Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T17:34:09.379Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Samuel Smiles and the Woman Question in Early Victorian Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

Extract

When Samuel Smiles (1812–1904) looked back over his career from the vantage point of old age he saw himself as one who had labored for “the emancipation and intellectual improvement of women.” His self-description will surprise those who know him, either through his famous book, Self-Help (1859), where women make fleeting appearances as maternal influences on the achievements of great men, or through the attempts that have been made during the Thatcher years to offer him as an exemplar of a highly selective code of “Victorian Values.” Nonetheless, there is much to be said for Smiles's interpretation: not only was he a prolific author on the condition of women, but his writings on this subject from the late 1830s to the early 1850s were radical in tone and content.

By directing attention to these writings, this article makes three points about early Victorian gender relations, radicalism, and Smiles's own career. First, it challenges the lingering notion that this was a time when patriarchal values stifled debate on gender issues. For some historians who write about the women's movement, the early Victorian era has the status of something like a dark age in the history of the agitation for women's rights; this period is overshadowed on the one side by the great debates initiated by Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and on the other by the new feminist movements that developed after the 1850s. Barbara Caine, for example, has written recently that the exclusion of women from the public sphere was “absolute” in the mid-century years; few women had the financial resources necessary to set up a major journal even if they had been bold enough to do so, and the sort of man who wrote sympathetically about women was concerned primarily with his own needs.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Smiles, Samuel, Autobiography (London, 1905), p. 344Google Scholar.

2 Smiles, Samuel, Self-Help (1859; reprint, London, 1958), pp. 342–43Google Scholar. Gilmour, Ian, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (London, 1992), pp. 336–37Google Scholar, refers to Smiles as “the Victorian hero of Thatcherism,” which he describes as a “reactionary creed.” There seems to be an endless supply of these attempts to force Smiles into a late twentieth-century ideological straitjacket: see the Institute of Economic Affairs's singularly ill-timed “Foreword” (attached to the reissue of Smiles's, Self-Help [London, 1996], pp. ivix)Google Scholar, in which Lord Harris of High Cross salutes Smiles as “a true Victorian” who anticipated “the cumulative failure” of the welfare state and is likely to find his “most enduring monument” in “the exemplary economic vigour and social stability of the Pacific rim, unimpaired to this day by socialised welfare.” Evidently we need a reissue of Burn's, W.L.The Age Of Equipoise (London, 1964)Google Scholar, with its salutary warning against the dangers of “playing the game of selective Victorianism” (pp. 26–36).

3 Caine, Barbara, English Feminism, 1780–1980 (Oxford, 1997), pp. 6–7, 56Google Scholar.

4 Mrs.Reid, Hugo, A Plea for Woman: Being a Vindication of the Importance and Extent of Her Natural Sphere of Action: With Remarks on Recent Works on the Subject (Edinburgh, 1843), p. 18Google Scholar.

5 Midgley, Clare, Women against Slavery: The British Campaigns, 1780–1870 (London, 1992)Google Scholar. See also my Woman's Mission and Pressure Group Politics in Britain (1825–1860),” Bulletin of the John Rylands University of Manchester 63, no. 1 (Autumn 1980): 194230CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and A House Divided against Itself: The British Abolitionists Revisited,” Journal of Caribbean History 22, nos. 1 and 2 (1988): 4267Google Scholar.

6 Quoted in the League (12 April 1845).

7 Taylor, Barbara, Eve and the New Jerusalem: Socialism and Feminism in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1983), p. xiGoogle Scholar; Gleadle, Kathryn, The Early Feminists: Radical Unitarians and the Emergence of the Women's Rights Movement, 1831–1851 (London, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Vickery, Amanda, “Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History,” Historical Journal 36, no. 2 (1993): 399400CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 For another example, see Pickering, Paul A. and Tyrrell, Alex, “In the Thickest of the Fight: The Reverend James Scholefield (1790–1855) and the Bible Christians of Manchester and Salford,” Albion 26, no. 3 (Fall 1994): 461–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Mill, John Stuart, “On Liberty,” in his Utilitarianism, Liberty and Representative Government (London, 1910), p. 127Google Scholar.

