Josephine Butler and the Social Purity Feminists: Their Relevance at the End of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

There was one kind of equality, one sort of liberation about which nineteenth-century feminists found it embarassing to speak. Higher education for women, better employment opportunities for women, protection at law for women—those were all good, clean, decent issues. Nobody was afraid to voice opinions upon them, nobody ashamed to sign their name on a petition. But the attack on that infamous 'double-standard', which so bedevilled relationships between the sexes in Victorian times did not attract such eager support. Even the bravest of the self-confessed feminists trembled at the implications of involving themselves in that particular fight (Forster 1984: 169).