English women’s movement, the feminism of the movement has never been seriously
analysed or discussed. Too often it is described in such terms as ‘the deliberate attempt to
achieve equality between the sexes in the political, economic and domestic spheres’ (Banks
and Banks, 1965). This definition, which is based on the programme of the movement, fails to
explore the problematical relationship between its ideology and its actual campaigns. It fails
to recognize the ways in which the forging of a pragmatic reformist movement destroyed
some aspects of the very feminism on which it was based. Lack of recognition of this problem
has resulted in a partial and inaccurate picture of the nineteenth-century women’s movement,
and one which ignores both its relationship to its own time and its implications for later
feminists.
The failure to establish the nature of mid nineteenth-century English feminism has led to
confusion concerning the objectives and the concerns of the women’s movement. Most recent
studies of the movement have concentrated entirely on the ways in which it sought to extend
the access of women to the public sphere without recognizing the extent to which this access
was expected to improve the situation in the domestic sphere (Holcombe, 1973; Hollis, 1979;
Vicinus, 1978).

* I would like to acknowledge the help I received from Judith Allen in writing this. Her enthusiasm, combined with
stringent criticism was invaluable.

537
538 BARBARA CAINE

The precise relationship between reforms in the public sphere and improvements in the
private one was not easily established by the women’s movement. Indeed the major conflict
within the movement in its early years, that concerning the question of support for the
Contagious Diseases Agitation, was based on disagreements over the relative importance of
suffrage and political issues as compared with sexual and moral ones. For many members of
the women’s movement, suffrage was important not just because it gave women political
rights and power, but also because it was seen as bringing an end to the domestic
subordination and the narrow outlook of women. Thus initially at least, suffrage was closely
integrated into the whole programme of the movement and into its analysis of the domestic
situation of women. But when the Contagious Diseases Agitation surfaced, it threatened to
upset the balance of public and private needs and turned those who supported suffrage
towards a more pragmatic stance.
Lack of recognition of the close relationship between the suffrage struggle and other
aspects of the movement is evident in the very chronology usually given to the suffrage
movement. All the studies of women’s suffrage which have appeared in the last 20 years
take either 1866 or 1867 as their starting point, thus dating the movement either from the
election of John Stuart Mill to Parliament, the formation of a committee to organize a
petition for Mill to present in Parliament, or from Mill’s first speech in Parliament on
women’s suffrage (Morgan, 1975; Rover, 1967). But although mention is sometimes made of
the fact that suffrage was part of a wider movement, little attention has been paid to Ray
Strachey’s insistence that the actual history of women’s suffrage in its organized form ‘really
dates from 1856, a time ten years before the formation of the first Women’s Suffrage
Committee’ (Strachey, 1927; p. 5).
In that year, a number of women, some of whom were later to be prominent in the suffrage
campaign, met to organize a petition in favour of the Married Women’s Property Bill which
was presented to the House of Commons. Thus the women who organized the committees
and the petition had for the most part already been working for 10 or more years in a number
of other causes, and many of them continued to do so. For them personally, the separation of
the suffrage as a campaign was a tactical question, but it remained part of a wider and more
comprehensive movement.
Ray Strachey’s book, The Cause, remains the only comprehensive study of the movement
(Strachey, 1978). Although it contains a wealth of information, this is essentially a record of
the movement written by a participant for whom the ideas behind the movement were more
or less self-evident. Strachey provides a brief outline of feminist writing in the early nineteenth
century and discusses the debt of the movement to the ideas of J. S. Mill and to the activities of
prominent female philanthropists. But apart from that, she has little to say about the ideology
of the movement and concentrates rather on questions of strategy and on the organization of
particular campaigns.
In this article I propose to look at the ideology, the strategy and the style of the women’s
movement in order to explore the relationship between them, and the discrepancies which
sometimes existed between the ultimate aims of the movement and the measures it adopted. I
will concentrate on the ideas of the movement on marriage, as an issue which was not only of
great concern to the movement, but shows the extent to which it incorporated early Victorian
domestic ideology in its own outlook. I will look also at the concern of the movement with its
public image, and the ways in which this determined its style.
The women’s movement was a large, diverse and informal one with a multiplicity of aims. It
resembled the current women’s movement in its lack of formal membership or central
 Feminism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 539

