The Victorian Cage: Women’s Place in Pre-Industrial Society
The late 19th century found women across the Western world trapped in what Freud would later describe as an immutable biological destiny. In 1907, the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society records captured prevailing attitudes with startling clarity: women’s intellectual capacities were deemed inferior, their potential for sublimation limited, and education largely wasted on them. These pseudoscientific pronouncements masked a deeper social reality – the systematic exclusion of women from public life and economic independence.
Traditional agrarian societies had maintained rigid gender roles where women’s labor, though essential, remained invisible. The peasant economy required both male and female contributions, yet only men’s work was formally recognized. As Grete Appen’s poignant account of her mother’s life reveals, educational opportunities were routinely denied to girls while brothers received vocational training. This pattern persisted well into the industrial age, with census data from the 1890s showing only 12% of married women formally employed in Germany compared to 95% of married men.
The Industrial Paradox: Economic “Progress” and Female Marginalization
Industrialization created a cruel paradox for working-class women. While factory work offered some independence, the separation of home and workplace actually reinforced gender inequality. Married women found themselves increasingly confined to domestic spheres as industrial capitalism created the myth of the male “breadwinner.” By 1911, only 10% of British married women held recognized employment. The few who worked faced systemic wage discrimination – their labor deemed supplementary rather than essential.
Middle-class women faced different constraints. The cult of domesticity idealized them as “angels of the house,” yet economic realities forced many into genteel poverty. The rise of typewriters and department stores created new white-collar ghettos – female clerks in Germany increased from 32,000 in 1882 to 174,000 by 1907, but these positions came with strict social limitations and the expectation that work would cease upon marriage.
Education as Rebellion: The Making of the New Woman
The most dramatic changes emerged in female education. France went from having zero public secondary schools for girls in 1880 to 138 by 1913. British girls’ secondary schools exploded from 99 in 1904 to 349 by 1914, nearly matching boys’ institutions. Universities slowly opened their doors – by 1914, Russia had 9,300 female students while Germany, France and Italy each hosted about 5,000.
This educational revolution created the “New Woman” – a figure who haunted male imaginations and dominated progressive literature. Ibsen’s Nora slamming the door in “A Doll’s House” (1879) became the iconic image of female self-liberation. Real-life counterparts like Marie Curie (Nobel Prizes in 1903 and 1911) and labor organizer Rosa Luxemburg proved women could excel in traditionally male domains.
The Suffrage Struggle and Its Limits
The fight for voting rights became the most visible feminist battle, particularly in Britain and America. The Women’s Social and Political Union (founded 1903) employed militant tactics – chaining themselves to railings, smashing windows, and enduring force-feedings during hunger strikes. Yet as socialist feminist Katherine Anthony noted in 1915, the movement remained largely middle-class, often overlooking working women’s more pressing concerns like wages and working conditions.
Conservative forces mounted fierce resistance. Psychologist Paul Möbius argued higher education would damage women’s “natural” roles, while philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche famously advised men to “go to women with a whip.” Even progressive men often supported feminist causes only selectively – liberal governments proved some of suffrage’s staunchest opponents.
Sexual Revolution and Its Discontents
Beneath political struggles simmered questions about female sexuality and family structures. Birth control advocates like Margaret Sanger faced prosecution, while the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition’s “Palace of Women’s Work” celebrated female achievement while ignoring exploited female workers behind the scenes.
Socialists like August Bebel envisioned radically transformed family structures in “Woman and Socialism” (1879), but most feminists hesitated to challenge marriage directly. The tension between career and motherhood remained unresolved – pioneering women like economist Beatrice Webb often chose childlessness, while Austrian socialist Amalie Seidl abandoned activism for five years to raise children.
Legacy: The Unfinished Revolution
By 1914, the contours of modern feminism had emerged. Women won voting rights across Europe and America in the 1920s, while educational and professional barriers continued falling. Yet fundamental inequalities persisted in wages, social expectations, and the division of domestic labor.
The “New Woman” of the pre-war years – cycling in bloomers, attending university, demanding political rights – became the prototype for 20th century feminism. Yet as postwar fashions shifted from corsets to Coco Chanel’s “little black dress,” women discovered liberation brought new dilemmas about maintaining femininity in male-designed institutions. This tension between equality and difference, first articulated in the ferment of 1880-1914, continues to shape gender debates today. The awakening had begun, but the revolution remained – and remains – incomplete.