School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemFactory girls: gender, empire and the making of a female working class, Melbourne and London, 1880-1920( 2007)Between 1880 and 1920, something remarkable happened among the women and girls who worked in the factories of the British Empire. From being universally represented as the powerless victims of industrial capitalism, women factory workers in the cities of Melbourne and London burst onto the stage of history, as bold, disciplined and steadfast activists and demanded their rights, not merely as the equals of working-class men, but as the equals of ladies. The proletarian counterpart of that other subversive fin de siecle type, New Woman, the factory girl became visible at a time when the nature of femininity was being hotly contested, and coincided with the growing militancy of the organised working-class. Her presence in the streets, economic autonomy and love affair with the new mass culture, represented a radical challenge to conventional bourgeois ideas of how women should behave. Her emergence as a new social actor also coincided with a crisis of confidence in Empire, radical disillusionment with the project of modernity and a growing unease about the consequences of urban poverty. As middle-class anxieties proliferated, so surveillance of the factory girl intensified. In this way, female factory workers came under the scrutiny of missionaries, medical men, demographers, social workers, socialists and sociologists. This study traces the role of female factory workers in the emergence of a transnational movement for working-class women's rights. As more women entered the factories in search of independence, their shared experience of exploitation emboldened and empowered them to demand more. During this period, increasing numbers of female factory workers in both cities thus confounded the stereotype of female workers as submissive, shallow and innately conservative, by organising and winning strikes and forming unions of their own. Such explosions of militancy broke down trade unionist prejudice against women workers and laid the foundations of solidarity with male unionists. They also forged of a new model of working-class femininity; based not on the pale imitation of gentility, but one which expressed a profoundly modern sensibility. In the process, women workers fashioned a new political culture which articulated their common interests, and shared identity, as members of a female working class. Yet the rise of working-women's militancy also coincided with the mature articulation of a racialised labourism and the rise of male breadwinner regimes. As the white populations of Empire were re-configured as one race with a common imperial destiny, the corresponding preoccupation with the white settler birth rate, increased hostility and suspicion of women workers. The first decades of the twentieth century thus saw the solidification of a regulatory apparatus which sought to police and discipline young working women in preparing them for their racial destiny as mothers. The contemporaneous demand of the labour movement for a family wage worked to further marginalise wage-earning women, and ultimately reinforced the sexual division of labour.
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ItemCharles Wesley and the construction of suffering in early English Methodism( 2006-07)This work examines the construction of suffering in the hymns of Charles Wesley, co-founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley wrote thousands of hymns, many of which focus on the experience of overwhelming pain. As eighteenth-century men and women sang or read Wesley's hymns, they were encouraged to adopt a distinctive approach to suffering, one which drew on long-standing elen1ents within Christian tradition as well as new patterns in eighteenth-century English culture. Identifying the construction of suffering in the hymns illuminates the culture of early Methodism and its complex relationship to its eighteenth century English context. My analysis places the hymns within the broader ‘narrative culture’ of early Methodism, which encouraged individuals to interpret their lives and experiences within a story of great spiritual significance. The hymns engaged men and women with a spiritual drama of conviction, conversion, sanctification and heavenly reward. I argue that suffering was central to Wesley's depiction of this drama. I examine his construction of the suffering of Christ, the suffering of Christians and of Christian responses to the suffering of others, den10nstrating that each of these had an important place in his depiction of the normative Christian experience. Those who read or sang the hymns were exhorted to embrace and endure suffering as an experience that offered opportunities for intill1acy with, and imitation of, Christ. Recognising Wesley's construction of suffering does not explain exactly how Methodist men and Women responded to affliction, but it does illuminate their responses. I explore the implications of Wesley's construction of suffering for early Methodist understandings of the self, spirituality, charity and gender, as well as specific kinds of pain such as childbirth and bereavement. These understandings contributed to a Methodist identity that was both related to, and distinct from, the eighteenth-century English culture in which the hymns were written.
