The notion of “separate spheres” has dominated the historiography of gender hitherto. It is the model which is taught to students of nineteenth century history. At seminars, people regularly raise their hands and object to some of its suppositions, but despite this, “separate spheres,” as a paradigm remains largely accepted by historians. Such is its prevalence that the belief that spheres were somehow gendered has formed a supposition of works of other historical topics. Michael Cohen has pointed out for example that from 1688 onwards the idea of politeness granted women a function as conveyers of language and social skill to younger men, but only within a quasi-domestic setting. Historians of the Victorian women’s movements also depict “separate spheres” and its stifling model of rigidity as a catalyst. Jane Rendell’s micro-study of Bessie Parkes and Barbara Leigh Smith emphasizes this point (and in doing so, in my opinion, ignores the importance of the continuation of the eighteenth century discourse of unjust exclusion). Equally, the ease with which the “public sphere” has been accepted as an analytical tool should make the point clearer. (For example Tim Blanning suggests in his study of the French Revolution that its outbreak can be attributed to the rise of an autonomous sphere of public opinion). According to the classic model, espoused by Davidoff and Hall, the period from 1780 to 1850 marked the nadir of female involvement in the public sphere. Their work emphasizes the shockwaves of the French Revolution and the evangelical movement from the 1790s onwards in cultivating a paradigm of ideal womanhood, which was exclusively confined to the private realm. In doing so, a lot of evidence is marshaled to support this argument though overwhelmingly the role of contemporary prescriptive literature forms the base of their views. Certainly within didactic material as well as other forms of literature, texts extolling domestic virtue for women may have held sway but this was nothing new. The dialectical polarity between home and the outside world was an ancient trope of western writing dating back to the times of Aristotle. The emergence in the 1690s within metropolitan drama of a new character, the profligate female aristocrat who scorns labour in favour of a life of idleness and consumerism is one example. This is symptomatic of the fact that the separation of the spheres was not unique. In this essay I will argue not only this but also that any work which establishes the primacy of “separate spheres” as an analytical tool should demonstrate its signifance not merely prescriptively but also within the everyday lives of men and women. A glance at the political undertakings of women will show the futility of “separate spheres” as an analytical tool for late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British history. Furthermore, various examples will demonstrate that in many ways this period marked the heyday of female power outside the home. All of this is not to suggest of course that women had it easy. Women had no legal identity. Any property she owned passed straight to her husband upon marriage. She was unable to hold office, become a JP and seldom held the position of parish official and only at the expense of a local fuss. Her position was much worse than her European counterparts, which is perhaps why many such as Sarah Austin flocked to the continent to revel in the experiences of their salon culture, which did not exclude women. Certainly women were not exempt from the conservative backlash after Quatre-Vignt-Neuf. In fact, it was obvious to historians as it was to contemporaries that the revolution only began to turn sour after the march of some 7,000 starving and disheveled Parisian housewives to Versailles in October 1789. The obvious outcome of this was increasing intolerance of female penetration of the male public sphere. Symptomatic of this was the decline in fashion for de-sexed clothing such as breeches at this time. Nonetheless, it will be argued here that as an analytical tool for the study of nineteenth century British history, an alternative paradigm should be sort for.
