First published in 1987. Reprints material from the 1850's and 1860's, a period which marked a turning point in the history of British Feminism. At the centre of this was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, whose pioneering schemes to improve the status of women made these years some of the richest in debate and reform
First published in 1987. Reprints material from the 1850's and 1860's, a period which marked a turning point in the history of British Feminism. At the centre of this was Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, whose pioneering schemes to improve the status of women made these years some of the richest in debate and reform
In this book, Barbara Leah Harman convincingly establishes a new category in Victorian fiction: the feminine political novel. By studying Victorian female protagonists who participate in the public universe conventionally occupied by men - the world of mills and city streets, of political activism and labor strikes, of public speaking and parliamentary debates - she is able to reassess the public realm as the site of noble and meaningful action for women in Victorian England. Harman examines at length Bronte's Shirley, Gaskell's North and South, Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, Gissing's In the Year of Jubilee, and Elizabeth Robins's The Convert, reading these novels in relation to each other and to developments in the emerging British women's movement. She argues that these texts constitute a countertradition in Victorian fiction: neither domestic fiction nor fiction about the public "fallen" woman, these novels reveal how nineteenth-century English writers began to think about female transgression into the political sphere and about the intriguing meanings of women's public appearances.
Centers on what a number of British Victorian and Edwardian women said and did in the name of nature -- what part they played in the cultural reconstruction of nature that transpired in the years just proceeding the publication of Darwin's major work and in the wake of the Darwinian revolution"--Introduction.
Barbara Caine's fascinating analysis of feminism in England examines the relationship between feminist thought and actions, and wider social and cultural change over tow centuries. Professor Caine investigates the complex question 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 was 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 Wollstonecraft, every woman pioneer into the public arena faced assaults on her honour as well as on her intellectual position. The author 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. 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.
The essays in this book argue that the active learning strategies that teachers trained in composition use for their literature courses can be exported to other disciplines to enhance both teacher performance and student learning. The book provides and explains examples of those strategies and illustrates how they have been effectively used in other disciplines.
Using original research and focusing on occupational ill-health in relation to women workers, this book presents a perspective for the analysis of both gender and work and work and ill-health. The author gives a critique of traditional theoretical accounts of gender relations, state intervention and industrial ill-health. The chapters examine the extent to which feminist activists got involved in debates about health and industrial work, and show how activists went beyond the concerns of suffrage.; The book presents a historical period which was marked by a change in the role of the state with respect to intervention in industrial conditions, and analyses the coincidence of this with three other significant developments: the growth of expertise in industrial disease; the employment of women in the factory to take on responsibilities in relation to other women; and changes in the direction of feminist activism. In light of this analysis, the author suggests that some theoretical approaches to both gender relations and health and safety requirements require modification.
This is the first full-length study to focus specifically on representations of motherhood in fiction by such Victorian writers as Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Caroline Norton, and Ellen Price Wood. These authors presented an idealized view of motherhood as part of a campaign to gain social and legal status for mothering in a society in which married women were not legal entities and children born in wedlock were the inalienable property of their fathers. These writers used dead mother plots which reversed New Testament parables so that the mother plays the leading role, and maternal circle plots, which portray adult daughters and their mothers raising children outside marriage. This fiction, which showed how children benefit from good mothering, was instrumental in married mothers eventually obtaining equal parental rights.
a genuinely interesting contribution to George Eliot scholarship by one of the leading postwar critics of Victorian fiction. The conception is bold and arresting... it reads excellently but its clarity is also vivid, effective and engaging. It wears its evident deep learning, and informed familiarity with Eliot's world, lightlyàIt manages to integrate three achievements: to give an animated sense of Eliot's personality as a woman, an intellectual, and a writer; it evokes successfully the milieu in which she lived and worked; and it offers genuine illumination in relation to the fiction.' Professor Rick Rylance, Deputy Head of English Department, University of Exeter (and former Chair of Council for College and University English)
An approach to the lives, thought and works of the Bronte sisters and George Eliot. Seen against the background of the dramatically changing world, their attitudes to such vital issues as religion, the child, the "woman question", love and sexuality, the self and death are examined.
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