1803 : Parliament passes the first British abortion law, prohibiting abortion after quickening.
1804 : The Napoleonic Code of France considers women
—like criminals, children, and the insane —to be legal minors. A woman's husband controls her property and, in the case of divorce, gets the children.
1813 : In England, Elizabeth Fry advocates reform of Newgate Prison, in which
300 women and children are housed under appalling conditions.
1821 : Colombian women gain the right to attend university.
1834 : In Lowell, Massachusetts, women mill workers stage a successful strike to reverse a 25 percent cut in their pay.
1837 : Victoria ascends the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland.

1840 : Female delegates are refused admittance to the World's Anti-Slavery
Convention in London. This event leads Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton to call the first women's rights convention.
1844 : The English Factory Act establishes the 12-hour workday for female factory workers.
1845 : Swedish women win equal rights of inheritance.
1848 : The Seneca Falls Convention is held and launches the woman suffrage movement in the United States. The document produced is the Declaration of
Sentiments, patterned after the Declaration of Independence.
1854 : Florence Nightingale begins nursing casualties during the Crimean War and effectively establishes nursing as a profession for women. Her efforts help reduce the death rate from combat injuries from 42 percent to 2.2 percent.
Britannica. "Timeline: Through the Centuries." Encyclopedia Britannica Online . Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 13 Jan.
2013. <http://www.britannica.com/women/timeline?tocId=9404138>.

• Before (pre-1800s):

– Greater industrialization during the Industrial
Revolution -> greater urbanization -> women begin working outside household more in factories/mills
• Women working for pay gradually lessens attitudes of social subordination towards women
– More wealthy women become centers of cultivated circles, BUT
• Still excluded from politics and business
• Still responsible for domestic duties (unless hire servants)
• Still viewed as delicate, virtuous, idle

• Women play important roles: a wife and a mother
• As a wife:
– Complement her husband, and be supportive of his interests (ex. comfort for troubles, enforce his principles)
– Do domestic duties: serve food, cleaning, washing and mending clothes – make household comfortable for husband
– Be pious, humble, submissive, supportive
• As a mother:
– Proper raising of child: education, care, character (especially in middle class)
• Women’s importance in domestics cause difficulties for greater female education:
– Opponents believe education detract from practical knowledge needed for housewives
• Ex. Motherhood stressed in women’s magazines and other writings:
– Parisian Journal des Femmes, Lady’s Home Journal, Godey’s Ladybook,
The Ladies’ Pocket Book of Etiquette (published in 1840)

• Greatly impoverished women; made up the lowest of the social ladder
• Lacked education and acceptable jobs
– Depended mostly on relief organizations and charity
– Ex. England’s Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (founded 1826)
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul
(founded 1835)
• Some resort to prostitution for income:
– Unrespectable profession; dirty lifestyle
– Great increase in prostitutes in cities in
19 th century:
• London: 9,000 to 80,000 registered prostitutes

• Low social standing
• Professions included: factory workers, domestic service, agricultural laborers (employment necessary for family survival)
– Laborious work hours with modest/little income and inheritance
• Women factory workers:
– Some begin working at ages of 8-12
– Lifestyle of long work days, poor health, poor sanitation
– Excluded from higher paying jobs (ex. mule-spinning reserved for males in textile factories)
– Mainly worked in the textile industry (cotton, flax, silk): made up most of the workers
• Ex. Textile factories in Manchester and Leeds
– Also employed in factories for manufacturing pottery and paper

Cotton
Wool
Flax
Silk
Lace
Potteries
Dyehouse
Glass
Industry
74.3
38.7
38.1
0.0
0.0
Ages 12 and under
51.8
38.6
54.8
Paper -
Whole Sample 52.8
Ages 13-20
57.4
46.9
0.0
0.0
65.0
46.2
77.3
84.3
100.0
66.4
Ages 21+
16.6
27.1
0.0
0.0
52.2
37.7
59.5
71.3
39.2
48.0
All Ages
36.5
29.4
0.0
0.0
58.0
40.9
67.4
78.1
53.6
56.8
Click here for more women workers statistics!
Burnette, Joyce. "Women Workers in the British Industrial Revolution." Economic History Services . EH.Net, 5 Feb.
2010. Web. 13 Jan. 2013. <http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/burnette.women.workers.britain>.

