<Articles>A Study of Feminism in Victorian England : around the victorian governesses

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Other Title
  • <論説>ヴィクトリア時代のフェミニズムの一考察 : ガヴァネスの問題をめぐって
  • ヴィクトリア時代のフェミニズムの一考察--ガヴァネスの問題をめぐって
  • ヴィクトリア ジダイ ノ フェミニズム ノ イチ コウサツ ガヴァネス ノ モンダイ オ メグッテ

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The feminist movement in England was one of the most striking social movements led by direct organized action during the period between the beginning of the Victorian age and the first World War. The initiative of this movement was taken consistently by the middle-class women and the spread of the emancipation was also limited to the middle classes. But one of the major factors which gave rise to this feminist rebellion consisted in the economic distress of those gentlewomen who were compelled to earn their own living in spite of the prejudice against paid employment outstanding among the middle classes. Their almost only occupation was the half-private governess and therefore its occupational conditions were miserable, for example, notoriously low salary caused by overstock. Those facts of material need exerted a constant pressure over the development of feminism in England during its formative years. The attempts to relieve those governesses raised up the movements for improving the low standard of middle-class girls' education and for expanding employment opportunities for those gentlewomen, and further developed more extensive feminism out of the early narrow intensions of governesses' relief and nourished the feminists of talent and the foundations of the women's suffrage movement, that is, a main stream of feminism in England.

Journal

  • 史林

    史林 56 (2), 224-258, 1973-03-01

    THE SHIGAKU KENKYUKAI (The Society of Historical Research), Kyoto University

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