Notable Figures in Nineteenth-Century Feminism

Abstract

This essay argues that feminist gains in the nineteenth century were frequently driven by the leadership of notable figures, men as well as women. Beginning with Mary Wollstonecraft, often deemed the ‘mother’ of modern feminism, it concludes with the campaign for the vote led by the suffragettes. While nineteenth-century feminism was initially galvanised by a need to change the law to remedy specific injustices (twice led by Caroline Norton), the middle period saw the forming of broad-spectrum groups with overlapping interests in women’s employment, education, married women’s property law, and eventually the suffrage. Leadership of specific campaigns was, however, still dependent on notable figures, such as Josephine Butler and Florence Nightingale, while Harriet Martineau and Frances Power Cobbe promoted feminist causes in their periodical writing. After comparing influential works by Harriet Taylor Mill and John Stuart Mill, the essay closes with Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s Introduction to the centenary edition of Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, and her reflections on a hundred years of feminist activism.