ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century feminism was and remained an essentially middleclass movement. Its ideology reflected the social aspirations of the bourgeoisie as well as expressing the emancipatory urge of the female sex. Its benefits were theoretically intended to extend to the whole of womankind, indeed ultimately to the entire human race. In practice, as we saw in the case of John Stuart Mill's classic formulation of the feminist creed, they applied only to the women of the middle classes. 1 Despite this, middle-class women were not alone in fighting for female emancipation; nor was liberalism the only political ideology to incorporate liberation of the female sex. As the industrial revolution spread across Europe and America in the course of the nineteenth century, bringing with it the rapid growth of industrial towns and cities, so the women of the new urban working classes began to add their voices to those of their social superiors in the call for women's rights. Middleclass feminists, of course, were very much aware of the social problems caused by the onset of industrialisation; of poverty, disease and privation in the new slums, of appalling working conditions and meagre wages in the new factories. Indeed, a major impulse behind the emergence of feminism and the mobilisation of middle-class women for the feminist cause lay in the growth of social welfare organisations designed precisely to deal with problems such as these. 2 Many early and above all most radical feminists regarded the economic and social problems of the working classes, and in particular of working-class women, as a serious obstacle to the attainment of their ultimate goal of a society based on equality of opportunity for all. Radical feminists often criticised the moderates for confining their attention to the women of the middle classes. The radicals believed that all women should be united in the struggle for their rights, and that the benefits of feminist reforms should not be limited to a relatively small and wealthy minority of the female population.
