English Feminists and Their Opponents in the 1790s
Subtitle: Unsex'd and Proper Females
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: November 1, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780719060823
Subjects: British & Irish history: c 1700 to c 1900; Feminism; Novels, other prose & writers: 16th to 18th centuries; Social history; c 1700 to c 1800; Women's Studies - General; Women Authors; Literary Criticism; Sociology; England; Europe - Great Britain - General; Women's Studies - History; Social Science / Women's Studies
Description: "This fascinating book examines what sixteen radical and conservative, famous and notorious British women wrote about the female sex in the 1790s. In doing so it offers the most comprehensive survey of what they thought about their fellow women with regard to love, sexual desire and marriage; their domestic roles and their engagement in the 'public' sphere; and issues of gender and female abilities including sensibility and genius." "Texts studied include 'feminist' and conduct material by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Catharine Macaulay, Priscilla Wakefield, Maria Edgeworth and Hannah More; historical writings by Helen Maria Williams, and prose fiction by Mary Robinson, Anne Radcliffe, Elizabeth Inchbald, Eliza Fenwick, Charlotte Smith, Jane West, Elizabeth Hamilton and Frances Burney. How contemporary reviewers divided these writers into 'unsex'd' and 'proper' is investigated, as is the issue of whether they attempted to exclude women from certain kinds of writing. The book reveals the depth of female complaint but contends that women did not passively submit. Conservative and radicals alike sought to extend their sphere of activity, to reform men, challenge gender stereotypes and propose that a woman should be a self for herself and her God rather than for her husband." "This book will be indispensable to academics and students of history, literature, gender and the history of social and political thought."--Jacket.