Gender, Class and the English Revolution: A Critique of Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution

Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution (Routledge, 2011) transcends being just another entry in the extensive historiography of the mid-seventeenth century. It exemplifies a significant ideological transformation that has influenced universities over the last forty years: replacing class as the primary lens for historical analysis with the more abstract, idealist idea of “gender.” This change did not develop naturally from historical study but is instead linked to specific social changes—most notably, the shift to the right among the affluent middle class and the political decline of the large workers’ movements that once provided a material basis for Marxist theory.

Hughes is a dedicated historian with well-established archival research, which is beyond dispute. The focus of critique is the theoretical approach she uses regarding the English Revolution. Her analysis is based on contemporary feminist historiography, especially the idea — influenced by Joan Scott and her followers — that patriarchy is a transhistorical framework of male dominance that can explain women’s experiences across diverse social contexts. However, this perspective is not just flawed; it is misleading because it replaces specific social relationships with an abstract, overarching category, ignoring the complex social realities that influenced the lives of both men and women in seventeenth-century England.

Against the Gender Turn: Hughes, Scott, and the Eclipse of Class in Early Modern Studies

A troubling trend in early modern scholarship over the past four decades is the gradual disappearance of class from historians' analytical tools. In its place, a new orthodoxy has emerged—placing gender as the primary category, viewing patriarchy as a universal explanation, and prioritising “identity” over the material relations that truly shape society. Ann Hughes’s Gender and the English Revolution exemplifies this trend with its polished approach. Still, it was Joan Scott’s 1986 essay on gender as a “useful category of historical analysis” that served as the theoretical catalyst. Together, these works illustrate a historiographical shift that has significantly hindered our understanding of the English Revolution.

Let us speak plainly. The English Revolution was not a quarrel between men and women. It was a class struggle of world‑historic significance: the first bourgeois revolution, in which the rising capitalist class, supported by plebeian layers and the radicalised soldiery of the New Model Army, broke the political power of feudal absolutism. Women participated in this upheaval — as petitioners, prophets, pamphleteers, and political actors — but they did so as members of classes, not as an abstract gender bloc.

Scott’s intervention prompted historians to view gender as an independent power structure, separate from economic and social relations that shape it. She presents patriarchy as a transhistorical system, detectable across different eras with minimal reference to evolving modes of production. This conceptual shift has been highly influential, not for shedding light on historical realities, but because it suits the ideological interests of a middle-class academic class that has largely disengaged from class politics.

Hughes’s analysis demonstrates how Scott’s framework, when applied to the English Revolution, reduces class to merely “social status.” The material realities of seventeenth-century England—such as property, labour, exploitation, and the decline of feudalism—are overshadowed by a focus on gendered agency. Both Margaret Cavendish and a poor London woman are categorised as “women” within patriarchy; while their vastly different class standings are recognised, they do not influence the analysis. This leads to a history where gender becomes the sole explanation for events, while class is disregarded.

This is more than just an intellectual mistake; it reflects an ideological shift rooted in social change. The gender focus in history aligns with the periods when the organised working class weakened, socialist movements declined, and a privileged academic elite adopted identity politics both as a worldview and a career move. Moving away from class analysis mirrors the political path of this elite, whose interests often diverge from those of the working class, despite claiming to represent "the oppressed.”

The historical evidence reveals the flaws of this method. Women who accompanied the Diggers to St. George’s Hill, filled Parliament’s galleries, petitioned against the Norman Yoke and the tithe, and preached in Baptist and Fifth Monarchist churches were not acting as a unified gender group. Instead, they acted as part of an oppressed class sharing material conditions with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Their radicalism was driven by the same social forces that inspired the Levellers, the Diggers, and the grassroots unrest within the New Model Army.

Alice Clark, a socialist and Quaker businesswoman in 1919, grasped this concept far better than many scholars of her time. She understood that women’s oppression is deeply intertwined with the class structures shaping society. This vital insight has largely been forgotten in the post-1980s academic landscape, overshadowed by discourse analysis, identity theory, and the expanding use of “gender” as a universal explanation.

The focus today is not to dismiss the significance of studying women’s oppression, but to free that study from the idealism that has overshadowed it. Gender should be viewed as intertwined with class, rather than separate from it. The English Revolution cannot be fully understood through patriarchy alone; it requires a materialist analysis of the class forces involved.

Hughes, Scott, and the broader feminist historiography of recent decades have steered the field into a dead end. It’s time to reconsider—not by following current academic trends, but by returning to a rigorous, class-based analysis that can truly explain the revolutionary upheaval of the seventeenth century.

The English Revolution was primarily a bourgeois revolution rather than a gender conflict. It was a major struggle in which the rising capitalist class, supported by parts of the gentry and driven by the urban poor, yeomanry, and radicalised soldiers of the New Model Army, dismantled the weakening feudal absolutist regime. Women took part in this upheaval as petitioners, preachers, pamphleteers, prophets, and political participants. Still, their involvement must be viewed within the context of the class forces that fueled the revolution.

Hughes’s framework conceals this reality by dividing women’s experiences into categories like “age, marital status, religion, and political allegiance,” overlooking the key factor in seventeenth-century English social life: class. This omission is intentional and central to her argument. Discussing “women” as a single political entity during the English Revolution ignores the vast divide between a propertied aristocrat such as Margaret Cavendish and a poverty-stricken woman begging in London. The aristocrat's concerns — actual and deeply felt — represented a specific class’s grievances, excluded from full participation in political and intellectual spheres. Meanwhile, the impoverished woman faced hunger, war requisitions, disease, and harsh exploitation. To bundle these disparate experiences under “patriarchy” effectively erases class differences from the start.

