Weird feminist what-if

Thande

Donor
Something I came across while reading Queen Victoria's letters and journals. Firstly a bit of background. When Victoria came to the throne, the Whigs had held power since the Great Reform Act broadened the franchise. However in the next few elections the Tories under Sir Robert Peel gradually demolished the Whig lead until by 1839 Parliament was almost hung. Anyway a controversial issue had arisen: there was unrest in Jamaica and Lord Melbourne's Whig ministry wanted to suspend the Jamaican colonial assembly and impose direct rule from London until the crisis was over. However Peel and the Tories opposed this and Melbourne suffered a backbench rebellion. While the bill passed by five votes, Melbourne decided his position had become untenable and resigned, recommending the Queen ask Peel to form a Tory minority government. Victoria however disliked Peel and initially approached the Duke of Wellington instead to ask if he would head a Tory ministry. The Duke declined but pledged to serve as Foreign Secretary under Peel.

Victoria then turned to Peel, but there was considerable mistrust between the two and Peel (rightly to some extent) suspected the Queen had improper sympathies with the Whig party rather than being entirely impartial. As one of the conditions for forming a government, Peel wanted the Queen to replace the Royal Household, which was packed with Whigs whom Peel suspected of influencing the young queen. Victoria agreed to replace the Grooms and Equerries, who were members of the House of Lords and thus fell under the remit of Parliament, but refused on principle to replace her Ladies of the Bedchamber because constitutionally they came under royal rather than Parliamentary authority. Peel on the other hand claimed that the Ladies were a political appointment because, under the Melbourne ministry, the Ladies had been packed with appointees who were the wives and daughters of Whig cabinet ministers.

In OTL in the end Victoria held firm, Peel refused to form a government as he believed this indicated he did not hold the Queen's confidence, and Melbourne took over again until the Tories won the 1841 election convincingly and Peel became PM. However Victoria made a curious side comment to Melbourne in a letter at the time: due to Peel's refusal to concede her point that the Ladies, being disassociated with Parliament, were not a political appointment, Victoria commented "Does he propose to give them seats in Parliament?"

Now this was almost certainly sarcasm on Victoria's part but it did make me wonder if this might actually have been tried as a solution to the crisis. Give selected wives and daughters of Lords involved in the Cabinet seats in the House of Lords in their own right, thus making the Bedchamber political appointees subject to the authority of the Prime Minister. Of course if this was tried, at first it would only exist on paper as a compromise. However, a few years down the line I could see one of the ladies in question actually exercising her right to speak and vote in the House of Lords if a crisis arose, say a close vote, or if her husband had died and she wanted to vote in his stead (a circumstance which had already happened a few times in various British-derived assemblies, especially in colonial America).

Could have interesting consequences down the line, especially if this means female participation in politics is viewed as a conservative or top-down position--at the time even among the Chartists the vast majority rejected the idea of women voting and standing.
 
I'm wondering how it'd affect the women's sufferage debate in the US. Around the '40's, women's sufferage was considered an extremely radical position, allied with abolitionism. Here, you'd have the conservative monarchy sort of supporting it... but Britain was also anti-slavery, so it could be viewed very weirdly.
 
Among the more populist, grass-roots feminists I've associated with on-line, a catchphrase is "feminism is the radical idea that women are people too." (And by golly, I've seen discussions on some AH threads where some people seem to be assuming the contrary, so my opinion is it is still a radical idea!)

So it seems problematic to me to characterize this as "feminist," exactly. It's premised in politics around aristocratic institutions after all. Feminism is considered a leftist sort of position because as formulated above, it derives from the assumption that people are people too, that there is no proper dividing humanity between the "better" sort who, as the aristocrats, have special privileges to go along with their special obligations. Feminism is rooted in the project of democracy in general.

It seems ironic then that societies which have most distinguished themselves as pioneers of democratic government have often been remarkably backward, or at least undistinguished, in the matter of the basic rights and dignity of women, at least as public citizens. Whereas, a quick glance at thousands of years of aristocratic forms of government soon reveals dozens of highly distinguished women leaders at the highest levels, and looking for "powers behind the throne" discloses legions more of very important women, whose names were known across their polities and often to their neighbors and those neighbor's rivals behind them, as powers not to be crossed lightly and whose intrigues were often crucial to the rise and fall of nations.

