Reform feminism
Reform feminism
Whereas Anthony held to a broad notion of individualism, equality and human rights as the foundation for her suffrage activism, in the final three decades of the century other women’s rights advocates began to focus on issues that emphasized the differences between women and men. The reform feminism of this period emphasized women’s supposed moral nature and led to many campaigns aimed at correcting or cleaning up mistakes allegedly made by men. Settlement houses, the peace movement and clean- government campaigns in cities were examples of such reform feminism, as were efforts to change sexual practices through the social purity movement’s attempts to create laws to protect women from men.
The lectures that British activist Josephine Butler presented in response to the Contagious Diseases Act of 1869 (CDA) offer one example of reform feminism and its concern with protecting women. The CDA introduced to Britain a French system to regulate prostitution and police the sexual health of prostitutes. Under the CDA, prostitutes would be examined regularly for signs of venereal disease and, if found to be infected, hospitalized until they were found to be free of disease. Upon release, they
Encyclopedia of nineteenth-century thought 218
would continue to be required to submit to regular physical examination. Butler and other anti-CDA activists objected to the CDA on numerous grounds, not least that it reinforced
a sexual double standard, encouraging prostitution by purporting to make illicit sex safe for male patrons and then punishing prostitutes as carriers of venereal disease. Butler claimed that since the act allowed the police to arrest women on suspicion, whether or not they had a record of engaging in prostitution, the CDA put all British women in danger of this assault on their freedom. Perhaps the most effective argument that Butler and other anti-CDA activists made lay in their opposition to the ‘instrumental rape’ of women arrested under the CDA with specula, examples of which the speakers displayed at their lectures. In 1871, Butler and her colleagues presented a petition to Parliament, protesting the CDA. The Contagious Diseases Acts were repealed in 1886.
Similar political action was the goal of English women’s rights advocate Frances Power Cobbe. In ‘Wife-Torture in England’ (1878), Cobbe identified the injustice of women’s position within marriage as the root of domestic violence. Claiming that the practice was at its worst among the labouring classes of the industrial north, Cobbe blamed negative cultural attitudes towards wives, especially the notion of the wife as property of the husband, for the phenomenon. Such attitudes were reflected in legal traditions that classified acts of wives against husbands as petty treason. The seventeenth- century principle that men could use any ‘reasonable’ instrument to chastise their wives, Cobbe noted, had remained a part of English law until 1829. She called for a bill to make divorce easily accessible to women of all classes, to grant custody of children to women and to require husbands to pay for the maintenance of their ex-wives and children.
Before the 1870s, only the temperance movement had offered an arena for mention of domestic abuse, and even there such discussion had been couched in more general rhetoric about the sufferings of the drunkard’s family. After 1874, the temperance movement again opened the way to women’s activism on numerous issues. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in that year in Chicago, and, after Frances Willard became its leader in 1879, the WCTU grew into the premier women’s organization, both nationally and internationally. Under Willard, the temperance movement became a prime example of reform feminism, a women’s movement that focused on sex difference as the main argument for suffrage. Enlisting ideas of home protection and maternalism, the charismatic Willard chose as her motto ‘Do Everything’, and under her leadership the WCTU expanded beyond anti-alcohol campaigns to a much broader agenda, which included departments focused on peace, labour reform, social purity, health and city welfare work. Members could participate at the local, state or national level, and after Willard joined with British temperance leader Lady Henry Somerset to found the World Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WWCTU) in 1884, they could focus on the international level as well. An ardent suffragist, Willard used the notion of home protection to persuade women that they needed the vote in order to defend their homes and families from the evils of drink. Most temperance workers were suffragists, and the WWCTU promoted women’s suffrage efforts throughout the world, especially in New Zealand and Australia, the first two countries to grant women’s suffrage at the national level.
Entries A-Z 219
Parts
» Encyclopedia of Nineteenth-Century Thought
» ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENTS AND IDEAS
» SIMON J.POTTER ARNOLD, MATTHEW (1822–87)
» S.JONES BERNSTEIN, EDUARD (1850–1932)
» THE BODY, MEDICINE, HEALTH AND DISEASE
» BONALD, LOUIS DE (1754–1840)
» PAMELA PILBEAM CARLYLE, THOMAS (1795–1881)
» CHATEAUBRIAND, FRANÇOIS RENÉ AUGUSTE (1768–1848)