organization. In the late 185Os, it centred on a small group of women who worked from an
office in London, and who published the Englishwoman’s Journal. The office housed an
employment bureau, a library and a meeting place. The women centred there were concerned
about education for women, about the possibilities of emigration for educated women, about
expanding the range of employments open to women and about the married women’s
property acts. In the 186Os, the movement became diversified as new publications began, the
Victoria Magazine and the Englishwoman’s Review’, and as new issues became important.
The question of women entering the medical profession, the suffrage question and the
Contagious Diseases Agitation all began in the 1860s and involved not only a broadening of
the concerns of the movement, but the establishment of organizations and societies in a
number of provincial centres. These societies were not formally linked, although they often
had overlapping memberships.
The women’s movement came into existence in the 185Os, the so-called period of ‘mid-
Victorian calm’ (Best, 1973). The connection between the women’s movement and the Anti-
Corn Law League has long been recognized (Rover, 1967; p. 61). The League had made use of
women to preside over its banquets and in its general propaganda activities. It is clearly
significant that the women’s movement began after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and
thus at a time when the efforts of middle-class women were no longer required by their
menfolk to support direct class interests and could be turned to questions of their own. The
relative stability of this decade, the decline of Chartism and the lessening of the overt social
tensions evident in the 1830s and 40s was accompanied by an increasing interest in the reform
of social and legal institutions.2 The emphasis of reforming activities and discussions in the
early 1850s: particularly the questions of the Courts of Chancery, the reform of Oxford
University, the discussions of reform in the Civil Service and in the Army, were all important
for the women’s movement, not so much because of their specific objects, but because of their
general implications. These reforms all incorporated the notion of the importance of
individual choice and merit in determining position. The expansion and the working out of
liberal ideas regarding free-trade and minimal government intervention made it more and
more clear that:

‘the disabilities of women are the only case. . in which laws and institutions take persons
at their birth, and ordain that they shall never in all their lives be allowed to compete for
certain things’ (Mill, 1970; p. 145).

At the same time, demographic developments which were revealed in the 1850s pointed to
the pressing need for women to be able to have access to many areas of education and
employment previously closed to them in order to earn their own livings. The prevailing view
that women were suited for domestic life and that their place was in the home did not accord
with the existence of increasing numbers of single women.
In the 1830s and 40s widespread discussion about the fate ofgovernessess made it clear that
many middle-class women lacked husbands, homes and families and had to fend for
themselves. By the 185Os, the disproportion between men and women in the population was
growing, largely as a result of the emigration of many single men. The 1861 census had shown

’ The Englishwoman’s Journal, 1858-1864 and the English Woman’s Review, 1866-1909 are available for reference
at the Fawcett Library, London and the British Library, London. The Victoria Magazine, 1863S1880 is held at
Bodleian Library, Oxford.
* For a discussion of the nature of mid-Victorian reform see Burn, W. L. (1964; pp. 132-231).
540 BARBARA CAINE

a considerable increase both in the numbers of ‘surplus’ women, and in the absolute numbers
of women between the ages of 15 and 40 who were unmarried (Banks and Banks, 1965; p. 27).
Thus the need for education, for employment and for some re-evaluation of ideas about the
proper position of women in society was clearly demonstrated-and, at the same time, the
notion of the ‘career open to talent’ provided the obvious way in which to admit women to
new areas.
The women’s movement derived its actual formulation of the problems which faced
women, and its instrumental and pragmatic approach from mid nineteenth-century
liberalism and the proceedings of earlier reform movements. To a very large extent, its early
demands involved not any positive change or assistance for women, but rather the removal of
restrictions which kept them in a state of dependence. The restrictions imposed on women:
the lack of property rights of married women, and the notion of guardianship involved in the
protection of the property of women in equity; the restrictions on the hours of women’s
industrial work, and on their work in mines; the protection of them within the home were all
seen by the women’s movement as compounding the view of women as childlike while it kept
them in the status of children. The essential individualism of mid-century liberalism, with its
notion of men as rational and self-interested beings and its belief in the importance of men
following their own perceived self-interests provided the foundation for the demands of the
movement, and made it often the case that what was being demanded was not rights in any
abstract way, but rather full adult status.3 Thus what was being asserted was not the equality
of men and women in any substantive way but rather the entitlement of women to equality
before the law and the freedom of women to develop themselves-often along lines which
were seen to be quite distinct from those of men. It is precisely this combination ofbelief in the
particular nature of women with the liberal individualism of the mid nineteenth century that
provides the distinctive character of the feminism of the English women’s movement.
The separation of home from workplace, and the withdrawal of middle-class women from
productive labour which had accompanied the industrial revolution of the late eighteenth
century had led to the idea of separate spheres for men and women. Women’s sphere became
that of home and family, but within a framework that involved a new emphasis in which
home and family came to be seen as the centre of religious and moral values which were
threatened by the harsh and competitive nature of the outside world (Hall, 1979). This
involved an insistence of the notion of women as ‘relative creatures’whose object in life was to
care for their men folk and their children. But while women were seen as being subordinate to
men, they were also charged with the obligation of keeping moral and religious values alive,
and of providing a beneficial moral influence for their families. Thus the domestic ideology
contained an important contradiction in its simultaneous insistence that women were
subordinate to men, but were also their moral guides.
It says much for the pervasiveness of the early Victorian domestic ideology that initially
those involved in the women’s movement were not even aware of the extent to which the lives
of working-class women totally contradicted this ideology. Bessie Raynor Parkes, the woman
who first took up the question of the need to expand the range of occupations for middle-class
women, and one of the founders of the Women’s Employment Bureau, was shocked to

