Shift in Social Roles for Women in 19th and 20th Century England

Nineteenth-century Britain seems to have been positioned technically, culturally, and geopolitically for wholesale social reconfiguration, though the fact that the processes of such reconfiguration would persist until the end of the twentieth century could hardly have been predicted. If at the start of the century there was national embarrassment at having lost the American colonies--once in 1783 after the Revolution and again in 1812 in the aftermath of only partly successful impressment raids at sea and attacks on the White House and along the American coastal frontier--there was also the national pride at having defeated the Continental enemy France in the person of Napoleon in 1815. In addition to geopolitical dynamics, there was the parallel line of activity that was later to be identified as the Industrial Revolution, which changed the whole structure of life from rural to urban and from agricultural to industrial.

The first voice for change in the status of women were heard in 1792, with the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's pamphlet titled Vindication of the Rights of Women, roughly contemporary w

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and which prompted many of them to reevaluate previously unquestioned assumptions about their social position." From 1867 until 1928, when male and female suffrage equality was finally enacted by Parliament, there was at least one suffragette organization in operation. The most prominent was the Women's Social and Political Union, founded by Emmeline Goulden Pankhurst and led by her and daughters Christabel Harriette Pankhurst and Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst. Except for a voluntary withdrawal from advocacy during the 1914-1918 war (after which women over 30 were allowed to vote), the Pankhursts' organization were progressively militant in their tactics. Suffragettes used nonviolent and violent demonstrations and attacks on members of Parliament and public buildings. The persistence of socially conventional mores vis-a-vis voting activism can be seen in the fact that suffragettes who engaged in hunger strikes were force-fed by prison authorities. Hartman cites an 1868 essay in London's Saturday Review that decried what it called The Girl of the Period and which rather neatly summarized how this Girl was properly perceived--by men, the perceptual standard, hence by women who appear to have been expected to align themselves with the s
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Reform Bill, Wollstonecraft Greer, Mina Lucy, Revolution Pope, French Revolutions, Girl Period, Consider Harker's, War II, Sylvia Pankhurst, One's Own, public life, nineteenth century, industrial revolution, status women, middle class, women's suffrage, social change, working-class women, houghton mifflin 1977, history ed bridenthal, women european, ed bridenthal koonz, visible women, bridenthal koonz boston, boston houghton mifflin,
Approximate Word count = 3405
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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