BARBARA LEIGH SMITH BODICHON (1827-1891): A MID-VICTORIAN FEMINIST.
Item
-
Title
-
BARBARA LEIGH SMITH BODICHON (1827-1891): A MID-VICTORIAN FEMINIST.
-
Identifier
-
AAI8023707
-
identifier
-
8023707
-
Creator
-
HERSTEIN, SHEILA R.
-
Date
-
1980
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
History, European
-
Abstract
-
Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (1827-1891) inaugurated organized British feminism during the third quarter of the nineteenth century. When she reached her majority in 1848 the women's movement in Great Britain was still only a series of fragmented individual efforts. She activated feminism through the publication of A Brief Summary in Plain Language of the Most Important Laws of England Concerning Women (1854) and the organization of the Married Women's Property Committee in 1855, the first committee dedicated to removing female disabilities from the law. An organizer first and foremost, a writer of merely mediocre talent, Bodichon was a catalyst for the women's movement. She inspired her friends and utilized her family heritage of wealth and political acumen on behalf of her sex. For several generations the Smiths had devoted their energies to political campaigns to remove social and religious inequities from English law. Bodichon continued that tradition. She was one of the first females to enter the public arena. She worked to abolish special disabilities just as her grandfather and father, William and Benjamin Smith had. They had participated in efforts to abolish slavery and religious discrimination and to extend education and the suffrage. She chose to champion women, working first to eliminate the inequities of the marriage law.;Raised in the Smith family tradition of rationalism, religious toleration and social responsibility, Bodichon became the center of an upper middle class circle of women whose families were intimately associated with every major social and political reform effort of the sixties and seventies. The feminist circle that coalesced around her during the fifties represented the first concrete action by women on their own behalf. Following the unsuccessful married women's property campaign Bodichon and the members of her feminist committee worked to expand women's employment opportunities. Despite her marriage in 1857, which meant that half her year was spent in Algiers, Bodichon remained dominant in feminist efforts. She wrote Women and Work in 1857 and was instrumental in founding the English Woman's Journal in 1858 and the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women in 1859. Bodichon was the first writer to recognize the value of woman's work within the home and to attribute an economic value to the tasks of wife and mother. She was completely convinced of the need for equal education and employment opportunities for women.;In 1865 Bodichon returned to legislative reform efforts and formed the first major women's suffrage committee. They worked first to gather signatures for petitions which J. S. Mill presented to parliament in 1866. Internal divisions led to the dissolution of Bodichon's suffrage committee in 1867 and she left formal suffrage committee work to join with Emily Davies in the founding of Girton College, Cambridge. She devoted the remainder of her life to that project.;By the time that Barbara Ayrton Gould, daughter of Bodichon's protegee Hertha Ayrton, became a member of parliament in 1945 almost one hundred years had elapsed since Bodichon's coming of age. During that time feminism had emerged as a major factor in societal reform. Looking back we can identify the Married Women's Property Committee as its first formal structure and recognize Barbara Bodichon as its earliest organizing agent.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
-
Program
-
History
