Women of the Upper Class

How is it possible for a highly educated woman with a career and resources of her own to stay in a marriage with an abusive husband? How can a man be considered a pillar of his community, run a successful business, yet regularly give his wife a black eye? The very nature of these questions proves our unarticulated assumption that domestic violence is restricted to the lower classes. When we do hear stories of high-profile victims, we regard them as exceptional cases and still believe abuse doesn't happen to "people like us". Now Susan Weitzman counters this assumption by exploring a heretofore overlooked population of battered wives -- the well-educated, upper-income women who rarely report abuse and remain trapped by their own silence.

With keen insight and sensitivity, Weitzman, a psychotherapist and educator, traces common patterns of behavior among this group -- their internal dilemmas and decisions, their dangerous desire to cover up abuse and maintain appearances. She shows how their abusive relationships follow a different course from those in other socioeconomic groups, and how these distinctions have profound implications for understanding the true nature of this behavior. Delving into the stories of these women -- wives of CEOs and attorneys, of physicians and professors, the women often professionals themselves -- Weitzman builds harrowing psychological profiles of both the abused and the abuser.

Challenging the view that class is dead, as well as the idea that it is a British phenomenon, this book argues that class needs to be regarded as a key concept in any attempt to understand women's lives.

This is a study of gender and power in Victorian Britain. It examines the contribution made by women to the public culture of the British aristocracy in the nineteenth century. It challenges the view that power and authority were predominantly masculine attributes and shows that a partnership of authority between men and women was integral to aristocratic life. The book is thus an important addition to the debate on `separate spheres'. Dr Reynolds explores the roles of aristocratic women in estate management, patronage of churches and schools, and in caring for the poor and other dependants. She shows how women were at the heart of the local communities and institutions on which aristocratic power was based. The book goes on to discuss the realm of national politics, analysing women's participation in the electoral process, in Westminster-based political life, and at Queen Victoria's court. Based on a wide range of previously unused archival sources, Aristocratic Women and Political Society presents a lively portrait of women's experiences and a corrective to the view of the upper-class Victorian woman as a passive social butterfly.

This book examines the many different ways in which women achieved public standing and exercised political power in England from the middle of the eighteenth century to the present. It shows how rank, property, and inheritance could confer de facto power on privileged women, and how across the centuries the arrogance of birth and title empowered aristocratic women to overawe enfranchised men of lower social standing.

The essays contribute to an ongoing "rethinking of the political", a consequence in part of the rediscovery of the work of Jurgen Habermas by political and social historians. For Habermas, the public sphere included print media and voluntary associations, and the contributors stress the extent of female engagement in political culture broadly conceived. However, they extend this definition of the public sphere further still to include the "private" world of family connections and friendship networks, within which political ideas were debated and new social practices played out.

Many of the essays are inspired by a related effort to reintegrate radical female activists within their political milieu. Although feminist hagiography has accustomed us to see female activists as heroic outsiders rising sui generis from a hostile environment, recent research restores them to their intellectual and familial contexts. Finally, the contributors explore the limits and possibilities of women's citizenship both before and after winning the right to vote. Together, the essays tell a continuous and complex story, redefining political activity and reassessing the turning points of British political history.

The 'bonds of matrimony' describes with cruel precision the social and political status of married women in the nineteenth century. Women of all classes had only the most limited rights of possession in their own bodies and property yet, as this remarkable book shows, women of all classes found room to manoeuvre within the narrow limits imposed on them. Upper-class women frequently circumvented the onerous limitations of the law, while middle-class women sought through reform to change their legal status. For working-class women, such legal changes were irrelevant, but they too found ways to ameliorate their position. Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this outstanding book, full of human insights, that women were not content to remain inferior or subservient to men.

Matrona Docta presents a unique study of the education of upper-class women in Roman society in the central period of Roman history, from the second century BC to AD 235.Emily A. Hemelrijk reconstructs women's opportunities to acquire an education, the impediments they faced, the level of education they could reach and the judgement on educated women in Roman society. She examines also the role of women as patronesses of literature, learning and Roman women's writing.