ABSTRACT
Industrialism sharpened the sexual division of labour in nineteenth-century England; patterns of urban development sharpened the separation between home and workplace. The ideology of family life associated with these changes was premised upon the assumption of ‘separate spheres’: the man's sphere the world of work, commerce and professional endeavour; the woman's sphere the home. Nineteenth-century feminists struggled against the restrictions imposed upon their behaviour by exponents of this theory of separate spheres; this led them to criticise certain aspects of the sexual division of labour and some of the conventions surrounding ‘femininity’. But these criticisms were limited. Victorian feminists in the main sought wider opportunities for women particularly unmarried women outside the home. They sought to enlarge women's sphere of autonomy in some areas of private and public life. But the changes envisaged by the majority fell far short of the kind of radical restructuring of family roles and relationship considered essential by the feminist movement today.