3 ‘Ought Englishwomen of full age, at the present state of affairs, to be considered as having legally attained
majority? or ought they permanently to be considered, for all civil and political purposes as minors. This, we venture
to think, is the real point at issue between the friends and opponents of”women’s rights”‘--Cobbe, Frances Power
(1868).
 Feminism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 541

discover how many women actually worked in industria! districts. In a report to the National
Association for the Promotion of Social Science in 1861, she commented on the situation of
working-class women, in a way which nicely counterpointed current beliefs concerning the
relationship between industrialization and the situation of middle-class women. The
expansion of industry in England and France had, she argued, been accomplished at a very
considerable cost:

‘The price which has been silently levied in every manufacturing town in both Kingdoms,
the great revolution which has been so little noticed amidst the noises of politics, and the
clash of war-(is) the withdrawal of women from the life of the household, and the suction
of them by hundred of thousands within the vortex of industrial life’ (Parkes, 1861; p. 632).

Her own concern about the problems of educated women, particularly of governesses, had
brought her face to face with the situation of all working women, and had made her see that
their plight:

‘though specially the result of overflowing numbers, is but part of a general tendency on the
part of modern civilization to cast on women the responsibility of being their own
breadwinners, and to say to them with a thousand tongues, “If thou wilt not work, neither
shalt thou eat”’ (Parkes, 1861).

The slogan which Carlyle saw as the basis of the New Poor Law was one which emphatically
applied to women as well as men.
As the comments of Bessie Parkes make clear, the women’s movement began its campaign
on behalf of middle-class women. Its leadership and its membership were overwhelmingly
upper middle class, most of its prominent members coming from professional, business or
landed families and often from families which included Members of Parliament. But the
movement did not disregard the plight of working-class women. In some cases work within
the movement brought middle-class women directly into contact with the problems of
working-class women. This was clearly so for Bessie Parkes and equally so for those women
who were engaged in the struggle for married women’s property acts, or for reform of the
divorce laws. In other cases, it was philanthropy, with the insights it gave into the problems of
poor women, which brought women into the movement. This was so to a large extent for
Josephine Butler and also for Frances Cobbe. But in its earlier concerns, the movement was
preoccupied with that other distinction which was so crucial for Victorian women, and which
was enshrined in legislation: that between married and single women.
The women’s movement has been seen as one which concentrated its attentions primarily
on single women, and largely ignored the question of marriage or of family life (Banks and
Banks, 1965). This view is based on the lack of a coherent analysis of the role of the family in
women’s oppression within the writings of the movement and on the ways in which concern
about work for women was discussed in relation to single women. But it is necessary to
remember that the campaign for reform of the legal situation of married women was the first
one around which the movement organized, and that it remained a sustained campaign,
occupying the attention of almost all the prominent members of the movement until the
passage of the Married Women’s Property Act in 1882. Moreover all the demands for
education, an extended range of occupations, legal rights and the suffrage were discussed in
relation to the situation of married women and the position of women in the home.
The ideas of the leading figures in the movement on marriage show more clearly than does
anything else not only the essentially moderate nature of the movement, but the extent to
542 BARBARACAINE

