Borderline Citizens: Women, Gender, and Political Culture in Britain, 1815–1867 (review)

Kathryn Gleadle's Borderline Citizens proposes to uncover "how it felt" for women of the middle and gentry classes to participate in politics in early-nineteenth-century Britain (1). Drawing upon insights from recent work in sociology and psychology, as well as a generation of historical scholarship on gender, class, and politics, Gleadle skillfully enhances our understanding of the parameters of early Victorian women's political power and illuminates their own conception of the extents and limits of that power. Gleadle's title refers to the ambivalent position in which women found themselves in early-nineteenth-century Britain: "During this critical period in British history women, it will be suggested, were 'borderline citizens.' Their status as political actors, as well as their own political subjectivities, were often fragile and contingent. They might be conceptualized (and feel) integral to the political process at one moment—but this could quickly evaporate in the face of other cultural pressures" (2). An extended analysis of the various realms in which women operated as "borderline citizens," this book is essential reading for anyone interested in gender and politics in modern Britain.

The book is divided into two parts. In part one: "Women, Gender and the Landscape of Politics," Gleadle explores the various arenas in which Victorian women could engage with politics. Synthesizing historian Jane Rendall's insight that there were "a variety of publics," with geographer Lyn H. Lofland's distinction between the "public realm" (where individuals engage with each other in terms of their formal roles), and the "parochial realm" (where individuals interact with others they know personally) (17), Gleadle puts forward an important new way to think about women's political work, as a series of overlapping spheres, through which women exerted varying degrees of authority based on the realm in which they were operating. Chapters 1 through 4 delineate the various domains in which women participated in Victorian politics: the parochial, the public, and the familial. Part two, "Case Studies and Micro-Histories," elaborates on these insights with specific studies: of the ambiguous legacy for women of the Reform Act of 1832; of the significance of land and dynasty to the political work of Mary Ann Gilbert, a prominent agricultural and educational reformer in Eastbourne, East Sussex; and of the significance of women in shaping the family political economy of Thomas Fowell Buxton, Weymouth MP and parliamentary leader of the antislavery movement in the first decades of the nineteenth century. Each of the chapters in part two thus extends the analyses of part one, elaborating upon Gleadle's larger assessments at the level of the particular.

Gleadle's method of layering impressive empirical research on women's political engagements in the parochial and public realms is infused with a sophisticated understanding of the self in relationship to society, enabling her to provide a stunning new perspective on women's relationship to politics in the early nineteenth century. Acknowledging the variety of ways Victorians interpreted legislation treating women's participation in politics, as well as the uneven quality of the early Victorian state, she notes that women of the middle and gentry classes participated in local and national politics in complex and often problematic ways. Because contemporaries did not agree on what the law said about the practices of female voting and office holding, local communities continually reinterpreted these policies on an ad hoc basis. And because contemporaries understood women's contributions in the public realm to differ from those in the parochial, women of the middle and gentry classes encountered a variety of opportunities to shape their own political participation within their local communities while simultaneously responding to perceived limits on that participation imposed by the larger culture. Ultimately, women's position as citizens remained "borderline," constantly in flux, as enhanced opportunities in the parochial realm gave them opportunities to engage in politics on the basis of their familial relations, while ambiguous...