Freethought, Free Love and Feminism: secularist debates on marriage and sexual morality, England c. 1850–1885

This article examines the previously unexplored current of Freethinking feminism in the second half of the nineteenth century. Active in the women’s movement of this period, Freethinking feminists were nonetheless viewed as a liability—an attitude that contributed to their exclusion from much of the subsequent historiography. Such marginalisation was due not only to their vocal opposition to all forms of religion, but also their openness to discussing new ways of organising heterosexual relationships. This article focuses on Freethinking feminist critiques of marriage and support for free unions. It demonstrates that these issues continued to be debated in the Secularist movement at a time when many other radical organisations—including much of the women’s movement—kept silent on such topics. In this way, Freethinking feminists kept alive the more radical and libertarian critiques of traditional sexual morality developed by Owenite feminists in the 1830s and 40s. The author argues that the ideology of Freethought propelled its adherents to readdress questions of sex within a new ‘Secularist’ ethical framework. Fierce debate ensued, yet commitment to freedom of discussion ensured that ‘unrespectable’, libertarian voices were never entirely silenced. Freethinking feminism might, then, be viewed as the ‘missing link’ between early nineteenth‐century feminist visions of greater sexual freedom and the more radical discussions of sexuality and free love that began to emerge at the fin de siècle.