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ItemRoger Barlow: Tudor trade and the Atlantic world( 2008)This thesis is about Roger Barlow. He was born near Colchester, sometime between 1480 and 1496, into a family with connections to the woollen cloth trade, and he died in Pembrokeshire in 1553. Barlow lived and traded in Seville during the 1520s as a member of a community of English merchants who prospered there. When Sebastian Cabot sailed from Seville in search of a route to the Moluccas or Spice Islands, Barlow accompanied him and joined in his exploration of the Rio de la Plata. He returned to Castile in late 1528 before returning to England around 1530 and marrying the daughter of a Bristol merchant. In the mid 1530s, Barlow moved to Pembrokeshire and cooperated with his brothers to further the Crown's policy for Wales while building up an estate around the dissolved commandery of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem at Slebech. He retained his links with trading networks in London and Bristol and in 1541 presented the king with a cosmography, subsequently titled A Brief Summe of Geographie, and a proposal, initially developed with fellow merchant, Robert Thorne. The crux of the proposal was that the English should undertake exploratory voyages to establish a trade route to the East via the Northwest Passage. As Barlow had inserted his personal account of the Rio de la Plata, including a description of a Tupi cannibal feast, into his cosmography, this would have been the first personal account of the Americas to appear in English, had Henry supported its publication. The contention of this thesis is that Roger Barlow's story is significant because it reveals the complex and influential role of guilds and informal merchant networks during the Henrician period, the nature of England's trading relationship with Spain and its Atlantic settlements before the Reformation, and the reactions of merchants, power brokers and monarchs to the New World during the first half of the sixteenth century. As well as connecting a myriad of geographical locations, Barlow's story links the mercantile world with that of the landed gentry and the clergy at a time when both social structures and forms of belief were being challenged. Barlow accumulated a knowledge of the world and its opportunities that was extraordinary for an Englishman in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such knowledge was the bedrock of the exploration, settlement, colonization and mercantile developments that gained momentum in the century that followed.
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ItemThe Puritan quest for enjoyment of God: an analysis of the theological and devotional writings of Puritans in seventeenth century England( 1997)This thesis explores the distinctive vision of enjoyment of God presented in the works of the seventeenth century English Puritans. The main sources for the thesis are the extensive writings of Richard Sibbes (1577-1635) and John Owen (1616-1683). Their works are placed in the broader context of Puritan theological and devotional writings: treatises on union and communion with God; sermons and commentaries on the Song of Songs; devotional works which outline the practice of piety and accounts of spiritual experience in biographies, autobiographies and memoirs. The thesis argues that there were strong mystical elements in Puritan piety, despite the traditional scholarly stereotype of Puritanism as antithetical to mysticism. While scholars have come to acknowledge the existence of mystical elements within Puritan piety they have sometimes suggested that these elements were exceptions within an otherwise anti-mystical movement. Others have detected mystical characteristics more widely in Puritan piety, yet have implied that these characteristics represented an adoption of existing Catholic devotional methods, rather than a natural development from the Puritans' own theology. Certainly, the Puritans were familiar with a rich heritage of patristic, medieval and contemporary spiritual writings, but the internal structure of Puritan devotion was provided by its own Reformed doctrine of God. Out of the rich soil of the Puritans' experiential and affectionate theology, grew an earnest and devout practice of piety, enabling an immediate union and loving communion with God, which was expressed in a sensual and lyrical love-language. The Puritan quest for enjoyment of God was a distinctive and confident vision, which has never received detailed attention in its own right; a virtually uncharted area which demands careful and sympathetic study. This thesis explores the Puritan quest for enjoyment of God in four main areas: its theology, vocabulary, devotion, and enactment. The first chapter deals with the theology which undergirded Puritan mysticism, for the inner shape of Puritan devotion must be sought in its own doctrinal formulations. It demonstrates that Puritan theology was not rationalistic and restrictive, as historians often assume, but a "mystical" and "experiential divinity", aimed at enjoyment of God. In their treatises and sermons, Puritan divines explored the intimate delights of union and communion with God, and the ecstatic joys to be gained through silent adoration of God's incomprehensible mysteries. The second chapter describes the language used by preachers to communicate the goals and ideals of Puritan mysticism: a heavily coded vocabulary which has remained largely unfamiliar to scholars, so that they often misinterpret or overlook descriptions of spiritual joy in Puritan writings. Enjoyment of God was communicated in a lyrical and imagistic love-language, chiefly taken from the marriage-metaphor and the Song of Songs: a passionate and sensual vocabulary which entered the shared language of the godly community, and was used by Puritan "mystics" and ordinary believers to express their spiritual joys. The third chapter outlines the Puritan practice of the means: a demanding devotional system which was deliberately shaped to the constraints of an active calling, a monasticism of the ordinary life. Puritan devotional disciplines have often been characterised as rationalistic and word-centred, dominated by sin and self-examination. But Puritan prayer was actually an earnest and affectionate quest for communion with God; meditation made use of the imagination and senses as well as the mind, and included rapturous contemplation on God's essence; and the Lord's Supper enabled a unique spiritual communion with God. Yet it cannot simply be assumed that ordinary believers followed the advice of Puritan preachers, as given in pulpit and press. The fourth and final chapter therefore concentrates on the records of spiritual experience preserved in biographies, autobiographies and memoirs; accounts of men and women, lay persons and divines, wealthy and poor. Puritan mystical piety was not an elitist or unappealing devotion: many individuals from various walks of life were attracted by its doctrine of God, modelled their lives on its archetype of experience, practised its devotional disciplines, and attained great heights of enjoyment of God.