Description
Book SynopsisThis investigation of women's part in civic life provides a fresh approach to the 'public sphere', illuminates women as agents of a middle-class identity and develops the notion of a 'feminine public sphere', or the web of associations, institutions and discourses used by disenfranchised middle-class women to express their citizenship. -- .
Trade ReviewSmitley's concept of a feminine public sphere is an original contribution to the growing body of work that challenges the ideology of separate spheres sharply divided by gender. Although the involvement of women in public action together with their self-representation has been highlighted before, Smitley makes space for women within the public culture of the civic elite, which urban historians, drawing on the early ideas of Jurgen Habermas, have depicted as male territory.
Eileen Janes Yeo, Victorian Studies volume 54, No. 2
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Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. The organisations
2. The 'feminine public sphere’
3. Temperance reform and the 'feminine public sphere'
4. The women's movement and female temperance reform
5. New views of the women's suffrage campaign: Liberal women and regional perspectives
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index
