| Summary: | Includes bibliographical references === The stereotype of the Victorian middle class woman, which generally characterised her as a passive, ornamental, helpless and dependent creature, has been one of the most popular caricatures of the nineteenth century. Recent research into this hitherto largely ignored social class has begun to re-adjust this image. The stereotyped distressed gentlewoman who emigrated to Australia and New Zealand for instance has recently been critically examined, but so far the female emigrant and settler in colonial South Africa has been ignored. It is only since the early 1970s that academic research into feminism began to appear. The influence of the women's liberation movement and of the increasing interest in social history, while stimulating research into Victorian women in England and her colonies, has only penetrated historical research within South Africa in the last decade.
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