Feminist Lives in Victorian England

Feminist Lives in Victorian England by Philippa Levine

Victorian women were more in control of their lives and collective destinies than historians have previously credited. This new study of nineteenth-century feminism combines the findings of extensive research with a strong emphasis on redefining the mould of politics in Victorian England. By looking at the writings of many women actively identified as feminists the author reveals how their political commitment suffused the lives they led. She argues that attempts to use trade unions, Parliament, the legal and medical professions and other bodies from which women were barred as yardsticks of political activity are bound to be misleading. Philippa Levine shows instead the subtler ways in which they used the activities open to them to reject many of the most persistent features of the "separate sphere" ideology which excluded them from public life. In employing a theoretical perspective culled from contemporary feminist scholarship, this analysis goes beyond such traditional categories as class, evangelicalism, liberalism, and latterly socialism, to a recognition of the centrality of gender in the making of nineteenth-century politics.

Levine, Philippa: - Philippa Levine is Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas in the department of history at the University of Texas at Austin and codirector of the program in British Studies.