Week 3.
Feminism, religion and secularisation, 1880-1914
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Was first wave feminism secular?
Does religion oppress women more than it supports them?
How can historians understand the religious beliefs of women in the past?
What is the relationship between religion and politics in the context of the first
wave women’s movement?
Documents
Margaret Jane Menzies, Eighth monthly letter to young women (1880) [available
digitally at
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/modules/docs/feminism]
A. Besant, Autobiographical Sketches (1885)
J. Butler, Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade (1928)
The Catholic Suffragist, volume 1, number 1 (15 January 1915) [available digitally at
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/modules/docs/feminism]
Histories
J. De Vries, ‘More Than Paradoxes to Offer: Feminism, History and Religious
Cultures’, in S. Morgan & J. De Vries (eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Cultures
in Britain 1800-1940 (2010)
J. Dixon, ‘Sexology and the occult: sexuality and subjectivity in Theosophy's new
age’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 7 (1997), 409-33
L. Schwartz, The Bible and the Cause: Freethinking Feminists vs. Christianity,
England 1870-1900’, Women: A Cultural Review 21:3 (2010), 266-278
L. Schwartz, ‘Review Article: Women, Religion and Agency in Modern British
History’, Women’s History Review 21:2 (2012), 317-323
L. Schwartz, Infidel Feminism: Secularism, Religion and Women’s Emancipation,
England 1830-1914 (2013)
J. Dixon, Modernity, ‘Heterodoxy and the Transformation of Religious Cultures’ , in
S. Morgan & J. De Vries (eds.), Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain
1800-1940 (2010), pp. 211-230
H. Mathers, ‘Evangelicalism and Feminism: Josephine Butler, 1828-1906’, in S.
Morgan, Women, Religion and Feminism in Britain (2002), pp.123-138 digitised
K. Gleadle, The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the
Women’s Rights Movement 1831-1851 (1995)
C. Midgley, ‘Women, Religion and Reform’, in S. Morgan & J. De Vries (eds.),
Women, Gender and Religious Cultures in Britain 1800-1940 (2010), pp.138-58
B.Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Feminism and Socialism in NineteenthCentury England (1983), [chapter 5].
M. Vicinus, Independent women : work and community for single women : 1850-1920
(1985) [chapters 2,6, and 7, especially pp.268-80]
L. Davidoff & C. Hall, Family Fortunes. Men and Women of the English Middle
Class, 1780-1850 (1987) [chapter 2]