which it shared a number of views common to the middle class in Victorian England (Caine,
1977). Their ideas also show the extent to which and the ways in which the movement sought
to improve the situation for all women within the private sphere through legal reform.
The women’s movement took up the question of occupations for women as an issue of
immediate practical concern. At the same time, they pointed to the importance of providing
women with a range of occupations, and with the means for earning an income and living a
full and satisfying life as a means of raising the standard of marriage by preventing women
from having to marry as their only possible career. The women’s movement wanted
simultaneously to raise the quality of married life and to remove the stigmas attached to
unmarried women by showing that such women contributed in important ways to society
and that a single state was not necessarily an unhappy one. In this attempt, they insisted on
the recognition that not all men or women were suited to married life. Moreover the existing
demographic imbalance between men and women precluded many women from marrying.
While asserting the merits of a single life for women, members of the women’s movement
pointed to the prevailing inconsistencies which existed in regard to marriage. One of the
greatest of these was precisely the fact that while marriage brought a woman social status, it
brought her also complete subjection. Yet a single woman, although she might be looked
down on retained a considerable number of rights over her property. Millicent Garrett
Fawcett pointed out that while marriage and the family were supposedly hallowed
institutions, the mere mention of motherhood or childbirth occasioned gales of raucous
laughter in parliament (Fawcett, 1878). Frances Cobbe pointed to the extraordinary and
blatant untruth of the marriage ceremony in which the groom promised to endow his bride
with all his worldly goods-when in fact he was in the act of appropriating hers-~-and she had
very little claim on his. She pointed to the extraordinary irony of the fact that women who
fulfilled the role society required of them by marrying were subsequently treated in the same
way as were lunatics and criminals-by the forfeiture of their legal right and their property
(Cobbe, 1868). She and many others commented on the discrepancy between the ideal, in
which the wife reared the children, educating them and providing-especially for her sons--a
source of piety and innocent love---and the reality in which children might often see their
mother belittled, ignored and humiliated by their father. Moreover the children she bore were
not hers-and many feminists were horrified by the lack of recognition of the ties between
mother and child, and by the idea that a man could, if he chose, remove his children from his
wife and hand them over to his mistress.
In accordance with English law, a married women was a jhmme couuert. This meant that in
addition to losing her property, she was unable to enter into any form ofcontract, to sue or be
sued in a court of law, or, as far as the law was concerned to commit any crime other than
murder through her own volition. In the view of the women’s movement, this placed women
in the position of slaves. J. S. Mill insisted that:

‘The wife is the actual bond-servant of the husband no less so as far as legal obligation goes,
than slaves cornmolly so-called. She vows a life-long obedience to him at the altar, and is
held to it all her life by law’ (Mill, 1970; p. 158).

For middle- and upper-class women, the possibility of trusts and settlements made by their
fathers could secure them some sort of allowance and security and thus mitigate some of the
worse features of the property laws. No such amelioration was available to working-class
women. These women did not come from families which could arrange settlements for them
and they were thus financially dependent of their husbands, even if they worked themselves.
 Feminism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 543

Their earnings belonged to their husbands, who could deprive them of their wages at any
time. Even if a man had left his wife, and she worked to support herself and her children, he
could at any time take her earnings from her. It was primarily for working-class women that
reform in the property laws was urged and in slow, piecemeal fashion, such reform was
obtained.
But the discussion of the power of men over their wives was not limited to financial terms.
The still vexed question of wife-beating was another major area of concern. Frances Cobbe
was scathing about the way in which the whole subject of wife-beating was generally treated.
Even in those circles where courtesy towards women was expected, assaults on wives seemed :

‘to be surrounded by a certain hale ofjocosity which inclines people to smile whenever they
hear a case of it (terminating anywhere short of actual murder) and causes the mention of
the subject to conduce rather than otherwise to the hilarity of a dinner party’ (Cobbe, 1878;
pp. 56657).

The popularity of the Punch and Judy show seemed to her indicative of the general
acceptance of wife-beating as a form of sport. The reports of divorce cases in the late 1850s
and after made it clear that this form of activity was not confined to the working class,
although it was there that it was most extensive and most severe. Frances Cobbe was
particularly concerned about the aggravated assaults on wives which involved trampling,
kicking, mauling and burning them. At least four such cases were reported every day, and she
was convinced that many more cases were never reported. The incidence of these cases was
highest in the densely populated areas surrounding manufacturing, mining or mercantile
operations, and propensity to drink and the lack of a steady income were often associated
factors. This kind of ill-treatment of women could, and frequently did, end in their deaths.
Frances Cobbe, like Mill, was appalled at the sympathy and leniency with which the
husbands were treated in such cases. A three-month sentence might be given to a man in such
a case, even if he had a previous conviction for aggravated assault. By contrast a woman who
killed her husband, even in self-defence, might be treated with the utmost severity (Cobbe,
1878; Mill, 1867). Imprisoning a man for assaulting his wife was clearly no solution as Cobbe
and Mill pointed out, because this only meant that at his release the man had an additional
resentment of his wife over whom he still had absolute power. Legal separation for the women
who were subjected to such treatment seemed the only possible way to deal with it, and in
1884 when the Matrimonial Causes Act was amended, aggravated assault was made the
ground for gaining such a separation-although in subsequent years many magistrates
seemed somewhat reluctant to grant these.
Unlike most of their contemporaries, members of the women’s movement questioned the
very morality of marriage. The marriage service itself was called into question. The vow of
obedience for women which it contained was the central problem, Frances Cobbe insisted
that while such a vow was very convenient to men, it was absolutely wrong. Women, as
rational beings could not give their conscience or their moral responsibility to their husbands.
No vow and no religious sacrament could justify it. Moreover the dependent position of
women resulted in their developing very undesirable traits. One of the worst evils of women’s
position was that it meant that every woman was:

