Enquiry 5 To what extent did women have different views, aims and aspirations throughout the nineteenth century?

Enquiry overview Lesson 1: Were all Victorian women the same? Lesson 2: What if you had to work? Lesson 3: Step by step Lesson 4: Did all women want the vote? Lesson 5: How did women get the vote? Outcome activity: Write an extended answer as to how divided Victorian women were and its impact on the campaign for women’s suffrage.

Lesson 4 Did all women want the vote?

Lesson 4 overview Content covered in the lesson: 1889 Appeal Against Female Suffrage. Gertrude Bell, explorer. 1908 Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League. Queen Victoria.

To what extent did women have different views, aims and aspirations throughout the nineteenth century? Recap: How did the legal rights of women change over the nineteenth century? Which class of women was most affected by these changes?

Women who opposed having the vote Image credits: © June Purvis 1900s postcard supposed to show a future House of Commons dominated by women

Activity 1: 1889 Appeal Against Female Suffrage Successful novelist who was passionate about helping the poor and improving education for women. Helped set up Somerville College, Oxford. Thought women’s expertise was the domestic sphere – not international affairs. 1889 Appeal Against Female Suffrage – signed by 104 prominent women. Image credits: Wellcome Collection Mary Humphry Ward Q: Why was Mary Humphry Ward opposed to suffrage? Q: How effective were her arguments?

Activity 1: Gertrude Bell, explorer Very famous explorer – travelled in Iraq and mapped its boundaries. Came from a very rich family. First woman to get a first-class history degree at Oxford University. Opposed women having the vote – thought women were not educated enough to make good decisions. In 1909, she organised a petition, demanding that women should not get the vote. She thought giving women the vote would distract them from running their families properly. Image credits: Gertrude Bell Archive, Newcastle University. Image reference PERS_B_001 Q: How influential were famous women like Bell in shaping opposition to women’s suffrage?

Activity 1: 1908 Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League Humphry Ward and Gertrude Bell involved. Opposed women being given the vote in general elections. Believed in ‘separate spheres’. Believed that as women couldn’t fight, they shouldn’t vote. By July 1910, the league announced it had around 15,000 members and 110 branches, and close to 320,000 people had signed its petition to Parliament. ‘Most women in Britain are not interested in having the vote – only a small, noisy minority.’ Image credit: LSE Library Q: Why do you think the Anti-Suffrage Society grew so quickly in 1908–1910?

Activity 1: Queen Victoria The Queen is most anxious to enlist everyone who can speak or write or join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘woman's rights’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Queen Victoria, private letter, 1870 Image credit: © National Portrait Gallery, London Q: Why might Queen Victoria be so opposed to women’s suffrage?

To what extent did women have different views, aims and aspirations throughout the nineteenth century? Activity 2: A letter to Queen Victoria Your challenge is to write a letter challenging Queen Victoria. Tasks: If you think she is wrong in her views, make arguments challenging her accordingly. If you think she is right, use what you have learned about the anti-suffrage arguments used by some women to support her.

To what extent did women have different views, aims and aspirations throughout the nineteenth century? Plenary: How divided were Victorian women? Summarise the arguments used by people like Queen Victoria, Gertrude Bell and Mary Humphry Ward to oppose women’s suffrage. To what extent had the ideas you came across in Lesson 1 changed by 1908? Image credit: © Museum of London