Isabel Sykes

• BA Hons English Literature and History
• Women’s industrial work during the nineteenth century and its impact on working-class female identity in Northern towns and cities

This research takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine the impact of the industrial revolution, particularly the rise of female labour in mills and factories, on working-class women’s social and political identities. By examining the writing of and pertaining to working-class women (both historical and fictional) during the mid-nineteenth century, this research attempts to recover female perspectives that have been neglected in favour of patriarchal and middle-class narratives. Research conducted at Huddersfield University, the People’s History Archives in Manchester, and Newcastle University’s Special Collections revealed that women’s perceptions of their domestic roles, their position in society in relation to men, and their political consciousnesses were widely varied and often conflicting. Overall, details of female involvement in political movements such as Chartism and the work of working-class women poets and autobiographers consistently revealed a desire for self-representation and self-definition in a society that rendered their social, political and economic identities inherently unstable.

Funding source: Newcastle University

Project Supervisor: Dr Annie Tindley