Any Questions? The Gendered Dimensions of the Political Platform

Abstract

Compares the political performance and reception of Chartist Mary Ann Walker and social reformer Josephine Butler to consider how changes in the organization of public meetings in the mid-1800s helped make female oratory more acceptable to audiences. Believes objections to women’s assuming the role of public speaker were not based simply on a desire to exclude women from the political sphere, but derived from a reluctance to allow women to face public interrogation. Claims most Chartists welcomed the token presence and even the voices of women on the platform but were loath to expose women to questions and engage with detractors, thus limiting their involvement as delegates; by contrast with the rowdy nature of Chartist assemblies, public meetings from the 1850s onwards resembled more closely the format of the public lecture or reading where speakers were not required to take questions. Shows that women who began to speak out did so within very controlled and disciplined auditoriums; hence, women like Josephine Butler were not simply beneficiaries of changes in the public sphere, but rather were themselves advocates of a mode of public discussion that emphasized the authority of the speaker and the passivity of the audience.