“Fresh Fields” and “Humble Doors”: The Politics of Poetry in the English Woman’s Journal

The English Woman’s Journal (1858–64) is the best-known organ of the Langham Place network of feminist activists. This essay investigates the relationship between its prose, which encourages work outside the home, and its poetry, which argues for the value of middle-class domestic life. While women in prose articles enter new professional fields, women in poems celebrate motherhood, extoll marriage, and mourn family deaths. While prose upholds paid employment as the only means to gain rights, poems by Bessie Parkes, Adelaide Procter, and Isa Craig elevate women’s domestic role and create a comfortable space for the journal’s upper-class female subscribers.