Borderline Citizens

Abstract

This volume provides a comprehensive analysis of women's involvement in British political culture in the first half of the nineteenth century. It is based on extensive archival research, but also engages with recent feminist theories in the social sciences, such as psychology and sociology. The volume looks at both rural and urban experiences of politics. The author throws new light on women's political activities and challenges many traditional assumptions about contemporary politics. The book gives fresh insights into the Reform Act of 1832, pays attention to continuities in political practice and ideas, and brings focus to the primary significance of parish politics within the day-to-day activities of the middling and gentry classes.

Preaching Religion, Family and Memory in Nineteenth‐Century England

“…Scholars such as Kathryn Gleadle have argued that the collaborative model of family identity acted as an important context for public assertions of women's agency. 73 Thorne's self-presentation in this letter suggests that, despite the Bible Christian denomination's rhetoric of spiritual equality, public expressions of female members' individual religious identities may also have been facilitated by being situated within a familial identity. Interpreting an individual's spiritual equality within the framework of the family was pivotal to the Bible Christian epistemology of the interconnectedness of family and religious life.…”

A Man’s Sphere? British Politics in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

“…Or Victorian authorial conventions often mean that a man is named as the author of a political treatise, which might well have been the product of collaboration with other family members. 60 As such, there are opportunities for the history of masculinity to say more about the nature of political practice. Masculinity is at its most concrete at the level of the corporeal, and the bodiliness of British politics is often striking.…”

“…73 Various everyday domestic rituals could have a political character, such as the reading of news, writing letters on behalf of the family, or family prayers. 74 Shifting from the micro to the macro, the geography of political activity is also important. The history of masculinity has generally been very urban in its focus: this is understandable, given that topics like homosexuality, politeness or bourgeois domesticity usually presuppose an urban backdrop.…”

Three Generations of Unconventional Family Values: A Case Study of the Ashursts

“…Yet the daughters were not empowered by their participation in the family cause; Gleadle found a hierarchical arrangement capped off by the 'domineering masculinity' typical of the ruling British elite. 15 Such was not the case with the Ashursts.…”