The rationality of the 18th Century Northern woman

Basically I haven't had much time to write of late, and like all good academics - or should I say the greatest self critics - I frequently re-read what I write with a ambitious sceticism.

Recently I have been engaging with a large volume of archival holdings, and have been undertaking the second part of my research by analysing just how real aspects of ideology were on women. Reading, for one, through the Ramsden correspondence in Huddersfield has shown me just how far the limitations of ideas of high society actually impacted women within Northern areas. It would be errorsome to say 'normal' or 'real' women, but it would be fair to say grounded in the economic and social realities of working life. How far did it matter about social emulation when the rail roads were threatening their homes, or when political marginalisation meant that the average woman would be institutionalised if they attended a political meeting as anything other than her.

So, I will focus above all else on my thesis, and hopefully come here soon to discuss some of the mesmerising, mind blowing sources I have seen over the past few months. And perhaps one day soon, catch up on some sleep - which right now is a concept too alien to me to imagine.

'Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it'

The complexity of rationality - just another system of patronage?

John Bull and Lady Hertford discuss politics

Almost everyone knows of the public/private distinction in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth-century. Typically, it is argued that this distinction emerged around 1780 and continued long into the Nineteenth-Century; we all know of the angel in the house - but was she really there, or is she a literary creation rather than art imitating life.

Historians such as Amanda Vickery have sought to change this preconception, however, and readdress the dynamics of gender relations in the period. My own research follows the premise of Vickery, and the assertion that the public/private, political/domestic, male/female distinction actually adds little to the debates of society and culture of the period, and is actually rather a flawed way of looking at the distinction between men and women in the period.

The question that always emerges in readdressing this debate, however, is the question of wealth and social prestige. Rarely in history did the wealthy sections of society share fundamentals with the lower classes, and so, it seems necessary to divide the question into women, wealth and public activity and also, charity to and charity for. That is to say, taking for example the abolition movement, wealthy women (with leisure time, money and friends in a similar situation) could become involved in the political debates through philanthropic activity and a subtle activism, yet, their lower class counterparts were marginalised once again; poor women were the philanthropic activity - the wealthy the givers of the aid. 

Considering this, is the system of philanthropy in the period actually as hierarchical as the male debates on gender, and should we actually see the public woman more akin to the masculine, whose influence they sought to transcend? 

Does this once again bring the historian to the question of patronage that was so central to Enlightenment debate about reason and worth, rather than status and privilege? 

Was the question of woman's worth and her rationality actually a question of how her behaviour fitted within the system of male patronage regarding access to knowledge, information and freedom? Or, was there a more complex debate on a woman's rationality outside of Wollstonecraft's circle? Surely she cannot have been the only woman to transcend her dependent role - yet, she has been charged with misogyny and as such, the question appears circular. 

The coffeehouse, despite the limitations of the man of letters, women found room to maneuver and a place for their intellectualism within this domain. 
  

Introduction