» CHINESE THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» CIESZKOWSKI, AUGUST (1814–94)
» JOHN MORROW COMBE, GEORGE (1788–1858)
» ALAN R.KING COMTE, AUGUSTE (1798–1857)
» The conservative reaction to radical natural-rights theory
» French conservatives and the challenge of the revolutionary past
» Institutional continuity and intellectual and moral discontinuity in British conservatism
» JOHN MORROW CONSIDÉRANT, VICTOR (1808–93)
» CONSTANT, BENJAMIN (1767–1830)
» CLIVE E.HILL DEMOCRACY, POPULISM AND RIGHTS
» PAMELA PILBEAM DEWEY, JOHN (1859–1952)
» DILTHEY, WILHELM (1833–1911)
» DOSTOEVSKY, FEODOR (1821–81)
» CHERKASOVA DU BOIS, W.E.B. (1868–1963)
» Saint-Simon and Saint-Simonism
» Other forms of non-Marxian socialism
» GREGORY CLAEYS EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (1803–82)
» ENFANTIN, BARTHÉLEMY-PROSPER (1796–1864)
» Revolutions, citizenship and sexual difference
» Socialism, labour, evangelical reform and public speaking
» Women’s rights at mid-century: an international movements
» KATHRYN M.TOMASEK FEUERBACH, LUDWIG (1804–72)
» FOURIER, CHARLES (1772–1837)
» KARINE VARLEY FREUD, SIGMUND (1856–1939)
» GREGORY CLAEYS GANDHI, MOHANDAS K. (1869–1948)
» GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (1807–82)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN GEORGE, HENRY (1839–97)
» GOBINEAU, JOSEPH COMTE DE (1816– 82)
» LYMAN TOWER SARGENT GREEN, T.H. (1836–82)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE IDEA OF PROGRESS
» From conjectural history to the Whig interpretation of history
» The critique of the idea of progress
» HUMBOLDT, WILHELM, FREIHERR VON (1767–1835)
» TIM KIRK HUXLEY, T.H. (1825–95)
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN IMPERIALISM AND EMPIRE
» SIMON J.POTTER INDIAN THOUGHT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
» INDUSTRIALISM, POVERTY AND THE WORKING CLASSES
» INTELLECTUALS, ELITES AND MERITOCRACY
» Tanzimat and the Ottoman Empire
» Other responses to colonialism and modernity
» Opening of the country and the Meiji Restoration
» CHUSHICHI TSUZUKI JEFFERSON, THOMAS (1743–1826)
» JEVONS, WILLIAM STANLEY (1835–82)
» One person, many faces: an introduction to a resonant life
» Stages on Life’s Way: from aesthetic, via ethical, to religious
» Intermission: the Corsair affair
» KROPOTKIN, PIETR (1842–1921)
» LABRIOLA, ANTONIO (1843–1904)
» LAMARTINE, ALPHONSE DE (1790– 1869)
» Continental liberalism FRANCE
» GREGORY CLAEYS LIEBKNECHT, WILHELM (1826–1900)
» LOMBROSO, CESARE (1835–1909)
» MACAULAY, THOMAS BABINGTON (1800–59)
» Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
» Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAISTRE, JOSEPH DE (1753–1821)
» MALTHUS, THOMAS ROBERT (1766– 1834)
» MARSHALL, ALFRED (1842–1924)
» GREGORY CLAEYS MARX AND MARXISM
» The development of Marxism to 1914
» GREGORY CLAEYS MAURRAS, CHARLES (1868–1952)
» MEINECKE, FRIEDRICH (1862–1954)
» MICHAEL LEVIN MILL, JOHN STUART (1806–73)
» THE NATION, NATIONALISM AND THE NATIONAL PRINCIPLE
» CHRISTOPHER DUGGAN NIETZSCHE, FRIEDRICH (1844–1900)
» DAN STONE NOVELS, POETRY AND DRAMA
» The development of Owen’s thought after 1820
» The development of Paine’s thought
» DAVID GLADSTONE PARETO, WILFREDO (1848–1923)
» Alternatives to classical economics
» Utilitarianism and the marginal revolution
» ANTHONY BREWER PROUDHON, PIERRE-JOSEPH (1809– 65)
» ‘Psychology has a long past but a short history’
» ‘Time present and time past’: James’s Principles
» RANKE, LEOPOLD VON (1795–1886)
» Biblical criticism and moral critiques
» TIMOTHY LARSEN RENAN, JOSEPH-ERNEST (1823–1892)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS RICARDO, DAVID (1772–1823)
» ROMANTICISM, INDIVIDUALISM AND IDEAS OF THE SELF
» Individualism, individuality, the self and psyche
» From alienation to Romantic love
» Critique of Political Economy
» Nihilism, populism, anarchism and early Marxism
» Religious and moral developments in Russian literature and philosophy
» SAINT-SIMON, HENRI DE (1760–1825)
» SAY, JEAN-BAPTISTE (1767–1832)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1775–1854)
» SCHLEGEL, CARL WILHELM FRIEDRICH VON (1772–1829)
» CLIVE E.HILL SIEYÈS, EMMANUEL-JOSEPH (1748– 1836)
» RICHARD WHATMORE SIMMEL, GEORG (1858–1918)
» DAN STONE SISMONDI, JEAN-CHARLES-LÉONARD SIMONDE DE (1773–1842)
» Social Darwinism and politics
» Social Darwinism, secularism and religion
» MICHAEL LEVIN SOREL, GEORGES (1847–1922)
» SPENCER, HERBERT (1820–1903)
» CLIVE E.HILL STEWART, DUGALD (1753–1828)
» TIM KIRK STRAUSS, DAVID FRIEDRICH (1808–74)
» TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (1861–1941)
» S.JONES THEORIES OF EDUCATION AND CHARACTER FORMATION
» THEORIES OF LAW, CRIMINOLOGY AND PENAL REFORM
» JOHN PRATT THEORIES OF THE STATE AND SOCIETY: THE SCIENCE OF POLITICS
» THIERS, LOUIS-ADOLPHE (1797–1877)
» GEORGIOS VAROUXAKIS THOREAU, HENRY DAVID (1817–62)
» ALAN D.HODDER TOCQUEVILLE, ALEXIS DE (1805–59)
» EVELINA BARBASHINA TÖNNIES, FERDINAND (1855–1936)
» Middle and late nineteenth-century utopianism LIBERALISM, CONSERVATISM AND UTOPIANISM
» LATER NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOCIALISM
» GREGORY CLAEYS WASHINGTON, BOOKER T. (1856–1915)
» CLIVE E.HILL WEBER, MAX (1864–1920)
Show more