Book contents
- Mary Wollstonecraft in Context
- Mary Wollstonecraft in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Frontispiece
- Chronology
- Part I Life and Works
- Part II Critical Fortunes
- Part III Historical and Cultural Contexts
- The French Revolution Debate
- The Rights of Woman Debate
- Philosophical Frameworks
- Chapter 16 French Philosophes
- Chapter 17 Dissenters
- Chapter 18 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Chapter 19 Edmund Burke
- Chapter 20 William Godwin
- Chapter 21 Political Theory
- Chapter 22 Feminist Theory
- Legal and Social Culture
- Literature
- Suggested Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 22 - Feminist Theory
from Philosophical Frameworks
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2020
- Mary Wollstonecraft in Context
- Mary Wollstonecraft in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Preface
- Frontispiece
- Chronology
- Part I Life and Works
- Part II Critical Fortunes
- Part III Historical and Cultural Contexts
- The French Revolution Debate
- The Rights of Woman Debate
- Philosophical Frameworks
- Chapter 16 French Philosophes
- Chapter 17 Dissenters
- Chapter 18 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Chapter 19 Edmund Burke
- Chapter 20 William Godwin
- Chapter 21 Political Theory
- Chapter 22 Feminist Theory
- Legal and Social Culture
- Literature
- Suggested Further Reading
- Index
Summary
To write of feminist theory in the 1790s is a complex undertaking. Even amidst the enthusiasm of the sexual revolution of the 1970s when feminist scholarship in academia homed in on the 1790s in the project to retrieve past women for the establishment of a female history and tradition to rival that of men, a certain unease began to be apparent about usage of the term feminist theory in relation to pre-nineteenth-century culture. It was not until the late nineteenth century that “feminism,” in the Oxford English Dictionary’s common definition of the word, emerged as a political movement advocating the “equality of the sexes and the establishment of the political, social, and economic rights of the female sex.” Hence the charge, in Regina Janes’ words, that “To speak of eighteenth-century feminism is to commit a vile anachronism, for there was no movement, no concerted demand for change in the political or economic sphere.”1
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Mary Wollstonecraft in Context , pp. 189 - 196Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2020