A look at the female work patterns during this period will demonstrate the problems of “separate spheres.” The unquestioned belief that the transition to industrial modernity robbed women of a previous golden age of freedom and status is a common trope of the writing of those who have espoused a model of “separate spheres” since Clark and Pinchbeck. Though the exact time span is questioned, it is argued that somewhere between 1600 and 1800 a wholesale family economy gave way to an exploitative wage economy which marginalized the dependents of the male breadwinner and hastened the development of the dichotomization between the female private and the masculine public realm. Any work on medieval and early-modern work patterns however will show the basic continuities in work patterns from 1200 to 1900. Women certainly experienced a great loss in terms of the mechanization of handspinning in the late eighteenth century, but it is not clear as to what extent this was the norm. A recent examination of sixteenth century Norfolk farming shows the common use of wage labour and importantly, for those that assume work was somehow degendered within the family unit, that a sexual division of labour predominated even when women worked with their husbands. Men were usually involved in the ‘heavy’ tasks of ploughing, mowing, reaping, harrowing and digging ditches, while women tended to involve themselves in planting seeds and hoeing weeds. In fact, continuities are evident in a variety of other sectors. Peter Earle’s work on female employment in the metropolis shows little change in opportunities for women took place between 1700 and 1851. Any opportunities that were taken from women with one hand were certainly given with the other anyway as machinery replaced brawn. Women for example were heavily represented in the Nottingham lace and Lancashire cotton industries. In fact, any clear linear development from family workshop to factory is obscured by the fact that many key industries such as mining, iron-smelting and ship-building could not and were not undertaken within the home. Importantly, insofar as the ideology of “separate spheres” is concerned, which suggests that the growth of capitalism hastened its advance within the middle-class by divorcing work from the home, an analysis of the work patterns of businessmen, bankers and other middle-class professionals shows that a clear demarcation between work and the home already existed before this period and insofar as any changes occurred, these tended to affect weavers, frameworkers and other industrial “proletarians,” where it is argued the ideology of “separate spheres” took a while to catch on. This leads on nicely to the next point. Why have historians tended to link the rise of “separate spheres” to the emergence of middle-class cultural hegemony? Perhaps the reasons lie in the fact that in attaching the study of gender to a longer-established analytical tool of nineteenth century British history, it would secure its primacy within historical scholarship. Regardless, there are major problems with this. Vickery is particularly scathing in her attack on Davidoff and Hall’s assumption of the cultural antagonism between landed and non-landed wealth. A recent rethink of the narrative of class formation has major implications for any study, which limits this emergence of class identity to a narrow time period between the end of the eighteenth century and the mid-nineteenth century. However, my main issue with this work particularly that of Davidoff and Hall is the belief that “separate spheres” was somehow an idiosyncrasy of the middle classes. Major ideological developments are very rarely narrowly confined to one class. Recent research by Colley, Mandler and Rose emphasizes the influence of supposedly “bourgeois” values on both the upper and lower orders and in doing so, in my opinion, relegates the status of middle-class, at least the way in which it is described by historians of “separate spheres,” to merely a heuristic, retrospective, sociological tool. Further, a synthesis of the work of Davidoff and Hall with that of Clark shows a lag of about twenty-five years in the acceptance of the ideology of “separate spheres” between the middle and working classes. Are we really to believe that those who regularly brushed shoulders with each other on the street, in the church or chapel or in the factory shared such different views of the world for a quarter of a century?
An analysis of female involvement in high politics will show the problems of viewing a clear dividing line between the public and private realms. Certainly, many women enjoyed the exercise of patronage and in many ways in doing so had more power than many men of the lower ranks. The number of women who exercised this power increased from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards. Drawing on the work of Lawrence Stone or John Cannon (or in some cases both), Colley, Lewis and Challus have shown that the eighteenth century demographic regime benefited more and more women as the male line tended to die out, thus leaving land to women. According to Stone this reached its peak in 1760-69 as a third of estates passed to women. Thus, whether they liked it or not, or indeed whether men liked it or not, women had no choice but to involve themselves in patronage, which could range from anything from canvassing and electioneering at the time of elections to attendance at balls, the holding of public days or inviting members of the local corporation to frequent their estates; interestingly for defenders of “separate spheres,” many of these activities obviously took place on a quasi-domestic setting. Colley estimates during the early nineteenth century that twenty-one constituencies were in the hands of women. Furthermore, as Reynolds has shown, the exercise of patronage by women continued long after the 1832 Reform Act, which did not eliminate all small boroughs, only rotten ones and in many cases, particularly in scot-and-lot boroughs like Leicester and Westminster reduced the size of the electorate drastically thus making it