11 See, e.g., Morris, Robert J., “Samuel Smiles and the Genesis of Self-Help: The Retreat to a Petit Bourgeois Utopia,” Historical Journal 24, no. 1 (1981): 89109CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For other references to Smiles moving to the right politically, see Brown, Lucy, “The Chartists and the Anti-Corn Law League,” in Chartist Studies, ed. Briggs, Asa (London, 1962), p. 344Google Scholar; Harrison, J. F. C., “Chartism in Leeds,” in Briggs, , ed., Chartist Studies, pp. 8385Google Scholar.

12 A recent example is Taylor, Miles, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847–1860 (Oxford, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Diary of the Late John Epps, M.D. Edin., Embracing Autobiographical Records; Notes on Passing Events; Homeopathy, General Medicine; Politics and Religion, etc. (London, n.d.).

14 Parkin, Frank, Middle-Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Manchester, 1968), pp. 3, 5, 39Google Scholar.

15 Travers, Tim, “Attribution of Articles in Eliza Cook's Journal to Smiles,” in his Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Work Ethic (New York, 1987), pp. 351–56Google Scholar; Jarvis, Adrian, Samuel Smiles and the Construction of Victorian Values (Thrupp, England, 1997), p. 168Google Scholar.

16 Smiles, S., Autobiography, pp. 164–65Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., p. 165.

18 This process of textual comparison is described by Travers, Tim in “The Problem of Identification of Articles: Samuel Smiles and Eliza Cook's Journal, 1849–1854,” Victorian Periodicals Newsletter 20 (June 1973): 4145Google Scholar.

19 Smiles, Samuel, “The Story of Robert Nicoll's Life,” Good Words (1875), p. 314Google Scholar.

20 Smiles's career as a political radical is described in my Class Consciousness in Early Victorian Britain: Samuel Smiles, Leeds Politics and the Self-Help Creed,” Journal of British Studies 9 (May 1970): 102–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 The full title is Physical Education: Or the Nurture and Management of Children, Founded on a Study of Their Nature and Constitution (Edinburgh, 1838)Google Scholar.

22 Ibid., pp. 1, 5, 91, 98, 159–61, 174–76, and 180.

23 The intellectual climate in Edinburgh and East Lothian at this time is described in Saunders, Laurance J., Scottish Democracy, 1815–40 (Edinburgh, 1950)Google Scholar.

24 Peacock, Thomas Love, Crotchet Castle, in Novels of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. Calder-Marshall, Arthur (London, 1967), p. 267Google Scholar.

25 Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 62Google Scholar. Smiles discussed some of the early attempts to write popularized medical literature in his Brief Biographies (Boston, 1861), pp. 365–76Google Scholar.

26 Gibbon, Charles, The Life of George Combe (London, 1878)Google Scholar; de Giustino, David, Conquest of Mind: Phrenology and Victorian Social Thought (London, 1975), pp. 310Google Scholar.

27 Diary of the Late John Epps, p. 131.

28 Combe, George, Lectures on Popular Education Delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophical Association in April and November 1833 (Edinburgh, 1848), pp. 50, 52, 57Google Scholar.

29 Parkes, Bessie R., Remarks on the Education of Girls, with Reference to the Social, Legal and Industrial Position of Women in the Present Day (London, 1856), p. 8Google Scholar.

30 Diary of the Late John Epps, p. 399; Smiles, S., Physical Education, p. 24Google Scholar; Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 80Google Scholar.

31 Samuel Smiles to George Combe, 20 December 1837, Scottish National Library, SNL 7244, fol. 10.

32 Mineka, Francis E., The Dissidence of Dissent: The Monthly Repository, 1806–38 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944)Google Scholar.

