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The experiences of Catholic lay women after Emancipation are largely absent from the historical narrative in England, in part, due to their portrayal in popular culture as especially passive and submissive to assumed patriarchal and hierarchical controls from the Church. Yet during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an ostensibly patriarchal religion became a locus of empowerment for some women. In this dissertation, I posit that the Catholic Church could be a place for expressions of unconventional religiosity and reinterpretations of Catholic “True Womanhood” and domesticity. I show that in some cases, personal interpretations of Catholic womanhood demonstrated slippages of the True Woman trope, reflecting contemporary influences like the New Woman and modernity, yet all were underpinned by a devout faith. I argue that the Catholic faith provided a space for some women to assert themselves in the private and public spheres in ways previously unnoted in scholarship, due to their gender or faith. This dissertation will address this significant lacuna in the scholarship by tracing the work and lives of four exceptional lay Catholic women – Margaret Fletcher, Maude Petre, Mabel Batten and Radclyffe Hall. The lives of these women demonstrate that there were Catholic women living unconventional and often unorthodox lives while exemplifying striking examples of pious Catholicism. For some, conversion to Catholicism was itself a radical choice, demonstrating an atypicality of belief and action that was echoed in other areas of their lives. A conjunction of the themes of marriage, domesticity, religion, gender, class, conversion, and sexuality informs my discussion of how these four remarkable women powerfully asserted aspects their faith while transgressing boundaries traditionally assumed for lay Catholic women. By drawing from privately held collections, as well as numerous archives, this dissertation uses the examples of these four women of unconventional religiosity in the years c.1880-c.1920 to provide rare evidence of the often hidden lives of lay Catholic women in England. / 2024-10-31T00:00:00Z

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From 1906 to 1912 the British police contended with the struggles of militant suffragettes and active unionists. In facing the disturbances associated with the suffragette movement and union mobilization, the police confronted the dual problems of maintaining the public order essential to the survival and welfare of the kingdom while at the same time assuring to individuals the liberty necessary for Britain's further progress. This dissertation studies those police activities in detail.

British aristocratic women exerted political influence and power during the century beginning with the accession of George III. They expressed their political power through the four roles of social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political patron/electioneer. British aristocratic women were able, trained, and expected to play these roles. Politics could not have existed without these women. The source of their political influence was the close interconnection of politics and society. In this small, inter-connected society, women could and did influence politics. Political decisions, especially for the Whigs, were not made in the halls of government with which we are so familiar, but in the halls of the homes of the social/political elite. However, this close interconnection can make women's political influence difficult to assess and understand for our twentieth century experience. Sources for this thesis are readily available. Contemporary, primary sources are abundant. This was the age of letter and diary writing. There is, however, a dearth of modern works concerning the political activities of aristocratic women. Most modern works rarely mention women. Other problems with sources include the inappropriate feminization of the time period and the filtering of this period through modern, not contemporary, points of view. Separate spheres is the most common and most inappropriate feminist issue raised by historians. This doctrine is not valid for aristocratic women of this time. The material I present in this thesis is not new. The sources, both contemporary and modern, have been available to historians for some time. By changing our rigid definition of politics by enlarging it to include the broader areas of political activities such as social patron, patronage distributor, political advisor, and political/electioneer, we can see British aristocratic women in a new light, revealing political power and influence.

The reclamation and analysis of women's experiences within three Nonconformist denominations is the focus of this thesis. The first chapter places each denomination in its social and theological context, and describes its governing structures. The bulk of the thesis is devoted to situating women within this context and examining the ways in which women sought representation within male-dominated governing structures. Chapter two examines the conflict between Friends' egalitarian theology and women's lack of governing power. Although women Friends gained access to the governing body of the Society, the issue of equality remained problematic. The chapter finishes with a discussion of the Society's split over women's suffrage. The Baptist Zenana Mission is the focus of the third chapter. Zenana missionaries claimed spiritual and imperial authority over "native" women and used the languages of separate spheres to carve out a vocation for single women in keeping with denominational norms. In so doing, they marginalised the work done by missionary wives. The fourth chapter begins with an examination of the life and theology of Catherine Booth, whose contribution to the Salvation Army is often neglected. Catherine advocated women's ministry in terms that validated both "women's work for women" and public preaching. This chapter looks at the appeal of officership for women, especially the empowering experiences of salvation and holiness, and charts the growth of the Women's Social Work. Despite the Army's egalitarian theology, conflict was felt by women officers who struggled to combine corps and family duties. The final chapter briefly examines idealised representations of women to conclude that their defining power, while significant, was by no means hegemonic.

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