The Spinster and Her Enemies - Feminish

FEMINISM AND SOCIAL PURITY
saw that poverty as the result of discrimination against women.
She asked, ‘Is it fair for you men, who can compel a fair wage
for your work, to sit in judgement on her, and say it is her
fault?’ 21
One indicator of the feminist current in the social purity
movement is the way that the fate of individual women or groups
of women who suffered male abuse was seen to be the concern
of all women since all women were united by a common
womanhood. Hopkins took this stance and wrote, ‘as slavery
fell before the realisation of a common humanity, this deeper
evil of the degradation of woman will fall before the realisation
of a common womanhood.’ 22 It was common for women
involved in the social purity movement to see themselves as
being of one accord with what they described as the ‘women’s
movement’, particularly with respect to work in the area of
sexuality. Hopkins clearly saw herself as part of the women’s
movement, as she makes clear in this rousing clarion call to
other women to join her to fight the sexual abuse of girl children:
I appeal to you…not to stand by supinely any longer, and
see your own womanhood sunk into degradation, into
unnatural uses—crimes against nature, that have no
analogues in the animal creation; but, whatever it costs you,
to join the vast, silent women’s movement which is setting in
all over England in defence of your own womanhood… I
appeal to you…to save the children. 23
Hopkins would not have meant anything specifically feminist
by the women’s movement. For her it represented a massive
uprising by women against men’s sexual abuse.
Another woman in social purity who does not seem to have
set out from a feminist perspective, but was certainly promoting
a feminist message about prostitution and the double standard,
was Laura Ormiston Chant. She was active in the Gospel Purity
Association which was set up as a specifcially nonconformist
organisation. The White Cross Army had originally been
intended as a nondenominational society, but was swiftly
associated with the Church of England. The GPA, set up in
1884, had a men’s and a women’s branch. Ormiston Chant,
who later became editor of the Vigilance Record, journal of the
National Vigilance Association whose work will be considered
in the next chapter, was a frequent speaker for the GPA. In 1884
she is reputed to have given 400 talks, mainly to men’s purity
leagues. She wrote a pamphlet published by the White Cross
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