33 Samuel Smiles to Willy Smiles, 25 June 1868, Leeds City Archives, Smiles Correspondence, SS/AII/5a.

34 Gleadle, , The Early Feminists, p. 6Google Scholar.

35 Tomalin, Claire, The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft (Harmondsworth, 1974), pp. 5152Google Scholar; Mineka, , The Dissidence of Dissent, p. 343Google Scholar. Gleadle, The Early Feminists, refers to Grimstone as “the great figure in the movement” for “many early feminists” (p. 37).

36 Grimstone, Mary Leman, Character; or, Jew and Gentile: A Tale (London, 1833), p. 77Google Scholar.

37 Smiles, S., Physical Education, p. 6Google Scholar.

38 Morris, , “Samuel Smiles and the Genesis of Self-Help,” p. 96Google Scholar.

39 A Word on Behalf of a Neglected Portion of Society,” Leeds Times (19 October 1839)Google Scholar.

40 Why Are Not Women Enfranchised?Leeds Times (9 May 1840)Google Scholar.

41 The attitudes expressed at the antislavery Convention are described in my “Woman's Mission and Pressure Group Politics (1825–1860),” pp. 194–98. For the laughter at the Chartist convention, see the Northern Star (7 January 1843).

42 Martin, Louis Aimé, The Education of Mothers of Families: Or, the Civilisation of the Human Race by Women, trans. Lee, E. (London, 1842), pp. 31, 37, 65, 73Google Scholar. Smiles seems to have read the French edition of this book.

43 There are brief references to Fleming and the Union in Holyoake, George J., The History of Co-operation (London, 1893), 1:151–53, 232; 2:577Google Scholar.

44 Owen, Robert, “A New View of Society,” in A New View of Society and Report to the County of Lanark (1813; reprint, Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 140Google Scholar; Simon, Brian, Studies in the History of Education (London, 1960), pp. 4445Google Scholar.

45 These articles are [Smiles, Samuel]: “Woman the Great Social Reformer,” Union (1 April 1842)Google Scholar, Woman and Civilisation,” Union (1 September 1842)Google Scholar, Female Education. I. Social,” Union (1 November 1842)Google Scholar, Female Education. II. Moral,” Union (1 December 1842)Google Scholar, and The Women of the Working Classes,” Union (1 January 1843)Google Scholar. Smiles also contributed Mirabeau,” Union (1 August 1842)Google Scholar, and a poem, Things Good and Evil,” Union (1 September 1842)Google Scholar. The Leeds Times (14 January 1843) acknowledged that Smiles was “S. S.”; he subsequently claimed authorship of all of these articles in his Character (London, 1913), p. 66Google Scholar.

46 “Woman the Great Social Reformer,” pp. 10, 11, and 13. Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of Smiles's favorite authors at this time, had published a lecture entitled “Man the Reformer.”

47 Davidoff, Leonore and Hall, Catherine (Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 [London, 1987])Google Scholar refer to a “generation of young women growing up in the 1820s and 1830s” with “less experience of domestic tasks than their mothers and grandmothers” (p. 391). See also Banks, Joseph A. and Banks, Olive, Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England (Liverpool, 1964), p. 12Google Scholar.

48 S. Smiles, “Woman and Civilisation.”

49 Smiles, S., “Female Education. I. Social,” pp. 322–23Google Scholar.

50 Ibid., pp. 324, 327. Smiles had been anticipated by “Mistress Margaret Dods of the Cleikum Inn, St. Ronan's” [Christian Isobel Johnstone, an Edinburgh radical journalist], who had taken up the challenge of making cookery part of “the science of good living” and “the diffusion of useful knowledge” in her The Cook and Housewife's Manual: A Practical System Of Modern Domestic Cookery and Family Management (Edinburgh, 1833)Google Scholar. Sydney Owenson, Lady Morgan (c. 1776–1859), was the author of Woman and Her Master (1840).