This erasure follows a clear social logic. The rise of gender-focused historiography aligns with the period when the organized working class weakened, social-democratic parties abandoned their socialist rhetoric, and a middle-class elite—many of whom were once radicals—shifted toward identity politics as a profession and worldview. The academic move away from class analysis reflects this group's political path, whose interests increasingly differ from those of the working class, even as they claim to represent "the oppressed.”

The historical evidence contradicts Hughes’s framework. The women who joined the Diggers on St. George’s Hill, filled Parliament galleries, petitioned against the Norman Yoke and the tithe, and preached in Baptist and Fifth Monarchist churches were primarily acting as members of an oppressed class. They shared the same material conditions with their husbands, brothers, and fathers. Their political radicalism was driven by social forces that also gave rise to the Levellers, the Diggers, and the grassroots movements within the New Model Army. Alice Clark, writing in 1919 as a socialist and Quaker businesswoman, recognized this more clearly than many modern scholars: women’s oppression is inseparable from the class relations shaping society.

None of this denies the importance of examining how women’s oppression was shaped by patriarchal law and tradition. However, such analysis must be grounded in a materialist perspective of seventeenth-century English society. Without considering class, gender becomes merely an ideological concept that conceals more than it uncovers.

Hughes’s book is valuable for its extensive archival material. However, its main argument — that gender, not class, drove the revolutionary upheaval of the mid-seventeenth century — is problematic. This view does not reflect the true dynamics of the English Revolution but instead aligns with the ideological preferences of a modern academic scene that favors identity-based frameworks over class analysis. To truly understand the English Revolution, a historical perspective must dismiss this approach and re-embrace the materialist foundations essential for comprehending the period.

Sources and Bibliography

Primary and Seventeenth‑Century Sources

• Cavendish, Margaret. The Blazing World and Other Writings. Edited editions vary.
• Chidley, Katherine. The Justification of the Independent Churches (1641).
• Clark, Alice. Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century. London: Routledge, 1919.
• The Leveller Petitions (1646–1649). In: Wolfe, Don M. (ed.). Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution.
• Winstanley, Gerrard. The Law of Freedom (1652).
• The Putney Debates (1647). In: Clarke, Peter & Lamont, William (eds.). The Putney Debates.

Ann Hughes and Early Modern Gender Historiography

• Hughes, Ann. Gender and the English Revolution. London: Routledge, 2011.
• Hughes, Ann. The Causes of the English Civil War. London: Palgrave, 1998.
• Hughes, Ann. Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Hughes, Ann. “Gender and Politics in the English Revolution.” History Compass 7 (2009): 1290–1301.

Joan Scott and the Post‑1980s Gender Turn

• Scott, Joan W. “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis.” American Historical Review 91, no. 5 (1986): 1053–1075.
• Scott, Joan W. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.
• Scott, Joan W. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.
• Fraser, Nancy. Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition. Routledge, 1997.
• Hemmings, Clare. Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory. Duke University Press, 2011.

Materialist, Marxist, and Class‑Centred Historiography

• Hill, Christopher. The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution. London: Penguin, 1972.
• Hill, Christopher. The Century of Revolution. London: Routledge, 1961.
• Hill, Christopher. The Experience of Defeat. London: Penguin, 1984.
• Manning, Brian. The English People and the English Revolution. London: Bookmarks, 1991.
• Manning, Brian. Revolution and Counter‑Revolution in England, Ireland and Scotland, 1658–1660. London: Bookmarks, 2003.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. The Origin of Capitalism. London: Verso, 1999.
• Wood, Ellen Meiksins. Liberty and Property. London: Verso, 2012.
• Thompson, E.P. The Making of the English Working Class. London: Gollancz, 1963.
• Morton, A.L. A People’s History of England. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1938.

Historiography, Identity Politics, and the Academy Since the 1980s

• Anderson, Perry. In the Tracks of Historical Materialism. London: Verso, 1983.
• Anderson, Perry. The Origins of Postmodernity. London: Verso, 1998.
• Callinicos, Alex. Against Postmodernism. Cambridge: Polity, 1989.
• Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
• Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
• Lasch, Christopher. The Revolt of the Elites. New York: Norton, 1995.
• Bourdieu, Pierre. Homo Academicus. Stanford University Press, 1988.
• Collini, Stefan. What Are Universities For? London: Penguin, 2012.

Feminist Social History with Class Emphasis (Counter‑Tradition)

• Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia, 2004.
• Rowbotham, Sheila. Hidden from History: 300 Years of Women’s Oppression and the Fight Against It. London: Pluto Press, 1973.
• Hartmann, Heidi. “The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism.” Capital & Class 8 (1979): 1–33.
• Barrett, Michèle. Women’s Oppression Today. London: Verso, 1980.

Useful Collections and Reference Works

• Cust, Richard & Hughes, Ann (eds.). Conflict in Early Stuart England. London: Longman, 1989.
• Reay, Barry. Radical Religion in the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985.
• Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. Yale University Press, 1992.
• Foster, Henry. The Politics of the New Model Army. Manchester University Press, 2020.
• Holstun, James. Ehud’s Dagger: Class Struggle in the English Revolution. London: Verso, 2000.