ABSTRACT
Despite the dominant ideology, which deemed that a woman’s place was within the home, women worked in a wide range of occupations, much wider than can be discussed in detail in this book.1 In this first part of the book, I intend to sketch out the terrain of women’s employment and the debates that arose from it in this period. Following the mindset of Victorian domestic ideology, concepts of work and the developing economic structure of the period, this chapter is organized around the location of work, either in the public or private sphere, and the social class that workers occupied. Therefore, given the wide range of occupations that were available for working-class women, I focus on those occupations that employed large numbers of women, that were the subject of widespread public interest and reflected ideological constructions of femininity in a range of public texts. As I mentioned in the introduction, the largest sectors of employment for women in the first half of the nineteenth century were domestic service, needlework, agriculture, textiles, homework and teaching. Teaching was an option for both middle-class and the higher strata of working-class women so this sector is discussed in the chapter on middleclass women’s work. Nursing was also a working-class occupation, but became an option for middle-class women towards the end of this period; as such, it is examined in the second part of the book where the increasing push to open up the professions to middle-class women is considered. In Chapter Two, I focus on domestic service and its allied trade, laundering, as well as needlework and other home-based work, factory work, agriculture and mining. Chapter Three focuses on the debate around surplus middle-class women needing, or wanting, to work and the discussions that emanated from the desire to open up suitable work other than governessing and needlework to women of this class. This chapter also encompasses a discussion of the debates around the need for training and education for women.