The aristocratic principle, by elevating a handful of men to positions of great and largely unchecked power, necessarily elevates along with those men their families and other close familiars. However nominally patriarchal, a male aristocrat has a mother, has sisters, has a wife (or many of them!) and mistresses and ultimately daughters. Because power is personal and human beings are social, the power and dignity necessarily and naturally spreads to his entire circle, half of which on the average will be female.

Thus, recognizing that a woman can after all serve just as well as a man in these sorts of ruling circles is not automatically or even very strongly likely to elevate the dignity of women in general nor undermine the basic principle of social hierarchy.

It is this latter principle that feminism undermines as a radical idea.

And this I think explains why women could frequently act as effective equals of men in aristocratic circles, but the early democracies--Athens, the Swiss, the Americans--were all rather infamous for their strict exclusion of women from formal politics and public business in general. When democracy as an ideal is emerging pragmatically in a society that is still deeply mired in notions of social hierarchy, the broad class that is jumping up to assert its general dignity as competent to run the state will generally be anxious to dismiss the charge that they are simply the mob, incapable of reason, and will therefore be swift to distinguish classes that are deemed truly unfit for public business, and in the modern phrase "throw them under the bus." Athenian democracy, for instance, by no means enfranchised even the majority of male residents of Athens--not only their slaves, who were quite numerous, but a very large class of "foreigners" (whose ancestors had generally come to Athens centuries ago) made the "demos" actually a small minority. But slave or free, deemed properly "Athenian" or "foreign," no women were admitted to the business of the polis.

Feminism proper then, is the reproach of the more advanced and far-sighted democratic elements among radical democrats to extend the logic of democracy to include those who were initially sacrificed in the project to overthrow aristocracy as such.

It remains controversial because we have hardly as a society fully repudiated the concept of social hierarchy! Conversely I reason that even my narrow self-interest as a man, quite aside from sympathy for female persons (and other classes of people society attempts to exclude), is to support the rights of women, as a bulwark of my own rights, because frankly I don't think championing social hierarchy is a smart strategy for someone as low on the social totem pole as me!

Now in this particular counterfactual, I don't think I understand the actual dynamics at work in Victorian Britain well enough to state with any confidence that Peel could hardly take Victoria at her off-hand and sarcastic word and do as the OP suggests, and formally empower some selected women in the House of Lords as a maneuver to take their selection out of Victoria's personal hands and put it in his as Prime Minister of the Commons. Still, just phrasing that way makes it seem very problematic from my probably ignorant Yankee point of view--how could even the highest agent of the Commons have any say over the composition of the House of the other estate? I don't even know who is supposed to preside in the Lords, and my best guess based on the logic of the division of the Houses would be--the monarch. If that's wrong (and I do know that in the 18th century much of the praise of the British Constitution that American colonials repeated themselves until matters seemed to have evolved to a breach to them focused on the notion that it was a triple division--commons, the lords, and the monarch, so that would imply the Lords would have and be entitled to some other president) then honestly I'm quite at sea how Peel would see the argument as a chance to gain control himself.

Nor can I foresee just how it would reverberate in British politics. I'd think, on its own merits, the "problem" (as many would see it) of women getting into the public sphere formally would be contained precisely because it would be a matter for the Lords, for the aristocracy, who as I say have frequently demonstrated a de facto acceptance of women among themselves as potential leaders. The only reason I think it might appear to lead to greater female participation in the Commons and in government on an equal basis with men in general would be that the trend toward democracy was already very strong and characteristic of the Victorian age.

My best guess is, it would have very little effect, for or against the process that enfranchised women in general in Britain.

And I suspect Evan's point is well taken; it might actually have some retarding effect on the acceptance of female suffrage in the USA. But again I suspect very little; OTL I believe female enfranchisement was largely a matter of it being established in frontier states; as those states survived and prospered just fine with women voting and running for offices, other states adopted it as well. What went on in the British House of Lords or the composition of the Queen's Ladies in Waiting would have little to do with it.
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Now in the context of "Look to the West," where we've been told the corresponding term to "feminism" is "Cytherianism," the latter may actually come closer to an idea that is less about women's equality in the context of a general ideology of human equality, and more about achieving a fair gender balance in the various levels of society, however stratified.

As much as I enjoy LTTW, I sometimes get the impression it's inspiration is in part the search for a more or less decent kind of modernism that sidesteps all this unseemly mob rule of OTL!
 