• More women work for pay in 19 th century:
– Ex. Lower-Middle Class: often operate small shops, are governesses, or are ladies’ companions
– Also: writing (ex. Elizabeth Gaskell, Bronte)
• Domestic role becomes major part of life
– In addition to being wife and mother, assumes virtuous values, piousness, and elegant dress in household
– Most important in maintaining calm in household
• Charities (ex. Sisters of Mercy, Franciscan Sisters of the Poor)
– Participated greatly in charity and good works
– Campaigned for sanitation, piousness, temperance
– Provided soup and bread, supported impoverished
– Participated in running nurseries, schools, and hostels

– Was virtuous, elegant, fashionable, idle
– Often had domestic servants to provide housekeeping
– Marry for acquisition of property and social alliances

• Marriage considered important obligation of women
– Especially middle class
– Singles considered spinsters; pitied and held in contempt
• However, single women more legally independent than married:
– Ex. In England: could own property, pay taxes, can vote in local parish
– Vs. married woman: rights to property and inheritance go to husband
• Middle and upper class often marry for social mobility, merging of estates, money
– Women play critical role
– Lower classes often do not marry with such motives
• Marriage laws made divorce for women difficult:
– Men just needed to prove wife’s adultery
– Women must prove: adultery and other marital issues (ex. incest, rape, abuse)
– Only until later reforms increased divorce rate
• Ex. Matrimonial Causes Act in England of 1857: established secular divorce courts

The effect of the restrictions on women’s divorce can be seen in this graph.
Not until later reforms did the rate of female divorces increased.
Office for National Statistics. Rate of Marriages and Divorces in England and Wales, 1862-2008 . Digital image.
Significance . Blackwell Publishing, n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2013.
<http://www.significancemagazine.org/details/webexclusive/1345767/Getting-hitched--marriageand-divorce-in-the-21st-century.html>.

• Romantic movement provided opportunity for women for expression in writing and the arts
• Romantics also wanted couples to be led by warm emotions, not rigid rituals formed by Bourgeois
• Women included:
– Madame de Staël : works on German thinkers, such as
Concerning Germany (1810) introduced Romanticism to France
– Ann Radcliffe : English author who wrote romantic, gothic works; wrote The Romance of the Forest (1791)
– Charlotte Smith : Poet and novelist; wrote compilation of sonnets in Elegiac Poems (1784)
– Anne Seymour Damer : English sculptor of the early
Romanticism movement

Ann Radcliffe
Madame de Staël
Anne Seymour Damer
Charlotte Smith

• Queen Victoria :
– Queen of England that ascended throne 1837
– Reign brought glory and power to England; monarch during the
Crimean War
Queen Victoria
• Duchess of Berry:
– Son was legitimist’s claim (supported Bourbons) to throne during the July Monarchy (1830s) in France
– 1832: attempted to start an uprising against monarchy
• Isabella :
– Daughter and planned successor of King Ferdinand VII of Spain
– Rule opposed by Don Carlos and Carlists – supported autocracy and Spanish Catholicism’s claims
– Eventually became Queen Isabella II of Spain in 1843
Queen Isabella II

• 19 th century experienced numerous feminist works
– Advocate for education and rights for women anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by
– Influence more often seen in works of friend and second husband, John Stuart Mill
—J. S. Mill
• Mill had advocated for emancipation of women
• Influenced work: “The Enfranchisement of Women” (1851)
• Anna Wheeler (1785-1848)
– With friend William Thompson, wrote feminist treatise:
• Appeal of One Half the Human Race, WOMEN, Against the
Pretensions of the Other Half, MEN, to Retain Them in Political, and
Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery; in reply to a paragraph of
Mrs. Mill’s Celebrated "Article on Government" (1825)
• Catherine Barmby
Anna Wheeler
– Wrote "Demand for the Emancipation of Woman, Politically and
Socially" (1843)
– Led way of feminist writings in the 1840s (more on feminism)

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