The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY
finding jobs or the setting up of homes for girls considered to be
in danger of falling into prostitution, to ease their passage into
other ways of making a living. Rescue workers set up refuges
for women working in prostitution with the aim of rehabilitating
them. From her time in Brighton onwards, Hopkins dedicated
herself to the task of preventive work, both directly with those
women who might become prostitutes and with the potential
clients, by working to transform the sexual behaviour of men.
Her work and influence lie behind the creation of the Ladies
Association for Friendless Girls, the White Cross Army and the
Church of England Purity Society. She also contributed to the
formation of many other purity organisations in the 1880s
through her speaking tours and writings. She formed a close
friendship with James Hinton, a medical specialist and
philosopher, who made a death-bed appeal to her in 1875 to
carry out the work he had been unable to do in preventive work
among the female poor. It seems that Hopkins by no means
fully implemented Hinton’s aims. Hinton had believed that
prostitution could be eliminated by the rehabilitation of
sexuality, so that non-prostitute women would be more compliant
in servicing men’s needs. 9 Havelock Ellis, who, as we shall see
in Chapter 6 was one of the main progenitors of the sex reform
movement which set out to eroticise women in the service of
men’s sexuality, claimed to have been inspired by reading
Hinton’s work. Hopkins saw her mission very differently. She
set out to restrict men’s sexual behaviour. This is a good example
of the way in which the desire to eliminate prostitution could
inspire men and women in very different ways. The main
motivation of the women involved in 1880s social purity was
to transform men’s sexual behaviour through challenging the
idea that men had an urgent sexual need which required to be
serviced by women. The sex reform movement, on the other
hand, totally accepted the imperative nature of men’s sexual
urges, and sought to conscript all women into the active servicing
of male sexuality.
In 1879 Hopkins submitted to a committee of convocation A
Plea for the Wider Action of the Church of England in the
Prevention of the Degradation of Women, later published as a
pamphlet. The ‘Plea’ is a very courageous attack on the hypocrisy
of the church and its indifference to the elimination of prostitu
tion, and an impassioned demand for action. The committee of
convocation had been set up specifically to deal with the problem
of prostitution and Hopkins expressed in the preface to the
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