The Late Victorian Marriage Question (5 Vol. set) (History of British Feminism) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415179432 ISBN 13: 9780415179430

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

This anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by linking them with the transformation of public opinion brought about by the late Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's right to an independent life.
Included are Mona Caird's controversial The Morality of Marriage; debates between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists on marriage, divorce and the New Woman, and selected reading from New Woman fiction, both feminist and anti-feminist, which reproduces the media debate on morality in literature.

About this title

Synopsis

The late-Victorian debate on marriage, motherhood and women's rights to an independent life reflects the impact the women's movement had on the formation and transformation of public opinion. The marriage debate was also about the New Woman, the fin-de-siecle representation of the feminist. This comprehensive anthology contextualizes key feminist texts and ideas by connecting them to the public response they received. The first volume focuses on Mona Caird's The Morality of Marriage and the widespread controversy it provoked. The second volume widens the debate between feminists, traditionalists and anti-feminists by linking the public discourse on marriage and divorce to the controversy of the New Woman, a debate initiated and sustained by Sarah Grand's writings. The third and fourth volumes are concerned with New Woman fiction, providing selected reading from feminist and anti-feminist works. The fiction is taken from the writings of: Emma Brooke, Mona Caird, Gertrude Dix, Lady Florence Dixie, Ella Hepworth Dixon, George Egerton, Isabella O. Ford, Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Netta Syrett, Eliza Lynn Linton, Grant Allen, Walter Besant and George Gissing.

The last volume places the controversy about New Woman fiction in its cultural context (decadence), reproducing the media debate on morality in literature and offering insights into the aesthetic and political self-representation of four major New Woman writers (Mona Caird, George Egerton, Sarah Grand and Olive Schreiner).

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415179432
• ISBN 13: 9780415179430
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 3278
• Editor: Heilmann Ann