Radicalism and Feminism in England in the Early Nineteenth Century

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between the various strands of feminism and radicalism in the early nineteenth century. Both developed within the early industrial-capitalist economy which transformed and reinforced the pre-existing relations of patriarchy.
The intellectual roots of radicalism lay in Enlightenment philosophy with its emphasis on the harmony between Reason and Nature, Equality and Justice. It was by appropriating these concepts and applying them to women that feminism gained a foothold. In this transition period of social disruption and economic dislocations, radicals and feminists were challenging the traditional forms of social organisation and women's position in the social order. Before the emergence of class-based struggle it was possible to believe in and work towards a society based on mutual harmony and co-operation.
At the same time as the new class of wage workers was being formed the middle class was increasing its power and greatly strengthening the eighteenth century ideology of 'ideal womanhood'. Underlying the debate on the Woman Question was an attempt to understand the true nature of woman and the attempt by some women to break out of the conventional model imposed upon them. The literature of the period both reflected and sustained this ideological struggle.
As the virtues ascribed to women by early Protestantism became transformed into moral values by the middle class they were transmitted to the lower classes by such movements as Methodism. Thus the dominant religious ideologies sustained both capitalism and patriarchy.
Only some tendencies within radicalism were able to accommodate a feminist dimension. The early socialists were the main carriers of feminist ideas with their radical critique of contemporary society and radical visions of alternative forms of social organisation in which all relationships would be transformed. It was the feminist dimension of radicalism which attacked the roots of the contemporary social order, based as it was on patriarchal relations.