ABSTRACT
WOMEN’S HISTORY TENDS TO CONCENTRATE ON WOMEN OF PUBLIC ACHIEVEMENT and, more particularly, on feminists. Though much useful study has been devoted to working-class women, it has, for the most part, focused on woman’s place in industry. What follows is an effort to provide a more rounded picture and to suggest a more general evolution of working-class women, at home and in the factory, in a mature industrial period. Quite apart from my specific conclusions, I would hope that the attempt to speculate on developmental stages in women’s history might be applied to other periods and areas. We need a more sweeping conceptual framework in which to fit biographical studies of women and the surprisingly popular theme of men’s opinions of women. In the case of working-class women, biography is a luxury that can rarely be indulged. And though men’s opinions are an important part of the immediate environment in which women shaped their lives, they need not be studied for their own sake.