51 Smiles, S., “Female Education. II. Moral,” pp. 373–74Google Scholar.

52 Smiles, S., “The Women of the Working Classes,” pp. 429–30Google Scholar.

53 For information on Smiles and the Leeds Redemption society, see Morris, , “Samuel Smiles,” pp. 105–6Google Scholar; for information on his involvement with phrenology, Cobden, and the education campaign, see de Giustino, , Conquest of Mind, p. 211Google Scholar. Smiles enthusiastically described his part in this campaign in several letters to his brother, R. W. Smiles (Manchester Public Library, National Public Schools Association Papers, M136/2). Surprisingly, Morris describes Smiles's attitude to his role as “uncomfortable” (p. 106).

54 Tyrrell, Alex, “The Origins of a Victorian Best-Seller—an Unacknowledged Debt,” Notes and Queries, n.s., 17, no. 9 (September 1970): 347–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 [Smiles, S.], “Men and Women—Education of the Sexes,” Eliza Cook's Journal (14 December 1850)Google Scholar. I have attributed this anonymous article to Smiles because of identical passages in his article Female Education. I. Social” and in Character, pp. 330–33Google Scholar.

56 Smiles referred to Eliza Cook's Journal enjoying sales of nearly forty thousand copies in 1850 (Samuel Smiles to R. W. Smiles, 26 March 1850, Manchester Public Library, National Public Schools Association, M136/2, 3/3047). According to Gleadle (The Early Feminists, p. 43), the circulation was between fifty and sixty thousand copies a year earlier.

57 Woodring, Carl R., Victorian Samplers: William and Mary Howitt (Lawrence, Kans., 1952)Google Scholar. For the friendship between the Smiles and Howitt families, see Smiles, Aileen, Samuel Smiles and His Surroundings (London, 1956), p. 68Google Scholar; Lee, Amice, Laurels and Rosemary: The Life of William and Mary Howitt (London, 1955), p. 188Google Scholar.

58 Questions about the parts played by women in the conduct of the periodical press during the mid-nineteenth century require research. George Eliot's subeditorship of the Westminster Review is well known; William and Mary Howitt acted as a team in the production of their journal; Christian Isobel Johnstone edited Johnstone's Edinburgh Magazine and, when that was incorporated with Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, she took a prominent part in it; Charlotte Elizabeth Phelan (Tonna) edited the Christian Ladies' Magazine; Anna Richardson produced periodicals for the antislavery and peace movements; and doubtless other examples could be adduced.

59 Ingram, J. H., “Eliza Cook (1812–1889),” in The Poets and the Poetry of the Century: Joanna Baillie to Mathilde Blind, ed. Miles, Alfred H. (London, n.d.), pp. 269–72Google Scholar; Cooper, Thompson, Men of the Time: A Dictionary of Contemporaries, Containing Biographical Notices of Eminent Characters of Both Sexes (London, 1879)Google Scholar.

60 Review of the Poetical Works of Eliza Cook,” Oddfellows' Magazine, n.s., 2, no. 12 (1 October 1859)Google Scholar.

61 Eliza Cook to Samuel Smiles, 14 October 1848, Leeds City Archives, Smiles Correspondence, SS/A/IX/40. Her opening article, A Word to My Readers,” Eliza Cook's Journal (5 May 1849)Google Scholar, made a similar point about sitting at “the head of the table” encouraged by friends.

62 Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 161Google Scholar; Eliza Cook to Samuel Smiles, 13 November 1848, Leeds City Archives, Smiles Correspondence, SS/A/IX/41; and Samuel Smiles to R. W. Smiles, 12 August 1850, Manchester Public Library, National Public Schools Association, M136/2.3/3059.

63 Eliza Cook's Journal (30 August 1851).

64 Smiles was not the only man to encourage women to venture into journalism at this time. See Holyoake, George J., Sixty Years of an Agitator's Life, 2 vols. (London, 1893), 1:222–25Google Scholar; Alexander, Sally, Becoming a Woman and Other Essays in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Feminist History (London, 1994), pp. 4445Google Scholar.

65 Howitt, Margaret, ed., Mary Howitt: An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London, 1889), 2:37Google Scholar.

