Rouse yourself to a sense of your merits' : Women and separate sphere ideology in the Chartist movement, 1838-1848

In this thesis, I argue that working-class women participating in the Chartist movement in the 1830s and 1840s challenged the basic assumptions of separate sphere ideology. Women were quite active in the movement despite the increasingly rigid and polarized societal notions of what constituted appropriate gender roles. In general, men were considered best suited for public activities (political and economic), and were supposed to aspire to autonomous individuality. Women, in their "natural" capacity as men's complements, were supposed to concern themselves only with domestic duties, thus remaining politically and economically passive and dependent on their husbands or fathers. These opposing sets of traits, or dualisms, had been prevalent among the middle classes for several decades. Members of the working classes, in their efforts to portray themselves as "respectable," were beginning to adopt it as well.

Through an analysis of their own words, I examine Chartist women's attitude toward the dualisms of separate sphere ideology. I argue that, while Chartist women did not deny their responsibility for domestic duties, they did proclaim their right and duty as women to take an active role in political and economic life. In so doing, they denied the validity of separate spheres. However, it seems highly likely that pressure to conform to these standards was largely responsible for women's declining participation in the Chartist movement, and in radical politics as a whole, after the mid-1840s.