‘stunted and belittled in soul, made a coward, made a liar, made mean and slavish,
accustomed to fawn and prevaricate and “manage” by base arts a husband or father’
(Cobbe, 1905; p. 17).
 The women’s movement expressed both an abhorrence for the legal situation of married
women, and a belief that in many cases the actual situation of married women was far better
than the bond-slavery entailed by their lack oflegal rights or identity. They accepted not only
that marriage was and would continue to be the lot of most women, but that:

‘for the mass of mankind, marriage is the right condition, the happiest, and the most
conductive to virtue’ (Cobbe, 1862; p. 595).

They accepted also that marriage, especially if it resulted in children, precluded a woman’s
adopting any other occupation. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first women doctor to
practise in England, was almost alone in her belief that:

‘the woman question will never be solved in any complete way so long as marriage is
thought to be incompatible with freedom and with an independent career’ (Manton, 1965;
p. 213).

For the most part, members of the movement agreed with Mill’s view that:

‘Like a man when he chooses a profession, so, when a woman marries, it may in general be
understood that she makes a choice of the management ofa household, and the bringing up
of a family, as the first call upon her exertions’ (Mill, 1970; p. 179).

This was seen not only as being conducive to the harmony of family life, but as being a
natural inclination in women.

‘The great and paramount duties of a mother and wife once adopted, every other interest
sinks, by the beneficent laws of our nature into a subordinate place in normally constituted
minds’ (Cobbe, 1862; p. 597).

Exceptions were to be allowed for specific abilities, and exceptional skills in women might
require an alternative arrangement, but in general married women would continue to occupy
themselves primarily with domestic cares. Men were seen as completely lacking in
homemaking or nurturing skills. The problem, as seen by the movement, was that the lack of
education, and of any general interests along with the absolute subordination of women
prevented their properly carrying out their duties as wives and mothers. Thus in some ways,
the women’s movement was attempting to enable women more adequately to carry out the
role prescribed for them within the Victorian middle-class domestic ideal, by opening to them
parts of the public sphere which this very ideology denied.
The fundamental point, in regard to the question of marriage was that the women’s
movement accepted as natural a sexual division of labour and of familial responsibility, and
moreover that they saw in existence marriages and familial relationships which they did not
believe could be bettered. That of John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor was often cited. Mill’s
marriage was not the only happy one. A number of women in the movement were themselves
partners in marriages in which shared interests and mutual respect were the basis of close
companionship. Josephine Butler, Millicent Garrett Fawcett, Clementia Taylor. Elizabeth
Garrett Anderson, Una Bright were just a few of the women whose views on women were
shared by their husbands and whose work for the women’s movement was shared and
endorsed by their husbands. In view of this, it is not hard to see why the women’s movement
did not regard marriage in itself as something which oppresses women, but rather turned their
attention to specific abuses and legal injustices which pertained to it.
 Feminism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 545

It is not surprising that the most outspoken critic of marriage was a single woman, Frances
Cobbe. She insisted that she had never either sought or been sought in marriage. Instead, she
had found domestic harmony with a woman friend, Mary Lloyd with whom she lived for 34
years and to whom she was deeply attached. A letter she wrote to Millicent Garrett Fawcett
after Miss Lloyd’s death reveals the emotional nature of the relationship:

‘The end of such a friendship. . is, of course almost a mortal blow, and I have yet to learn
how I am to live without the one who has shared all my thoughts and feelings so long. (sic)
But I am very thankful that the pain of loneliness is mine-not hers as it would have been
had I gone first and she been left alone. She died calmly and bravely resting on my arm and
telling me that we should not long be separated.‘4

There is no way of knowing what, if any, sexual relationship existed between the two women.
But it is evident that this relationship provided a more than adequate alternative to marriage,
and that it underlay the frequent insistence by Frances Cobbe that a single state for women
was not necessarily a lonely or joyless one.
But Frances Cobbe also demonstrates the extent to which the women’s movement
attracted women whose personal lot was a happy one. Members of the movement either came
from families which were supportive, or found in marriage or close female friendships
encouragement and support. There was no-one in the movement whose attempts to establish
a career, or to engage in philanthropic or political activity were accompanied by the agonies
suffered by Florence Nightingale or George Eliot. It is hard to say exactly why this was the
case. But it clearly contributed to the moderation of the movement, to its lack of bitterness
and to the assumptions of its members that men were amenable to persuasion in regard to the
needs of women. This facet of the movement was recognized at the time by some of its
prominent members, who insisted that they were not campaigning for their own immediate
needs, but only on behalf of their less fortunate sisters.
The emphasis on lack of immediate suffering amongst those most active in the women’s
movement was seen as necessary for the success of the movement, and as contributing to its
being taken seriously. Lydie Becker explained this need very forcefully, in her attempts to
recruit women who were known to be comfortably situated into the movement:

‘However miserable a woman may be, if she makes that the ground of agitating for an
amelioration ofthe condition of the sex-though she is undoubtedly right in doing so, yet it
may be said that self-seeking is at the bottom of her efforts. But when women who have
nothing to ask for, as far as they personally are concerned, exert themselves in the cause of
their suffering sisters, the voice of reproach is silenced’ (Blackburn, 1902; p. 41).

