Religious Change and Male Domestic Authority in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain

This paper argues that religious ideas constitute a neglected element of anti-feminist thought, and that the creation of a viable feminist politics in the nineteenth century required supporters of women’s rights to develop credible challenges to anti-feminist arguments derived from scripture. New approaches to the study of scripture, the so-called ethical revolt against Christianity and the growing influence of Incarnational theology were therefore important intellectual influences on Victorian feminists like Millicent Garrett Fawcett and Emily Davies. The paper will pay particular attention to the way in which religious ideas were used to justify male domestic authority, and will examine how those religious arguments lost their force in the final third of the nineteenth century. The writings of J. Llewellyn Davies will be used to illustrate some of the ways in which liberal Anglicanism, and especially the work of F.D. Maurice, allowed supporters of women’s rights to forge new models of masculinity. It will conclude by arguing that a focus on the religious elements of anti-feminist thought suggests a profound discontinuity between Victorian and Edwardian anti-feminism.