Chartist Fiction

Volume 2: Ernest Jones, Woman's Wrongs

This title was first published in 2001. When the Chartist leader Ernest Jones emerged from prison in 1850, he was determined to capture the public's attention with a controversial and topical novel. The result of his endeavours was the remarkable Woman's Wrongs, a series of five tales exploring women's oppression at every level of society from the working class to the aristocracy. Each story presents a graphic, often harrowing account of the social, economic and emotional victimisation of women, and taken together the tales comprise a devastating indictment of Victorian patriarchal attitudes and sexual inequalities. But Jones also shows women's refusal to accept this subjugated role, and he creates some of Victorian literature's most subversive and unruly heroines. He draws on sensationalism, reportage, melodrama and political analysis in order to expose the wrongs done by and to women.