ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on some of the issues and themes relating to women’s lives with which nineteenth-century feminists were concerned. It emphasizes the contradictions and tensions in these, indicating the range of thinking and positions which existed during the period. The chapter argues that one line of thought which seems to concern and unite a lot of nineteenth-century feminists is a developing critique of sex privilege. At other times it was the system of patriarchal privilege, regarded as having been developed by men to support and extend their own interests, which was the focus of attention. It will be argued that reader are mistaken to see Victorian feminism only as a series of piecemeal reform-oriented activities and that much is to be gained from a careful examination of the patterns of thought which lay behind the various campaigns. Nineteenth-century feminist thinking on sexuality is usually portrayed as developing as part of the hostile response to Contagious Diseases Acts of 1860s.