more liable to be subject to the control of patronage. At times of elections the role of women went into overdrive and here something should be said of the duchess of Devonshire controversy in Charles James Fox’s election to Westminster in 1784. Traditional interpretations have cited this as a clear watershed. The public outcry defined the lines between the public and private realms for a generation and in doing so excluded women from any involvement in the masculine political world. However, female campaigning during elections was not unusual. At the same time as she was kissing plebeian voters for votes, her mother Lady Spencer was making sure of the family interest in St. Albans. Female involvement in electoral campaigning continued also thereafter. Certainly if what she was doing was controversial for a female aristocrat, the duke of Devonshire’s family, who had no issue in objecting of her breastfeeding in the previous year, would have no qualms about complaining. So what exactly was so controversial about the actions of Georgina? Linda Colley argues that it was because she campaigned for someone who was neither a relative nor directly linked to her families interests. However, this does not explain why Mrs. Crewe or the duchess of Portland who campaigned for Fox came out blameless. Equally, those who claim that it was because she broke rank with her encouragement of the butchers of Westminster miss the point too. Certainly the butcher was a common symbol of masculine plebeian sexual virility and thus her easy association with them gave the lampoonists a great opportunity for bawdy sexual humour. This would not explain however why Lady Caroline Lamb’s dancing in the taverns during the 1809 election in the same constituency went so unnoticed. The main reason is probably because she was so successful in campaigning for Charles James Fox and must be credited with his regaining of his seat in an election he did not expect to win. This probably explains the outburst of vicious attacks within the Pittite press and as posterity has tended to view history through Pittite, rather than Foxite, spectacles it is no wonder that people have viewed this debacle as a watershed in the development of female social mores. Conversely, it seems that female involvement in elections like this was the norm and continued for much longer thereafter. In fact, female involvement in high politics generally was fairly commonplace. Richardson for example shows, by citing the example of Harriet Martineau, who dictated twenty-three letters in one week whilst bed-stricken with illness and wrote many more, letter-writing was a common means for the exercise of patronage and discussion of politics. One problem with this discussion is the absence of writing on the influence women from the lower orders. We do not know exactly what their role was particularly at the time of elections though the York Herald did mention the “fair sex” as being the best campaigners during Wilberforce’s election to Yorkshire in 1809. In fact, we know far less about women from the lower ranks generally, which is perhaps why, probably unfairly, I have tended to be more critical of Davidoff and Hall than Anna Clark; a matter which I can only justify by the lack of alternative interpretations to Clark’s study of gender within the formation of the working class.
Further attention to the role of women within other areas of the public or political sphere will emphasise the problems of the public/private divide. In fact all this talk of high politics is very well and good but in focusing purely on the role of women within the administration of patronage, there is a danger of succumbing to the impoverished, quasi-Namierite interpretation, which excludes the realm of public opinion in the discussion of politics. The importance of public opinion within politics has quite rightly grasped the attention of historians. John Parry for example in his book on the formation of the nineteenth-century Liberal party emphasizes the importance of public opinion. Within this realm, women exercised a great amount of influence and it is likely that this increased over time. This has in fact led many historians to characterize the ideology of “separate spheres” as a conservative backlash to the increasing female penetration of public life. Even Clark in her analysis of artisan culture in London, Glasgow and Lancashire shows that violence towards women and misogynism increased as more and more women seemed to be infiltrating the public sphere of work and thereby undermining the strong journeyman bachelor ethos. In fact, even if we take Habermas’ narrow interpretation of the public sphere to mean the printed word and associational activity, female involvement in both appears clear and ever-increasing. Certainly women appeared as authors on a large number of topics ranging from “soft” subjects such as travel writing, homilies and educational tracts to more serious ones like political science, philosophy and the natural sciences, and are likely to have made up more than half the total readership though statistics on female literacy rates are at best sketchy. Paradigmatic of the increasing opportunities for women to express themselves within the political sphere is the increasing vogue from “Coelebs” onwards for women to appear in print under their own name. Certainly in terms of associational life the opportunities for women were manifold. In fact if women lost opportunities to discuss radical politics during Pitt’s terror as the ladies’ and mixed debating societies which sprang up in the 1770s and 1780s decreased sharply, the growth of associational life in the 1810s and 1820s had the opposite affect. It is so often assumed that women used religion and philanthropy to cultivate their own apolitical sphere, however this was not the case. The ladies’ anti-slavery associations formed from 1825 onwards mobilized large amounts of women for a political cause and cannot be subsumed under the banner of the domestic sphere. Its continuation in terms of personnel with and the administrative training it provided for, future