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The Victorian and Edwardian era press saw a shift to the practice of New Journalism and the start of a thriving female-run periodical press. Women were excluded from the mainstream press, necessitating the development of a female-centered space for women's discourse. Luminary feminist and journalist Henrietta Müller created such a space in her feminist periodical, the Women’s Penny Paper/Woman’s Herald. Müller’s penny press brought readers into evolving social and political dialogues relevant to British women. Müller took on the all-important “woman question,” which asked what the position of women should be in society. Müller believed women should be vested with full citizenship rights, beginning with complete enfranchisement.
Müller started her activism for women working within the traditional confines of the British political structure. However, she found this approach frustrating and limiting, as her voice was silenced and her efforts restricted. The limitations she experienced through traditional political and social venues inspired her to create her own discursive space to advocate for women in her periodical press at home and abroad. Thus, in 1888, she founded her own penny press to advocate for women’s suffrage and the end of gender-based double standards. Müller’s advocacy for women throughout the British Empire demonstrates the complex relationship between gender, race, and authority.
This thesis utilizes social, political, and intellectual history in its methodology to analyze the limits of existing public space regarding gender discourse. It incorporates sources from various feminist and mainstream periodicals—particularly the Women’s Penny Paper—and some private correspondences.