Gender In Nineteenth-Century England Research Articles

Poverty, old age and gender in nineteenth-century England: the case of Hertfordshire

This article examines the relative incidence of poverty among the elderly in nineteenth-century Hertfordshire with special reference to gender. Both national and local sources are employed to highlight the particular difficulties experienced by the elderly, male poor under the New Poor Law, and the short and long term problems they faced as a result of seasonal unemployment and an overstocked labour market. For elderly women, the extent to which their poverty was relieved by employment in cottage industry, almshouse accommodation, the continuing receipt of out-relief and a higher incidence of family support are examined to provide an assessment of the manner in which poverty was gendered in the nineteenth century.

Dorice Williams Elliott, The Angel Out of the House. Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 2002, 270 pp; Kathleen D. McCarthy, ed., Women, Philanthropy, and Civil Society. Bloomington/Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001, 314 pp.

The relationship between philanthropy and women is a much-discussed topic in women's studies and history of the welfare state. Women have played a major role in philanthropic endeavors. They were personally involved in caring for the sick, the poor, and other destitutes, and took part in establishing and organizing philanthropic societies that catered to a host of social problems. Both books under consideration address this subject anew, though in very different ways. Elliott's book is about nineteenth-century England, McCarthy's volume includes articles on the development of women's voluntary work in various countries all over the world up to the present time.

The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England (review)

The argument that philanthropy was the taproot of female emancipation in nineteenth- century Britain was not much admired when it was first put forward over twenty years ago. Most feminists sought to find their origins in radical movements such as Chartism or in trade unionism. The idea that women's charitable work might have played a major part in feminist history was unwelcome, if not anathema. Not uncommonly, scholars assumed that philanthropy was little more than a justification of patriarchal rule, a form of "social control" that kept the poor in their place. Today, however, historians and literary critics are more sensitive to the ironies and complexities in women's history and are more susceptible to the idea that Victorian women domesticated the public sphere through charitable work, and thereby opened up possibilities for themselves.

The angel out of the house: philanthropy and gender in nineteenth-century England

Was 19th-century British philanthropy the truest and noblest woman's and praiseworthy for having raised the nation's moral tone, or was it a dangerous mission likely to cause the defeminization of its practitioners as they became public persons? Volunteer work seemed a natural extension of women's domestic roles, but many assumptions about gender roles, the connection between charitable and domestic work is the result of specific historical factors and cultural representations. This volume examines the ways in which novels and other texts that portrayed women performing charitable acts helped to make the inclusion of philanthropic work in the domestic sphere seem natural and obvious. Although many scholars have dismissed women's volunteer work as merely patriarchal collusion, this book argues that the conjuction of novelistic and philanthropic discourse in the works of women writers was crucial to the redefinition of gender roles and class relations. It explores how literary works contribute to cultural and historical change, exploring the philanthropic discoures in 19th-century literature.