Feminist Controversy of the 1790s
Feminist Controversy of the 1790’sFeminism during the eighteenth century has come to be defined by the literature of the time. Women, who did not have as many outlets as they do today, expressed their political opinions through literature itself. Although feminist texts existed before the end of the century, women writers in the final decade were seen as more threatening to the dominant patriarchal system. Following the overthrow of the government in France, women in Britain believed that it was then possible, and even necessary, to have a revolution in sentiments, manners and moral opinions of their own. Writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Jane Austen reacted to the conservative patriarchal society by drawing parallels between the domestic and political, and between the private and public, in their fiction. While all women did not attempt to reconstruct the gender roles of the time, the women who sought to equalize the positions of men and women were labeled as unsexed.
Male authors of the late eighteenth century saw the patriarchal hereditary government as tyrannical and viewed Kings as animals. They believed reason should decide issues of human affairs, and not the power based on money, age, rank, sex, or physical strength. Men also saw the possibility of a revolution but only in terms of class structure. Although most male authors were sympathetic to the plight of women, they recognized the need to minimize class distinctions as more important than gender. Nevertheless, male appeals to humanity ironically inspired and became models for revolutionary women writers. Women writers later adopted this emphasis on individual abilities rather than birth or family, but in terms of gender, not class. Women who were beginning to contemplate the inequalities of men and women saw an analogy between political tyranny and the situation in the household.
Unlike men, women who sought political reform were labeled as unsexed, meaning that it was unnatural for women as the frail or gentle sex to harbor brutal thoughts, to want to be the equals of men, or to meddle in politics. All of which make them perverse or unacceptable examples of their gender. During the reactionary decade of the 1790’s, concerns normally thought to be private and domestic – women’s education, their choice of husbands, female conduct, sexuality, and manners – became politicized as general topics of interest. The outspoken behavior regarding their position was seen as inappropriate for women. However, not all women addressed these topics with a radical perspective. Some women, who today might be considered a setback to the feminist movement, took a rather conservative approach.
Women’s literary history, in terms of feminism, can be broken down into three stages of development: 1) those women who internalized the male culture’s assumptions about female nature; 2) those who were able to dramatize the ordeals of wronged womanhood; and 3) those who turned to female experience as...
To view the complete essay, you be registered.