As their stress on the centrality of family life for married women makes clear, the English
women’s movement did in some ways accept the notion of ‘separate spheres’ as it was
incorporated into the early Victorian domestic ideology. They criticized the very notion of
women having a ‘sphere’, the assumption that women were created for some definable end,
rather than being human beings in their own right. On the other hand, most members of the
movement accepted the view that women were fundamentally different from men in many
ways. They saw women as being more chaste, compassionate and kind than men, as having
home-making skills which men lacked, and as nurturing and caring beings. Thus while

4 Letter dated November 1 I. 1896, Fawcett Library Autograph Collection. Vol. 8, Part C
546 BARBARACAINE

demanding freedom from the existing restrictions imposed on women, they assumed that
women would develop interests and select occupations which would allow these qualities a
wider use. It is in part this which explains the place of medicine as the profession chosen for a
battleground, rather than law or the Church. Indeed the difference between men and women
became one of the major grounds on which women demanded access to the political sphere:

‘We do not advocate the representation of women because there is no difference between
men and women; but rather because of the difference between them. We want women’s
special experience as women, their special knowledge of the home and home wants, ofchild
life and the conditions conducive to the formation of character to be brought to bear on
legislation. By giving women greater freedom we believe that the truly womanly qualities in
them will grow in strength and power’ (Fawcett, 1891; p. 676).

What differentiated the women’s movement from earlier exponents of the Victorian domestic
ideal was their sense of the innateness of womanly qualities. Conservative proponents of this
ideal like Sarah Ellis stressed the fact that women’s particular moral and emotional qualities
were inextricably linked with their seclusion in the home and away from the corrupting
features of public life. Thus in place of this essentially environmentalist position, the women’s
movement adopted a socio-biological one in which these qualities were seen to be evident in
all women. Thus they argued that while they were important within the home, womanly
qualities were not derived from domesticity and would continue to be exercised by women in
whatever capacity they chose.
The ideas of the women’s movement on marriage and on the particular nature of women
have been discussed at length in order to show both the extent and the limitations of the
movement in its analysis of the position of women. These ideas show also the ways in which
the notion of legal change, as a means of bringing about social reform, was incorporated into
the movement and made it concentrate its attention here, rather than in changing
consciousness or mobilizing women on a mass scale. Moreover the very way in which the
movement endorsed the idea of women as having a different nature and a particular role set
limits to the kind of agitation in which the movement would become engaged. All of these
combined to produce the structure of the movement: its division into separate campaigns.
This division in turn emphasizes the extent to which the movement saw the oppression of
women as being composed of a series of particular forms of legal injustice, and economic and
social restriction. Thus the emancipation of women was seen in terms of a step-by-step
process which would remove all of these particular injustices or iniquities.
This emphasis on the need to free women from particular restrictions contributed to the
extreme instrumentalism which is evident in the whole approach of the women’s movement.
By isolating the major areas in which it saw damaging restrictions as existing, the movement
concentrated its attention entirely on a finite number of particular issues. This approach
enabled the movement to see itself simultaneously as a moderate and a revolutionary one
since by bringing about several discrete reforms, it believed that it would revolutionize not
only the position of women but the whole tenor of society. In this, as has been said, the
women’s movement shared the views of many other Victorian reformers regarding the
efficacy oflegislative change. Hence what became the major issue was strategy- the means by
which these particular changes were to be gained. It is this which explains the immense
concern within the movement about its public image, and which determined its style.
But the division of the movement into separate campaigns provided a means whereby
women could work with others with whose general and political outlook they sympathized,
 Femmism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 547

