Copelman’s study explores the borderland between the «two spheres» and
suggests that the process of social give and take between the sexes was complex. Perhaps the most interesting aspects of freemasonry and gender are those areas which confront the neat divisions of a «two spheres» model. Late Victorian rhetoric of sexual difference portrayed women as shoppers and consumers, but the private spaces of the masonic lodge enabled men to indulge in conspicuous display. Freemasons purchased jewels of enormous value to wear in their lodges, and decorated their halls with furniture and fittings of great opulence.55 In masonic shops such as Kennings in London they had their own department stores. 56 Similarly, philanthropy was an area in which different genders had distinct roles.57 but masonic charitable activity could quietly cut across some of these distinctions. Above all, in the other direction, women’s freemasonry provided a significant social outlet for women. Janet Burke and Margaret Jacob have argued that the Adoption enabled women, through freemasonry, to engage with the emerging civil society in the 18th century.58 James Smith Allen and Mark Carnes have recently documented extensive participation by women in fraternal organisations in the 19th century, 59 while Co-Masonry, through figures such Annie
55 See e.g. Neville Barker Cryer”s various publications on the masonic halls of England and Wales and John M. Hamill, “The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery”, Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp.
285-295. 56 American equivalents are discussed by Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989, pp. 213-4, who illustrates how lucrative these businesses could be. Firms manufacturing and selling regalia and other products did not restrict themselves to the masonic market but aimed at the whole range of fraternal organisations. For example, the firm of Toye, which eventually took over Kenning, also produced banners and badges for friendly societies and trade unions: Paul
Martin, The Trade Union Badge: Material Culture in Action, Aldershot: Ashgate 2002, p. 131. 57 Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 429-36. 58 Janet M. Burke, “Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing
Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites”, History of European Ideas 10 (1989) 3, pp. 283-94; several publications by Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth- Century Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 120-142; “Freemasonry, Women and the Paradox of the Enlightenment”, in: Eleanor C. Riemer (ed.),Women and the Enlightenment, Women and History 9, New York: Haworth Press 1984, pp. 69-93; “Money, Equality, Fraternity: Freemasonry and the Social Order in Eighteenth Century Europe”, in: Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III (eds.), The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, pp. 102-35; with Janet M. Burke, “French Freemasonry,
Women and Feminist Scholarship”, Journal of Modern History 68 (September 1996), pp. 513-49. 59 Carnes, “Secret Ritual and Manhood”, pp. 81-9; James Smith Allen, “Constructing Sisterhood: Gender in the French Masonic Movement, 1740-1940”, paper at the University of Sheffield conference “Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe”, 2002. Abstract available on-line at:
www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/
jimabstr.htm; cf. Nord, op. cit., pp. 27-8. cf. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Shuster 2000, pp. 389-90.
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