Seen but not Heard? Women’s Platforms, Respectability, and Female Publics in the Mid- Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Explores the role of the press in defining the boundaries of respectable feminine activity in the public sphere in mid-nineteenth-century Britain. Examines reporting of women’s meetings and appeals to female opinion to demonstrate that although women who engaged in public controversy risked ridicule and condemnation, they could be portrayed as respectable and even desirable by selective reporting of women’s meetings by concentrating only on the outcome. Considers the broadening opportunities for women to address mixed audiences on topics such as female education and social reform. Concludes that the stifling of public debate between women in order to uphold an ideal of female moral purity was a price women had to pay to influence public opinion, and that such ideals of feminine respectability continued to shape women’s access to platforms long after the hypocrisy of moral arguments against women’s involvement in political debate had been exposed and the existence of a unified “female opinion” thrown into doubt.