66 Leach, Joseph, Bright Particular Star: The Life and Times of Charlotte Cushman (New Haven, Conn., 1970), p. 157Google Scholar.

67 Review of the Poetical Works of Eliza Cook,” Oddfellows' Magazine (1 October 1859)Google Scholar.

68 “J. M. W.” and First Impressions of Miss Cushman's Romeo,” People's Journal (7 November 1846)Google Scholar.

69 Review of Romeo and Juliet,” Manchester Guardian (20 May 1846)Google Scholar.

70 Leach, , Bright Particular Star, pp. 179–80Google Scholar.

71 Ibid., p. 209.

72 Howitt, , Autobiography, 2:37Google Scholar; Leach, , Bright Particular Star, p. 188Google Scholar.

73 Stanza Addressed to Charlotte Cushman,” Eliza Cook's Journal (5 March 1853)Google Scholar.

74 Levine, Philippa, Victorian Feminism, 1850–1900 (London, 1987), pp. 1519Google Scholar.

75 Faderman, Lillian, Surpassing the Love of Men; Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present (New York, 1981), pp. 222—23Google Scholar. I am indebted to Judith Johnston for this reference.

76 Leach, , Bright Particular Star, p. 210Google Scholar.

77 Smiles, A., Samuel Smiles and His Surroundings, pp. 6869Google Scholar; Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 161Google Scholar; Lee, , Laurels and Rosemary, pp. 163, 188Google Scholar.

78 Bancroft, Elizabeth D., Letters from England, 1846–1849 (London, 1904), pp. 155–56Google Scholar; Smiles, A., Samuel Smiles and His Surroundings, p. 68Google Scholar; Diary of the Late John Epps, p. 477.

79 [Smiles, S.], “Men and Women—Education of the Sexes,” pp. 99100Google Scholar.

80 S. Smiles, three signed articles entitled The Condition of Factory Women—What Is Doing for Them?People's Journal, vols. 2–3 (18461847)Google Scholar. See also [Smiles, S.], “Employment of Young Women,” Eliza Cook's Journal (5 January 1850)Google Scholar, an unsigned article incorporating parts of the foregoing.

81 Clark, Anna, The Struggle for the Breeches: Gender and the Making of the British Working Class (London, 1995), p. 2Google Scholar.

82 Smiles, S., “The Condition of Factory Women—What Is Doing for Them?People's Journal 3 (1847): 52–54, 143–44Google Scholar. See also [Smiles, S.], “Industrial Schools for Young Women,” Eliza Cook's Journal (9 June 1849)Google Scholar; authorship is acknowledged in Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 161Google Scholar. Rimmer, W. G. (Marshalls of Leeds: Flax Spinners, 1788–1886 [Cambridge, 1960])Google Scholar describes the social philosophy of the Marshalls at this time.

83 [S. Smiles], “Men and Women—Education of the Sexes.”

84 [Smiles, S.], “The Seamstress,” Eliza Cook's Journal (11 May 1850)Google Scholar. Authorship of this article is acknowledged by Smiles in Samuel Smiles to R. W. Smiles, 11 May 1850, Manchester Public Library, National Public Schools Association, M136/2, 3/3055.

85 [S. Smiles], “Employment of Young Women.” He also wrote about Caroline Chisholm's work of sending women to the Australian colonies. See [Smiles, S.], “Mrs Chisholm,” Eliza Cook's Journal (3 January 1852)Google Scholar, and Mrs Chisholm,” in Brief Biographies, pp. 511–17Google Scholar.

86 [Smiles, S.], “Short Notes: Female Doctors,” Eliza Cook's Journal (28 September 1850)Google Scholar, an unsigned article, but see Samuel Smiles to R. W. Smiles (12 August 1850, Manchester Public Library, National Public Schools Association, M136/2.3/3059), where Smiles refers to writing “the Notes of the Month” at this time.

87 [Smiles, S.], “What Will Mrs Grundy Say?Eliza Cook's Journal (6 April 1850)Google Scholar. This unsigned article is identical in some sections to writing in Smiles's, Thrift (London, 1892), p. 235Google Scholar.

