Wheeler, Anna Doyle (1785–c. 1850)

Irish feminist writer . Born Anna Doyle in Clonbeg, County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1785 (month and day unknown); year and date of death unknown, but approximately 1850; youngest daughter of Nicholas Doyle and Anna (Dunbar) Doyle; educated at home; married Francis Massey Wheeler, in 1800 (died 1820); children: Henrietta Wheeler (d. 1825); Lady Rosina Bulwer-Lytton (1802–1882).

Select publications:

(with William Thompson) Appeal of One Half of the Human Race, Women, Against the Pretensions of the Other Half, Men, to Retain Them in Political, and Thence in Civil and Domestic Slavery (1825, new ed. Virago Press, 1983).

Born in Ireland in 1785, Anna Doyle was the youngest of three children of a Church of Ireland cleric who was a dean in the diocese of Fenner and Leighlen. Her father died when she was very young, and the family was looked after by her paternal uncle, General Sir John Doyle. The Doyle family had a long military tradition. Anna, who had a liberal education at home where she was taught fluent French, was 15 when she married Francis Massey Wheeler, son of a wealthy landowning family in County Limerick. Her mother had grave reservations about the marriage which were soon justified. Anna was abused and neglected by her husband and she also suffered a number of miscarriages. By the time their marriage broke up in 1812, they had two surviving daughters, Henrietta and Rosina (Bulwer-Lytton) .

Anna, her children and her sister Bessie Doyle then went to live in Guernsey in the Channel Islands where her uncle was governor. In 1816, she left Guernsey and went to Caen in France where she became part of a group of social reformers and thinkers. Anna had read widely since her childhood and one of her earliest influences was Mary Wollstonecraft 's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). She was also familiar with the philosophical works of Denis Diderot and Paul von Holbach. In Caen, many of the people Wheeler associated with were followers of Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, one of the founders of French socialism. Although Saint-Simon was not particularly interested in the position of women, he believed, rather vaguely, that women could play "useful and productive" roles in his new socialist society.

Wheeler returned to Ireland when her husband died in 1820, and for the next few years she moved between Dublin and London. In London, she became acquainted with members of the cooperative movement who were strongly influenced by the ideas of Robert Owen. After her years in Caen, Wheeler was struck by the similarities between Owen's ideas and those of Saint-Simon. Writes her biographer Dolores Dooley : "She regularly introduced [Owen] to French and Irish reformers, and circulated his writings to enthusiasts in both countries. Wheeler excelled at facilitating meetings with potential disciples, expanding networks and smoothing differences between Owen and some of his antagonists."

Wheeler also got to know the English Utilitarian leader Jeremy Bentham. It was through these connections that she met the Irishman William Thompson, who was associated both with Owen and Bentham. Dooley describes this meeting as a turning point in Wheeler's personal and professional life. In 1825, Thompson was cited as the author of Appeal of one Half of the Human Race … Against the pretensions of the Other Half but in the introductory letter to the volume he emphasized her contribution to the volume: "I have endeavoured to arrange the expression of those feelings, sentiments and reasoning, which have emanated from your mind." The Appeal was written primarily to refute the argument of the Utilitarian philosopher James Mill that women were the responsibility of their fathers and husbands. But it developed into a sustained analysis of the social and economic causes of sexual inequality. Wheeler and Thompson did not argue that women would achieve equality when the laws changed; they recognized that culture and public opinion would also have to change. Without equality, not only would women not respect themselves, but men would not respect them either. A central theme of Wheeler's arguments was that improvements in the condition of women would benefit men just as much as women. The Appeal is now recognized as a key text in feminist history.

During a sojourn in Paris in the early 1820s, Wheeler met the utopian socialist François Fourier who became a regular visitor to her salon. Fourier envisaged a society organized into small communities called phalanxes. Wheeler was attracted to his ideas because for Fourier the position of women was a barometer of social progress. She popularized his beliefs, which were expressed in rather obscure and difficult terms, in lectures and articles. Wheeler's stay in Paris was marred by the death of her daughter Henrietta in 1825. After this she moved back to London where she lived a withdrawn existence and wrote little. In 1827 her surviving daughter Rosina married the writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton and by 1831 she had two children, a daughter Emily Bulwer-Lytton and a son Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton. By 1833, Wheeler was once again writing in various cooperative journals. Family troubles intervened in 1836 when Rosina's marriage ended in a bitter and tempestuous divorce which had long-lasting consequences. Little is known about Wheeler's last years, although she seems to have remained in London. A friend of Fourier wrote to her in May 1848 urging her to come to Paris and experience at first hand the revolution which was sweeping the city. Circumstantial evidence, discussed by Dooley, suggests that she was dead by 1851. Her granddaughter Emily had died of typhoid in 1848.

After her divorce Rosina wrote a number of publications in which she charged her former husband with cruelty and adultery. In 1858, Bulwer-Lytton kidnapped her and put her in a mental home in order to stop her public accusations; ironically, her mother had once accused mental institutions of colluding with men who wanted to rid themselves of inconvenient relatives. In a memoir, Rosina's son, Edward Robert, attacked his grandmother Anna Wheeler as an unreasoning fanatic on the subject of women's rights. Unfortunately for Edward Robert, his third daughter, Constance Lytton , became a prominent member of Emmeline Pankhurst 's Women's Social and Political Union and was imprisoned in 1909 for her suffragist activities.

sources:

Dooley, Dolores. "Anna Doyle Wheeler (1785–1850)," in Women, Power and Consciousness in 19th Century Ireland: Eight Biographical Studies. Ed. by Mary Cullen and Maria Luddy. Dublin: Attic Press, 1995, pp. 19–53.

——. Equality in Community: Sexual Equality in the Writings of William Thompson. Cork: Cork University Press, 1996.

Deirdre McMahon , lecturer in history at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland