Gendering the Nation: Separate Spheres

Gendering the Nation: Separate Spheres

1. Industrialisation --> Gender changes. Culture differences, men =public, women = private.Women as the homemaker and men as the breadwinner.

   • Religious Origins
     • "Wives submit yourselves into your husbands" The husband is the head of the wife. Evangelicalism, social change. Believe to reform from within, and manners of the nation. - Abolition of slavery, public/private world view.
       • Hannah More (1745-1833): Evangelical writer, in literary and scientific circles. Interested in and wrote on practical education of women. Not a supporter of women's rights or children.
         • More can do details but cannot generalise out, cannot grasp a subject.

2. Impact of Enlightenment

   • Sexual Difference: The two-sex model, emphasised physiological difference, cultural difference. Reproductive function of women, womens sexual pleasure was not essential for conception, so their role was passive.
     • Rise of male medical expert.
       • Jean- Jacques Rousseau: Locates women firmly in the separate sphere, no equal rights for women. Complimentary role for men and women, the female is always a female, embody their gender.
         • Women's role is to please and being pleasing, to win his respect and love. Women's education planned in relation to man.

3. Legal Expression

   • Legal Doctrine of Coverture: When women married they entered into a legal contract of subservience. Man had the legal rights, married women could not have property, enter into contracts, or have legal entitlement to keep money they earned.
     • 1882 Married women's property rights. Women were 'femmes coverts'- when married the very being or legal existence of woman is suspended, incorporated into that of husband.
       • Political Expression
         • Rise of the middle class --> Women economically independent. Home no longer workplace of production, but is now a place of consumption. Segregation of sexes in working hours.
           • Separate spheres in organised labour, breadwinner husband and homemaker housewife
             • Women excluded from the public world of work and politics.

4. Sarah Stickney Ellis

   • Wrote to make money, promoting domesticity among women. Conduct book, moral power of women within the home.
     • Embraces separate spheres, women having a role within the home. This role gives them real moral power, personally empowering. Home is women's sphere of power, women should control the home without interference, it is a power base.
       • John Ruskin
         • Separate spheres manifesto. 'Wise not that she set herself above her husband, but that she may never fail from his side.
           • Women are so much better than men, so much responsibility, on a pedestal. Women's domestic power. But there for men.
             • Samuel Smiles: Good character was the key to self-improvement. Message in relation to politics, women don't need to worry about getting the vote as they have so much power in the home. More than MPs and lawmakers
               • Shouldn't that power be exercised ob behalf the public in the public sphere?
               • Separate spheres evident also in painting 'Woman's Mission. Companion to Manhood' (1863). Passive role for women.

5. Working Class

   • The family wage - the 'male breadwinner' and the 'dependent wife'. Women's role as the manager of the house and domestic budget.
     • R.J Richardson: Women should not be working as 'your places are in the homes, your labours are domestic duties, your interests are the welfare of your families... go seek husbands...go and mister their domestic comforts.'
       • Working women posed a threat, men need to make enough money to provide for the family. Women should create a peaceful home.

6. Criticisms:

   • Amanda Vickery
     • Women's lives dominated by continuity - separation of spheres 'could be applied to almost any century or any culture'
       • Difference between literacy prescription and social practice. Did men and women actually conform to prescribed models of authority. Literature more than one ideological message, irony?
         • "Victorian women emerge as no less spirited, capable and, most importantly, diverse a crew as in any other century"

7. Unraveling 'Separate Spheres'

   • 1) Women's involvement in the public sphere of the 19thC was significant: as consumers (boycott of sugar, as political campaigners (anti-slavery, anti-corn Law League), philanthropists (charity work) and as campaigners for womens rights
     • Women use their moral power instrumentally to argue for a wider extension of their role
       • Women were not completely excluded from political power anyway despite not having the parliamentary franchise, 2/5 of men were also excluded till 1918. Female taxpayer had a vote for local government from 1869.
         • Use moral power to push out into the world. Active in political parties and trade unions. The Matchgirls Strike 1888, complaints of low pay and long hours and dangers
   • Centrality of marriage and children to women's lives didn't match the reality either. Census of 1851, identification of surplus women problem, lots of spinsters. 1850s 30% women unmarried
     • Feminist campaigns to wider women's opportunities in education and employment (to support themselves) and against legal disabilities in marriage.
       • Working class notions of family wage and male breadwinner undermined by continued poverty: Working class women had to work. Their domestic work was also key to 'survival strategies'.
         • Physical environment of working class neighbourhoods made a private family life impossible.
           • Not a separation of public and private, work and home.
     • YES: There was clearly defined roles for women and men within the nation. BUT the mid to late century also witnessed increasing debate about the gender order.
       • SO: Whilst a clearly defined binary system was enthusiastically promoted, it was simultaneously under threat. Prescription is not the same as practice.