88 [Smiles, S.], “Nobody Did It!Eliza Cook's Journal (2 August 1851)Google Scholar, an unsigned article identified by Travers, in Samuel Smiles and the Victorian Ethic, p. 354Google Scholar.

89 See Smiles, Samuel, “Topics for Thought: What Will Mrs. Grundy Say?Leeds Times (16 November 1839)Google Scholar. In addition to appearing in “What Will Mrs Grundy Say?” Mrs. Grundy appears in the following two Eliza Cook's Journal articles: “A Stitch in Time” (10 August 1850) and “Our Mourning Customs” (28 September 1850). Smiles incorporated sections of Our Mourning Customs” in his Thrift, pp. 255–58Google Scholar. He may also have written “A Stitch in Time”; it was a moral tale published in Eliza Cook's Journal at a time when Smiles told his brother that he was writing much of the monthly output, including “Sometimes a Tale or Sketch Also.” See Samuel Smiles to R. W. Smiles, 12 August 1850, National Public Schools Association, Manchester Central Public Library, M136/2, 3/3059.

90 Smiles, S., “Industrial Schools for Young Women,” Eliza Cook's Journal (9 June 1849)Google Scholar.

91 Cobbe, Frances P., The Life of Frances Power Cobbe by Herself, 2 vols. (London, 1894), 1:5868Google Scholar.

92 [Smiles, S.], “Men and Women—Education of the Sexes,” pp. 9798Google Scholar.

93 Gerson, Noel B., George Sand: A Biography of the First Modern Liberated Woman (London, 1973), p. 3Google Scholar.

94 Croker, John W., “French Novels,” Quarterly Review 56 (April 1836): 99, 100, 102, 105Google Scholar. The article was long remembered and quoted: see Thomson, Patricia, George Sand and the Victorians: Her Influence and Reputation in Nineteenth-Century England (London, 1977), p. 15Google Scholar.

95 Searle, January [Phillips, George Searle], The Life, Character, and Genius, of Ebenezer Elliott, the Corn Law Rhymer (London, 1850), p. 131Google Scholar; Mrs.Foster, , A Hand-Book of Modern European Literature for the Use of Schools and Private Families (London, 1849), pp. 215–18Google Scholar.

96 Smiles, Samuel, “George Sand,” Howitt's Journal (2 February 1847), pp. 128–30Google Scholar.

97 Smiles, Samuel, “Félicité Lamennais,” Howitt's Journal (10 July 1847)Google Scholar; Roe, William G., Lamennais and England: The Reception of Lamennais's Religious Ideas in England in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1966), pp. 22, 179Google Scholar; Thomson, , George Sand and the Victorians, pp. 2425Google Scholar.

98 Smiles, S., “George Sand,” p. 129Google Scholar.

99 Thomson, , George Sand and the Victorians, p. 25Google Scholar.

100 Smiles, S., Brief Biographies, pp. 474, 488, 499Google Scholar.

101 Gleadle, , The Early Feminists, pp. 171–72Google Scholar. The changing radicalism of this era is analyzed by Tholfsen, Trygve R., Working Class Radicalism in Mid-Victorian England (London, 1976), pp. 159–68Google Scholar.

102 Houghton, Walter E., ed., Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824–1890 (Toronto, 1966), 1:699Google Scholar.

103 Smiles, S., Self-Help, p. 211Google Scholar.

104 Smiles, S., Character, pp. 61, 328Google Scholar.

105 Banks, and Banks, , Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England, pp. 5456Google Scholar; Layard, George S., Mrs. Lynn Linton: Her Life, Letters and Opinions (London, 1901), pp. 139–40, 259–60Google Scholar.

106 Smiles, S., Character, pp. 6668Google Scholar.

107 Smiles, Samuel, Duty with Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance (London, 1887), p. 42Google Scholar.

108 Smiles, S., Autobiography, p. 344Google Scholar.