Women and Late Chartism: Women’s Rights in Mid-Victorian England

Abstract

Abstract This article revisits the relationship between women and Chartism, the British mass movement for democratic rights that dominated popular politics from the late 1830s to the 1850s. It argues that the opportunities for women to participate in the movement were more varied, extensive and enduring than has often been appreciated. Particular attention is paid to late Chartism (1843–52) by documenting in full, for the first time, the number of female Chartist bodies in existence. By presenting new material, based on a combing of the press and the Home Office files, the article moves on to consider the role played by Chartist women in 1848, the year of European revolution when the movement revived. It then builds on the theme of late Chartism by offering a case-study of the Women’s Rights Association (WRA). This body was established in 1851 by a group of Sheffield Chartist women to campaign for votes for women, which, it is argued here, represented the culmination of a women’s rights discourse within early Chartism. The article concludes by comparing the women’s rights discourse in early Chartism and other contemporary feminisms with that deployed by the WRA.