# The Angel Out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-century England

- Link: https://fundraising.co.uk/books/the-angel-out-of-the-house-philanthropy-and-gender-in-nineteenth-century-england/
- Published: 2002-05-12T12:43:00+01:00
- Author: Howard Lake

From the Victorian Literature and Culture Series.

Was nineteenth-century British philanthropy the “truest and noblest woman’s work”
and praiseworthy for having raised the nation’s moral tone, or was it a dangerous
mission likely to cause the defeminisation of its practitioners as they became “
public persons”? In Victorian England, women’s participation in volunteer work seemed
to be a natural extension of their domestic role, but like many other assumptions
about gender roles, the connection between charitable and domestic work is the result
of specific historical factors and cultural representations. Proponents of women
as charitable workers encouraged philanthropy as being ideal work for a woman, while
opponents feared the practice was destined to lead to overly ambitious and manly
behaviour.

In _The Angel out of the House_ Dorice Williams Elliott examines the ways in which
novels and other texts that portrayed women performing charitable acts helped to
make the inclusion of philanthropic work in the domestic sphere seem natural and
obvious. And although many scholars have dismissed women’s volunteer endeavours 
as merely patriarchal collusion, Elliott argues that the conjunction of novelistic
and philanthropic discourse in the works of women writers—among them George Eliot
and Elizabeth Gaskell, Hannah More and Anna Jameson—was crucial to the redefinition
of gender roles and class relations.

In a fascinating study of how literary works contribute to cultural and historical
change, Elliott’s exploration of philanthropic discourse in nineteenth-century literature
demonstrates just how essential that forum was in changing accepted definitions 
of women and social relations.

**Dorice Williams Elliott** is Assistant Professor of English at the University 
of Kansas

## Reviews

“Informative, readable, and insightful, The Angel out of the House is an original
formulation of ideas concerning philanthropy, gender, and class. Elliott draws on
work done in the area of the history of philanthropy, the history of gender, the
history of feminism, the history of professionalization, and analyses of separate
spheres ideology.”
Deborah Gorham, author of _Vera Brittain: A Feminist Life and
The Victorian Girl and the Feminist Ideal_

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