Physical purity feminism and state medicine in late nineteenth-century England

Late nineteenth-century England saw the development of a number of campaign s and social movements which were connected by both a hostility towards the medical profession and by the use of discourses of purity and sanitary ref orm. This article explores the involvement of women within these movements, analysing their activism as an aspect of social purity feminism. It argues that many of these movements drew on widespread female anxiety regarding m ale violence-both physical and sexual-towards women. The anti-medical femin ists claimed that some pieces of 'sanitary' legislation represented a state -sanctioned violation of the bodies of women and children. Finally, this ar ticle analyses the use made, by some of these activists, of the discourses of sanitary reform to challenge the gender ordering associated with the rea son/nature dualism in Victorian society.