Female Workers in Industrial England: Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna’s Helen Fleetwood and The Wrongs of Woman

Abstract

Female workers formed a substantial portion of the nineteenth century industrial workforce as more
than a million women were employed and exploited in factories by the middle of the century. The
industrial novels, intended to form a narrative of social protest against the unprecedented
developments generated by the Industrial Revolution, like the abominable working conditions of
factories or the exploitation of factory labourers, however, rarely delineate the condition of female
factory workers. Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, a presently obscure writer, is an exception in this regard
as she strived to bridge this critical gulf through her active participation in debates concerning the
condition of proletariat women workers. The present study aspires to assess the conventionally
marginalised condition of the female industrial workers in Victorian England, with particular
emphasis on Tonna’s contentions about the working women’s rights and plights as articulated in
her novels Helen Fleetwood and The Wrongs of Woman.