while avoiding those with whom they clashed. It also allowed for the clear expression of the
very different ideas which existed within the movement as to what the movement itself was.
While some leading figures, like Millicent Garrett Fawcett saw the movement as a pragmatic
one which had to establish its political sense and to work through accepted political channels,
to others it was something quite different. For Josephine Butler it was primarily a moral
reform movement, directed against social and spiritual evils and having as its ultimate aim the
regeneration of society through expanding the moral sway of women and bringing about the
transformation of men. For a Conservative like Frances Cobbe, it was essentially a
philanthropic movement to help women less fortunate than herself.
Most members of the women’s movement accepted as axiomatic the need to convert their
opponents to their point of view. This was obviously essential if they were ever to obtain the
necessary Parliamentary majorities to support legislation to protect the property of married
women or to introduce the suffrage. It was equally necessary if they were to gain entry to
male-dominated educational or professional establishments. Thus what was stressed was the
need to work through persuasion rather than through direct confrontation.
In accordance with this view, Emily Davies in particular enjoined the importance of
moderating the kinds of comments which the movement made, either about the situation of
women or about the obstructionism and hostility of men. She engaged in a considerable
amount of stage-management to avoid arousing male hostility. In public meetings called to
discuss women’s education, she carefully placed her supporters from the women’s movement:
only pretty and docile looking women were allowed to sit at the front (Stephen, 1927;
p. 1088119; Manton, 1965; p. 71-73).
But it was not only Conservative women who stressed the importance of avoiding hostility,
or of catering to contemporary beliefs about the proper nature-and appearance-of
women. John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor, despite their generally more radical beliefs than
those of Emily Davis, shared her views as to the importance of public relations. In his capacity
as President of the London National Society for Women’s Suffrage, Mill insisted on the
importance of having attractive married ladies as speakers endorsing the suffrage. He
castigated Croom Robertson for his tendency to ‘underrate the value of “a pretty face” in a
lecturer on women’s rights’. The presence of such women was important:

‘not for the sake ofits effect on men. but for the influence it has on the younger women. It
shows them that the championship of women’s cause is not confined to women who have
no qualifications for success in the more beaten track’ (Mineka and Lindley, 1972).

For the same reason, both Mill and Helen Taylor insisted that the secretary of the London
Society, over whose name all correspondence was sent out, must be a married woman. If
necessary, the work could be done by a Miss, but the main public representative of the
movement must be a Mrs.’
Although there was general agreement within the movement concerning the importance of
persuasion, and of presenting the movement in a way that was acceptable, there was
considerable divergence over what precisely this entailed or indeed over the relative
importance of remaining within the pale of respectability. At what cost to the ultimate beliefs
of the movement must respectability be maintained? It was this question that lay at the base
of the split within the movement over the Contagious Diseases agitation,

5 Letter from Helen Taylor to Millicent Garrett Fawcett, October 31. 1867, Fawcett Library Autograph
Collection, Vol. 1, Part A.
54x BARBARA CAINF

Opposition to the Contagious Diseases Acts from women became mobilized in I869 with
the formation of the Ladies’ National Association against the CD. Acts led by Josephine
Butler.6 Butler was quite as concerned to keep the C.D. agitation separate from the suffrage
and educational campaigns as were many of her opponents. She accepted their views of the
harm the CD. agitation could do to other struggles, and moreover believed that the way in
which the suffrage campaign was being handled might harm not only her own campaign, but
the whole movement. She felt that the suffrage campaign lacked the moral and religious focus
which was essential for the emancipation of women.’
For Butler, the C.D. agitation became the central issue of the women’s movement. The
Acts, by placing women thought to be prostitutes under police control, and by depriving them
ofrights evident in other areas ofcriminal law, showed clearly the oppression of women which
accompanied the sexual double standard. They showed the essential nature of women’s
oppression. Hence it was crucial that women undertake to fight against them as an indication
of their recognition of the ways in which the treatment of prostitutes involved implications for
all women.’
Those members of the women’s movement who refused to support Butler did not differ
drastically from her in their understanding of the CD. Acts. Indeed it is necessary to recognize
the extent to which those who refused to support the agitation, or to see it as allied with the
suffrage, nonetheless opposed the C.D. Acts and saw them as unjust and oppressive. The split
that occurred within the women’s movement developed within the suffrage campaign, as
some suffrage societies endorsed the agitation and supported it directly, while others refused
to have anything to do with it. Most of the provincial societies espoused the former position
and affiliated themselves with the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage which was
formed in 1872. This committee was intended to be based in London, to lobby Parliament
and to co-ordinate the activities of the local societies. It was led by Lydia Becker and Jacob
Bright, both of whom had been and continued to be active in the Manchester Society for
Women’s Suffrage. The group that refused to accept their views, or to affiliate with the Central
Committee was the oldest suffrage society, the London National Society for Women’s
Suffrage. Its refusal was in part the result of its assumption of its own primacy. and its
rejection of any take-over bid by the provincial societies. But the crucial issue was that of the
Contagious Diseases Agitation, and the absolute refusal of the London National Society to
accept that this should be associated with the suffrage campaign.
The separation of the London Society from the other suffrage societies was demanded b)
John Stuart Mill who was President ofthat society.’ This is particularly interesting in view of
Mill’s own implacable hostility to the Acts. He considered the Acts to be both unjust and
ineffective. His opposition to the Acts was widely known. He was one of the major witnesses
called by the Royal Commission into the Contagious Diseases Acts which was set up in 187 1.
and his opposition to the Acts had considerable influence on that Commission (McHugh,
1980). Mill included his name amongst the published lists of men who supported the work of
the Ladies National Association in 1870 and both he and his step-daughter, Helen Taylor
gave money to that cause. But Mill was adamant about the need to keep the suffrage question

