(Per)Forming Female Politics: The Making of the `Modern Woman'

Abstract

As more middle-class women began to participate in the public life of London more frequently between 1890 and 1914, middle-class women's identity shifted from the "Angel-in-the-House" to the "New Woman" to the "Angel-in-the-City," and to ultimately the "Modern Woman." This dissertation explores these stages of transition and contemporaries' reactions as middle-class women redefined themselves within the modern city. I argue that their experiences working and living within the cultural milieu of London shaped a modern femininity that incorporated a political consciousness and forming a gendered and political identity. Female suffragists attempted to re-imagine Britain's public, social, political and cultural institutions as middle-class, woman-centered and feminist spaces, and the Actresses' Franchise League succeeded in creating this space in the design of the Woman's Theatre in 1913.