Women's Suffrage in Britain: From Chartist Exclusion to Pankhurst Radicalism (thesis)

Abstract

Although the language has changed somewhat, there remains a constancy in the way "moral principles" ultimately stifle opportunities available to women, keeping them on unequal grounds with men. Upper- and middle-class women were expected to maintain an increasingly Victorian sense of morality and respectability, ideals which ultimately were used as justification for refusing women the vote. This, then -- extremely broadly -- is the subject of my thesis: men have used morality as a tool to exclude well-to-do women from attaining the vote in Britain. [From Introduction]