Sex and Suffrage in Britain, 1860-1914

Book excerpt: Although other historians have viewed the suffrage movement as aimed at exclusively political ends, she argues that such a categorization ignores many of the most compelling reasons why thousands of middle and upper-class women risked ostracism, obloquy, and, often, physical harm in the pursuit of the right to vote and why their efforts met with such intense opposition. The alliance of respectable" middle-class women with prostitutes, the attack on marriage, and the suffragists' distrust of the medical profession are among the topics the author addresses. Drawing on hypotheses advanced by Michel Foucault, she asserts that feminists sought no less than the total transformation of the lives of women. Originally published in 1987. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.