’ The political and social attitudes behmd the Contagmus Diseases Acts and the effect of their unplementatlon on
women has recently been discussed in Walkowitz. Judith (1980).
T For the formation of the L.N.A., and the whole repeal campaign, see McHugh, Paul (1980;pp. S5 00)
’ See letter to MISS Priestman, November 18. 1873, Fawcett Library, Josephine Butler collectlon.
9 For detailed discussion of Mill’s role in this Issue. see Caine. Barbara (197X; pp. 52- 67).
 Feminism, Suffrage and the Nineteenth-Century English Women’s Movement 549

quite distinct from the Contagious Diseases Agitation. In part, his reasons for this relate to his
ideas about the absolute and central importance of the suffrage.
Mill’s emphasis on the suffrage as the most important of the women’s causes followed from
his general beliefs concerning the vote and parliamentary representation. The vote was the
necessary means to enable people to safeguard their interest, but it was also something which
was accompanied by important moral and educational effects. Enfranchisement and
inclusion within the constitution encouraged active involvement with public affairs and
public questions rather than the passive acquiesence that followed from exclusion. Mill also
believed that the vote was the necessary first step and that after it had been achieved, the other
disabilities under which women suffered would be removed fairly rapidly. In his view, the
whole issue of the Contagious Diseases Acts would not have arisen had women possessed
political rights. The major iniquity of the acts was the way they had been framed by a male
legislature to apply only to women. But for him, they were not the essential indicator of the
nature of women’s oppression as they were for Josephine Butler”: rather they provided
evidence of the kind of unjust laws to which women could and would be subjected until such
time as they had the political rights to protect themselves and to force the legislature to
acknowledge their claims. Thus the unpopularity of the Contagious Diseases Agitation, just
as its object might be, was damaging to the underlying issue which in his view was the suffrage.
The split over the Contagious Diseases Agitation was of decisive importance for the
women’s movement as a whole. Although many members of the movement supported the
work of Josephine Butler, the feminist impetus became only one part of the Contagious
Diseases agitation.” Conversely, the question of sexual oppression, as it was embodied in
prostitution, became only a very small part of the women’s movement. Although Mill did not
win the immediate battle, in that a number of Suffrage Societies supported the Central
Committee, his view of the centrality of the suffrage question came to dominate the
movement as did his stress on the importance of a moderate and pragmatic approach. His
views were accepted by individuals like Millicent Garrett Fawcett, who refrained from
actively supporting the Contagious Diseases Agitation although she sympathized with it,
largely as a result of the arguments of Mill. She was one of the many women in the movement
who acknowledged Mill’s importance in establishing the distinctive character of the Suffrage
Movement.
‘Just as in art a master forms a school and influences his successors for generations, so the
present leaders and champions of the Women’s Movement have been influenced, and to a
great extent informed, by Mr. Mill. . One great service of Mill to the Women’s Movement
in England has been, I conceive, in impressing upon it from the first, the character bf
practical good sense and moderation which has been its distinguishing feature. The
suffrage has not been claimed for women in England as an abstract and inalienable right,
but it has been claimed upon the ground of expediency; that is to say, on the ground that
the good resulting from it would far outweigh any evils that might possibly attend it’
(Fawcett, 1881; p. 4).

Far from radicalizing the women’s movement, as Richard Evans has claimed, the

lo See particularly Josephine Butler ‘A letter to the Members of the Ladies National Association’, August 1875
and her Address Delivered at Croydon, July 3, 1871. Both were printed by the office of the National Association,
London.
” For the different attitudes amongst repealers, see Bristow, E. J. (1977).
550 BARBARA CAINE

emergence of the Suffrage Movement led to a contraction of its aims and an emphasis on
pragmatism and moderation which considerably narrowed the scope of the movement and
limited its analysis of the sexual economic and familial problems of women (Evans, 1979). The
dominating role of the suffrage led to an almost exclusive concern with an issue of direct
importance only to some middle-class women, in place of the concern with the problems of all
women evident in the Contagious Diseases Agitation and some of the earlier work in regard
to marriage laws and employment.
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