
Contents
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Earliest recollections Earliest recollections
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The marriage of a New Woman and a new man The marriage of a New Woman and a new man
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‘Matrons and Maidens’ ‘Matrons and Maidens’
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An uneasy alliance An uneasy alliance
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Conclusion Conclusion
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Notes Notes
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Cite
Abstract
This chapter examines the sexual progressivism of Bella and Charles Pearce, important figures within the Independent Labour Party (ILP) in 1890s Glasgow. Bella wrote as ‘Lily Bell’ for the Labour Leader, her column ‘Matrons and Maidens’ providing a weekly feminist critique of contemporary sexual relations, addressing topics including the sexual double standard, prostitution and ‘free love’. Charles Pearce was equally committed to women’s rights, described as one of the era’s ‘new men’. Their route to radical politics was via Chartism and the Ruskin Society, and they initially believed ‘new life’ or ethical socialism held the potential to transform intimate relations. However, during this decade, the relationship between those campaigning for socialism and women’s suffrage was fraught, the chapter providing evidence of the sexualisation of female activists by male socialist writers and of James Keir Hardie’s elision of gender exploitation in his reading of an 1896 brothel scandal. Bella’s eventual denunciation of the ILP as a ‘man’s party’ in 1907, it is argued here, is reflective of the difficulties faced by those putting forward a feminist sexual politics within the masculinist rhetoric and practice of late Victorian socialism.
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