Earlier roots

Before the beginning of the Suffrage Movement, some voices started to denounce the women´s discrimination and to claim for their rights.

At the end of the 18th century, Enlightenment was the intellectual context of one of these voices, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1797). In her most famous work, " A Vindication of the Rights of Woman" (1792), she demanded an educational reform, giving women access to the same educational opportunities as men. Her work and life were an inspiration for later feminism.

• Out of curiosity, find out what she had to do with this character.

Caroline Norton (1808 - 1877) is remembered for her successful struggle to reform the unjust laws concerning married women in Victorian Britain, although she was not interested in defending female suffrage. In 1855, when Parliament debated the divorce reform, she submitted to the Parliament a document explaining the inferior status of women in English law:

A married woman in England has no legal existence: her being is absorbed in that of her husband. (...) She has no possessions, unless by special settlement: her property is his property (…) An English wife has no legal right even to her clothes and ornaments; her husband can take them and sell them if he please. (...) An English wife cannot legally claim her own earnings. Her salary is the husband´s. As her husband, he has the right to all that is hers: as her wife, she has no right to anything that is his.

Caroline Norton

 From " A letter to the Queen on Lord Chancellor Craworth´s Marriadge and Divorce Bill",1855, London, in Victorian Women Writers Project, Indiana University.

• In 1857, Matrimonial Causes Act was passed with some clauses which came from Carolin´s pamphlets. Her propousals were also taked into account in other laws as Married Women´s Property Act in 1870.