History 364-0-01: Gender and Sexuality in Victorian Britain; Northwestern University, Fall 2014

• Victorian’s Women’s Movements
  • Umbrella term for a variety of interest and lobbying groups
  • Women were not awarded degrees because those with degrees would have a voice on how the university is run, and they wanted to keep women out of that
  • The term “feminism” comes to use in the mid-1890s
  • The Women’s Movement was extremely effective
  • Before the movements kicked in, women had no legal right in their marriage over their own children – the husband has sole rights
  • Infant Custody Acts (1873, 1886)
    • For the first time, gave mothers certain rights over their children
  • Married Women’s Property Acts (1870, 1882)
    • Prior to this act, women’s husbands seized all possession of their property; she loses control over her own property and money
    • Upon marriage, a woman no longer loses rights to her own property, and for the first time, were allowed to represent themselves in court and be sued
  • Matrimonial Causes Act (1857): divorce gets taken out of the church courts and becomes a civil matter
    • A man can divorce a woman due to adultery, but a woman can only divorce a man due to adultery as well as one aggravating factor (i.e. abuse, negligence, bestiality, sodomy, etc.)
• Marriage
  • August 1888: Daily Telegraph asked, “is marriage a failure?”
    • The paper received 27,000 letters, ranging from enthusiasm to dissatisfaction
  • Mona Caird (1854-1932)
    • Saw herself as a progressive feminist and thought the women’s movement was too conservative
    • Publishes a journal article in the Westminster Review earlier in the month (before the question was asked) titled “Marriage”
    • She states that marriage, in its present state, is a failure
    • She asks why, in marriage, they are stuck with an antiquated law and women are always on the losing end
    • She thinks about marriage as a form of legalized prostitution – marriage is the only career choice for a women who could not earn admittance into a higher education institution, and the only way out of the parental home
    • During this time, a newspaper often had stories about Jack the Ripper on one half, and a raging debate about marriage on the other half
    • When a woman marries, she gives up all legal rights to her own body
    • Conjugal rights are the rights a man has to engage sexual activity with his wife – sexual intercourse is his right in marriage, and the woman has no right to say no
    • Free union is a lifelong, committed relationship between two equals
  • Clitheroe/Jackson Case
    • Comes to court in the late 1890s
    • A woman named Emily marries a man named Edmond Jackson in 1887
    • Jackson leaves to travel to New Zealand to take care of business interests
    • Shortly after his departure, she writes to him asking him to return
    • By the time he returns, she is living with her sisters and her family, and she refuses to see him
    • He sues his wife for restitution for conjugal rights
    • In 1891, as she’s leaving church, two accomplices set up by her husband bundle her into a carriage and take her to her husband, where he locks her into his bedroom
    • Her sisters countersuit for the return of her body, and this gets taken to a higher court
    • “Where a wife refuses to live with her husband, he is not entitled to keep her in confinement in order to enforce restitution of conjugal rights.”
    • When Emily left court, there was a massive crowd of mostly men booing and jeering at her because of the judgment; mainstream conservative newspapers claimed that this is the end of marriage in this country as we know it
• The progression of women
  • “Free love”
    • (Not to be confused with “free union”)
    • Sexual partners at will for both men and women
    • Most people did not endorse a free love position at all, even the free union position was a minority position
  • Contraception
    • If this topic was published 20 years ago, the author would be taken to court and charged with writing obscene material
    • Mainstream women’s movement were anti-artificial contraception methods due to religion (marriage is for the procreation of children), anxieties across disrupting the family structure, …
    • The main reason was that husbands were now able to prevent pregnancy and procreation, which might lead to unregulated sexual demand in marriage
    • The Victorian Women’s Movement supports abstinence
  • The idea of the “new woman” takes off – the new woman is young, highly educated, middle-class, (sexually) independent, liberated, and a part of a completely different generation of most people of the women’s movement
    • Dressed in a long, slim skirt with a white shirt and a scarf
    • Often holding a cigarette
    • Often shown riding a bicycle, which is symbolic of liberation – it was possible move around without a male escort, or an older female escort of your family
    • The new woman doesn’t need to get married because she already has it all
    • The race of women whose type we want to continue, are women who have no interest in marriage or procreation
    • When women write about the new woman, they go for the problem of male sexuality in marriage, and venereal disease; men write about the extreme outlying topic of free union