English Feminism, 1780-1980

Erscheinungsjahr 1997
ISBN: 978-0-19-820686-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 360 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 144 mm x 227 mm, Gewicht: 570 g

Barbara Caine offers the first complete overview of the history of `modern' English feminism, from the French Revolution through to the advent of Women's Liberation. Her analysis of feminist organizations, debates, and campaigns shows a keen sense of the relationship between feminist thought and actions, and wider social and cultural change. The result is a fascinating study with a new perspective on feminists and feminist traditions, which can be used both as an introductory text and as an interpretative work. Professor Caine examines the complex questions surrounding the concept of a feminist 'tradition', and shows how much the feminism of any particular period related to the years preceding or following it. Though feminism may have lacked the kind of legitimating tradition evident in other forms of political thought, the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft is seen here as something which all nineteenth- and twentieth-century feminists had to come to terms with. Her story was a constant reminder of the connection between the demand for political and legal rights, and its conflation with the issues of personal and sexual rebellion. Like Mary Wollstonecraft, every woman pioneer into the public arena was faced with assaults on her honour as well as on her intellectual position. Professor Caine also addresses the language of feminism: the introduction and changing meanings of the term `feminist'; the importance of literary representations of women; and the question of how one defines feminism, and establishes boundaries between feminism and the `woman question'. She ends with a discussion of the new emphasis, post-1980s, on the need to think about `feminisms' in the plural, rather than any single kind of feminism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Caine, Barbara

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Europäische Länder
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Feminismus, Feministische Theorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Chronology

- Introduction

- 1.: Feminism and the Rights of Women
Socia change and sexual difference in the late eighteenth century
Mary Wollstonecraft and the origins of modern Feminism
Feminism and the Woman question

- 2.: Feminism and the Women Question in the early Nineteenth Century
Men in feminism: William Thompson and the Unitarian radicals
The tragic tale of Caroline Norton
Harriet Martineau and the slow development of feminist consciousness
Feminism, Evangelicalism, and `Women's sphere'

- 3.: Mid-Victorian Feminism
The Langham Place circle and the ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft
Feminism, liberalism, and the problem of sexual oppression
Feminist campaigns and feminist strategies
Nation and empire in Victorian feminism

- 4.: The New Woman and the Militant
Feminism and the new woman
Feminism, the labour movement, and working-class women
Militancy
Feminism and imperialism

- 5.: Feminism and the Woman Citizen in the Inter-War Years
The legacy of War
A feminist programme
Training women for citizenship
Feminist questions and party politics
From politics to culture: feminist theory in the 1920s and 1930s
Feminism and internationalism

- 6.: The Post-War World
The impact of war
Feminist organizations and the feminist agenda
The woman question in the 1950s and 1960s

- Afterword: From Feminism to Feminisms

- Notes

- Select Bibliography

- Index