feminist movements and local Tory constituency organization highlight this. Quite often movements such as this attracted the support of the most politically ambitious, who would fail to see their endeavours as a retreat into the private realm. The duchess of Sutherland regularly campaigned for the emancipation of the enslaved as well as for the Spitafield silk-weavers, whilst establishing a finishing school for domestic workers on her estate. Crucially for the study of gender during this period, the political and the domestic realms could often overlap. Consumerism, particularly exclusive dealing and the purchasing of teapots, plates and the like with a political motif, and ideologically-inspired child-rearing are just two examples of how the lines between the public and the private were blurred. Indeed, women often justified their involvement in the public sphere by reference to their predominance in the domestic. This was especially the case with Colley’s patriots and the women of the Anti-Corn Law League as Morgan has demonstrated. The domestic world was often the setting for the discussion of politics. Margot Finn emphasizes the importance of the home in radical middle-class culture. “For radical women, the discourses of “separate spheres” did not imply the denial of female political identity, for the expression of political ideas and agency could take a multiplicity of forms.”[1] In referring to “radical women,” Gleadle is referring to the various Unitarians who appropriated the discourse of “separate spheres,” however this can refer to women generally, radical or non-radical, throughout this period.
An emphasis on the moral superiority ascribed to women will also show the opportunities for women within the public sphere and more importantly their enhanced role in nineteenth century discourse. In fact it is often assumed that the moral backlash of the 1790s stifled the opportunities for women however this is based on a continuation of the 1960s feminist supposition of the link between sexual adventure and social liberation. While they may have been prevented from attending the theatre auditorium, pleasure garden and assembly room, by appealing to the moral superiority of their sex, many women cultivated countless opportunities for themselves within the public sphere, already discussed, which should not be seen as a basic continuation of their domestic duties. In fact whereas women in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century were often depicted as licentious and excessive, towards the end of the eighteenth century it was increasingly their morality which was seen as their main characteristic and this had a necessary role within the political realm. Mandler for example emphasizes the role of women in carving out a new model within the nineteenth century of liberal subjectivity, which was based as much on morality and the moral worth of the ruling aristocrat as it was on rationality; a point which has been largely ignored by historians of nineteenth-century Liberalism. Discussions of morality naturally lead on to a consideration of the ramifications of the Queen Caroline affair. Tamara Hunt in her analysis of contemporary caricatures has shown that morality was the overwhelming concern of the campaigners. Caroline was often depicted as an injured woman among the bawdy satires. The best example of this is the “Queen’s Matrimonial Leader,” which went through a staggering forty-four editions. The second illustration entitled “Emigration” which accompanies the pamphlet shows the scene of the prince and his paramours forcing Caroline to flee the country while she hopelessly gestures to her teenage daughter. Curious however is the sudden volte-face in the prints in January and February 1821 after the Bill of Pains and Penalties had been dropped and she had accepted a ministerial offering of £50,000 per annum to leave England, which tended to depict her as a promiscuous, demented hag. Surely if this had merely been an excuse to attack a king, who let’s face it was always unpopular, why this sudden change of direction in the press? he only conclusion is to view this affair as part of a broader cultural shift, which began with “Father George” during the king’s father’s reign, towards the expectation of moral virtue within the public realm. Morality, therefore a female trait, underpinned the political as well as the domestic sphere. Equally if Hunt is correct that the satirical attacks upon George IV’s morality should be interpreted as a continuation of a form of charivari then this has important implications for the study of women. Whereas traditional rough music tended to discipline recalcitrant wives, the broadsheets were concerned until the Bill was dropped almost entirely with the morals of the king and often depicted him as a wife-beater. This suggested that the rights of the queen and therefore women needed to be protected and they could not be completely divorced from the public sphere. Clark in fact notes the importance of the Queen Caroline affair in carving out a more political role for women. The descriptions of Caroline as rational, educated and brave went far beyond the limits of separate spheres. Nevertheless, it was ultimately with morality, a feminine virtue that the press were most concerned with. On that note, perhaps the best piece of evidence marshaled against “separate spheres” is the point made by Boyd Hilton that the political discourse of this period seemed to evoke connotations of female moral superiority. Whereas the discourse of eighteenth-century Whiggism was overwhelmingly masculine and corruption was often portrayed in popular iconography as a woman, nineteenth-century politics seemed to incorporate household concepts of economy, order, moral reform and a polite commercial policy and viewed speculation as masculine and predatory. “It might be suggested that Pitt inaugurated a feminine polity.”[2] This more than anything should plant the seed of doubt within the minds of those who espouse the concept of separate spheres, especially as it took so long for the Pittite polity to be dismantled.
