ABSTRACT
The creation, virtually from scratch, of an organization with the kinds of qualities that so impressed Alexandra Kollontai in 1913, required ideological as well as organizational and political innovation. One of the greatest obstacles confronting the early Guild was the widespread belief that by nature and custom ‘women’ 1 belonged in the domestic sphere. This ideal of femininity – the ‘angel in the house’, possessed of special nurturing qualities but congenitally unfit for rational activity in the public domain – emerged as part of the ideological formation of the industrial middle class, 2 but then became a yardstick against which the virtue of all classes was measured. By the late 19th century, the middle-class model of a housebound wife, along with a sentimental idealization of homelife, were hallmarks of the respectable working-class, pressing as hard on Co-operative women as on their social superiors. 3