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Something I came across while reading Queen Victoria's letters and journals. Firstly a bit of background. When Victoria came to the throne, the Whigs had held power since the Great Reform Act broadened the franchise. However in the next few elections the Tories under Sir Robert Peel gradually demolished the Whig lead until by 1839 Parliament was almost hung. Anyway a controversial issue had arisen: there was unrest in Jamaica and Lord Melbourne's Whig ministry wanted to suspend the Jamaican colonial assembly and impose direct rule from London until the crisis was over. However Peel and the Tories opposed this and Melbourne suffered a backbench rebellion. While the bill passed by five votes, Melbourne decided his position had become untenable and resigned, recommending the Queen ask Peel to form a Tory minority government. Victoria however disliked Peel and initially approached the Duke of Wellington instead to ask if he would head a Tory ministry. The Duke declined but pledged to serve as Foreign Secretary under Peel.

Victoria then turned to Peel, but there was considerable mistrust between the two and Peel (rightly to some extent) suspected the Queen had improper sympathies with the Whig party rather than being entirely impartial. As one of the conditions for forming a government, Peel wanted the Queen to replace the Royal Household, which was packed with Whigs whom Peel suspected of influencing the young queen. Victoria agreed to replace the Grooms and Equerries, who were members of the House of Lords and thus fell under the remit of Parliament, but refused on principle to replace her Ladies of the Bedchamber because constitutionally they came under royal rather than Parliamentary authority. Peel on the other hand claimed that the Ladies were a political appointment because, under the Melbourne ministry, the Ladies had been packed with appointees who were the wives and daughters of Whig cabinet ministers.

In OTL in the end Victoria held firm, Peel refused to form a government as he believed this indicated he did not hold the Queen's confidence, and Melbourne took over again until the Tories won the 1841 election convincingly and Peel became PM. However Victoria made a curious side comment to Melbourne in a letter at the time: due to Peel's refusal to concede her point that the Ladies, being disassociated with Parliament, were not a political appointment, Victoria commented "Does he propose to give them seats in Parliament?"

Now this was almost certainly sarcasm on Victoria's part but it did make me wonder if this might actually have been tried as a solution to the crisis. Give selected wives and daughters of Lords involved in the Cabinet seats in the House of Lords in their own right, thus making the Bedchamber political appointees subject to the authority of the Prime Minister. Of course if this was tried, at first it would only exist on paper as a compromise. However, a few years down the line I could see one of the ladies in question actually exercising her right to speak and vote in the House of Lords if a crisis arose, say a close vote, or if her husband had died and she wanted to vote in his stead (a circumstance which had already happened a few times in various British-derived assemblies, especially in colonial America).

Could have interesting consequences down the line, especially if this means female participation in politics is viewed as a conservative or top-down position--at the time even among the Chartists the vast majority rejected the idea of women voting and standing.

Women weren't entitled to sit in the Lords until 1958.

Doubt that the Tories would allow that change!
 
Interesting, though I think the more important change would actually be outside of Whitehall. If we go through with this then yes the Bedchamber gets representation in Parliament (I think you'll find it would be a single seat, not EVERY Lady, as the Ladies of the Chamber would form far too large of a voting bloc if they were all given seats) but the side you aren't considering is that by accepting that seat in Whitehall, Victoria would be conceding that the appointment of Ladies of the Chamber is in fact a political decision, and therefore it would become a legitimate political manoeuvre to stock the Chamber with women who sided with the ruling government. Aside from the fact that this creates a situation where MPs can vote other MPs of their party into existence, you create a situation where it becomes hugely important to politics for party Ladies to be in control of the monarch's person, and thus parties will begin attempting to utilise this to affect the monarch's disposition. The monarchy would effectively become like a restrained version of the Presidency, with the monarch constantly being barraged with propaganda by their Household which would slowly induce them to side with the ruling party of the time in all political matters - it would make it increasingly difficult for a non-ruling party to squeeze any law through Parliament, and you'd eventually see a monarch actively engaging in party politicking in public, especially once the practice had become entrenched into the psyche of the monarchy, who would likely slowly come to not only accept that they were expected to support the ruling party at the time, but actively revelled in it.
 
I demand that this timeline includes Prime Minister Harriet Taylor Mill! I could definitely see her leading the Liberal Party with William Gladstone as her trusted Chancellor of the Exchequer every time they're in power. :D
 
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