All this should suggest that “separate spheres” is not a useful concept for the study of nineteenth century British history. Martin Pugh has shown in an analysis of four elite Victorian marriages – the duke and duchess of Marlborough, lord and lady Londonderry, the earl and countess of Jersey and lord and lady Knightley - that in each marriage there was one shy and home-loving individual and in each case it was the male. “Where historians have researched the activities of particular individuals and groups, rather than contemporary social theories which hobbled them, Victorian women emerge as no less spirited, capable and most importantly diverse a crew as in any other century.”[3] This has led many historians to assert the diversity of private experiences across the centuries regardless of ideologies. In my view however this is wrong. The history of ideas tells us that every epoch throws up various different discourses and “separate spheres” was surely one. What is needed however if it is to be used as an analytical tool is a greater focus on whether women managed their lives according to its precepts. Davidoff and Hall base their views on a number of texts, particularly Sarah Ellis’ “Women of England” though they do allude to the fact that religious institutions segregated formal activities. However, this throws up the question as to whether the sexual division of labour amounts to the separation of the spheres. If it does, and we are unsure as the definition of the spheres remains largely ambiguous, then what exactly was unique about the late eighteenth and nineteenth century? The fact that men and women had different roles based on their sex transcends barriers of both class and time. In fact, Vickery argues that the growth of female committee work within religious denominations in the nineteenth century marked an augmentation, not a diminution in the role of women within the public sphere and this is probably symptomatic of the general sequence in this period. The fact that women lived highly different lives to men is a point which should be made again. The “Lawes and Resolutions of Women’s Rights in 1632 was fairly unequivocal: “Women have no voice in parliament. They make no laws, they consent to none, they abrogate none” and it stayed that way for over two hundred-and-fifty years. In fact women even lost their right to vote in parish and Poor Law elections in 1835. However, if a clear separation of the spheres only existed in prescriptive, rather than actual terms, then its usefulness as an analytical tool for the study of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British history is nil. As a discourse, “separate spheres” clearly had a role. It is not surprising that its prevalence within didactic literature increased rapidly due to changes in scientific thought to a “two-sex model.” Separate spheres as a discourse though should not be taken as an historical axiom or a reflection of objective reality as Davidoff and Hall have done so. It was subject to modulations and changes over time. Wahrman shows how it only came to encompass the middle-class within a discourse of domestic as well as public power after 1832. Indeed, any reading of contemporary debate over the Reform Act, whether it is the speeches of the Benthamite MP Charles Buller or the writings of James Mill show no references to the superiority of the middle-class in the familial sphere but only platitudinous references to their intellectual hegemony and independence. Equally, like all discourses it was open to a number of interpretations, which is why it was able to contribute to the feminist rhetoric of the Saint-Simonians as Gleadle has shown. There were also other competing discourses at the time, a point which Anna Clark makes clear. How different the history of the British working classes could have been if the Chartists opted for a Painite egalitarian rhetoric instead of an ideology of domesticity. The prevalence of “separate spheres” ideology within this period is not disputed, but we should not ignore the gap between social experience and its representation as Davidoff and Hall have. If we are looking at how women actually behaved, rather than how they were supposed to, then it becomes clear that as an analytical tool for the study of late eighteenth and early nineteenth century British history, the role of separate spheres is non-existent.
[1] K. Gleadle, Women in British Politics, 1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat (2000), p147
[2] B. Hilton, A Mad, Bad & Dangerous People? (2004), p370
[3] A. Vickery, A Golden Age to Separate Spheres?: A Review of the Categories and the Chronology of English Women’s History, Historical Journal (1993), p390
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