FROM THE INTRODUCTION:

The history of men has been palmed off on us as universal history.

Deirdre Beddoe, Professor of History.

The history of women is not adequately covered by books that focus on men because, for as far back as records began, women were subject to special laws and social customs which governed every part of their lives. Local history books tend to focus on MPs, mayors, councillors, huge landowners and large businesses, so women are absent.

Omitting to explain that women were straight-jacketed at every turn by legal disabilities and man-made social structures invites readers to misinterpret women's absence from civic life, big business and professions as voluntary. Furthermore, when historians mention 'the worker', 'the shopkeeper', 'the philanthropist' or 'the publican', they habitually cite men as examples. One's mind becomes so saturated with men's names, by the constant repetition of 'he', 'his' and 'him', that the reader is duped into believing that no women existed in those categories. It is, therefore, necessary to redress the balance by writing specifically about women. And it is essential to delve into primary sources to discover what our female predecessors did.

FROM 'THE POSTION OF WOMEN'

The Status of Women

The Victorians … made a fearful hash of the problem of woman… Their moral dualism .. might be amusing in architecture or painting, but it involved endless cruelty towards flesh and blood. R. J. Cruikshank.

In the 1860s one-time Hastings resident Bessie Rayner Parkes calculated that, if society were divided into 13 units, one would represent the aristocracy, three the middle ranks and nine the working masses. However, all women, whatever their class, shared a special status as females, and suffered particular disadvantages in government, law, marriage, money, business and employment. Women and men were believed to be completely different from each other and this was reflected in every aspect of public and private life. The railways offered women-only carriages and waiting-rooms, there were separate schools for each sex, some hotels - notably the Queen's at Hastings - had separate coffee rooms for men and women and some churches, such as Christ Church, St Leonards, had separate pews for each sex. Few jobs were performed by both sexes and where they were women were paid half to two-thirds the wages of men for the same work.

It may be thought that 'positive discrimination' is a modern idea; in fact Victorian men practised it with great zeal, reserving for themselves every position as MPs, town commissioners, councillors, freemen, aldermen, members of Boards of Guardians, judges, magistrates, overseers, coroners, jurors, solicitors, police officers, journalists, civil servants and clergymen. Every decision about public policy, every law and bylaw, every rule and regulation was made by men without consulting women and only men were permitted to interpret and administer the decisions of the men in power. Only men could vote for which men would govern. Entitlement to vote was, supposedly, based on property qualifications yet female landowners such as Lady Frances Elphinstone of Ore Place, a widow with 530 acres who employed 15 men, were denied the vote, while some of their own labourers were enfranchised in 1867. Some progress was made in 1869, when the Municipal Reform Act gave women householders the vote in municipal elections - but only if they were spinsters or widows.

The economic structure hindered women from owning or inheriting wealth, throwing most into involuntary dependence upon men. Fathers routinely bequeathed to sons, partly because anything left to a daughter would later pass to her husband.

With a woman, Queen Victoria, as Head of State it was ironic that women lived under such total male authority.

This state of affairs was not entirely the result of ancient legislation. For example, an Act of 1835 ended the right of unmarried women who were qualified (by property) to vote in parish-based elections (such as for Poor Law Guardians), and an Act of 1857 reaffirmed that men, but not women, could obtain a divorce solely on the grounds of adultery.

The 'Woman Question' was discussed in newspapers, magazines and journals, in parliament and at home. Woman's place in society was a battlefield upon which competing ideologies strove for dominance. Some people challenged the narrow lives of women and argued for greater opportunities; others believed vehemently that women should be restricted to domestic work and child-rearing. A single issue - that of women being trained and employed as watch-makers - dominated the letters-pages of the Hastings & St Leonards News for several months in 1857 after a lecture on the subject was given locally.

The 'cult of womanhood' preached that women should be religious and god-fearing, and pure of heart, mind and body, which entailed pre-marital chastity and marital submission without enjoyment. They were expected to live contentedly in a state of perpetual childhood, passively accepting the actions and decisions of men, to whom they were supposed to be happily subservient. Women who declined to attain this idealised stereotype were criticised, even shamed, into complying. Coventry Patmore, a one-time Hastings resident, wrote a poem in the 1850s entitled The Angel in the House, in which he presented his submissive angel-wife as the stereotype to which all women should aspire. She was meek, humble and tranquil, and lived only to please her husband.

COPYRIGHT HELENA WOJTCZAK 2002