Nell Blaine (1922-96), The Cookie Shop (1986) — a favorite woman artist for me
Dear friends and readers,
On C18-l, a listserv I’ve been on since 1994 Jim Chevalier asked the question, “What were our research interests?” for the ostensible reason that then we could all know what areas we shared and what was the expertise or real terrains of the community. The motive was more to get people to write and thus keep the community alive with writing presences.
At first few answered, and there was an immediate tendency not just to cite pubilshed articles or books, but refer to a recent academic site where academic-style papers are published. One growing (it was asserted) by leaps and bounds: it’s a form of self-advertisement, face-book academic version. But, rightly, Jim said that he was looking for something different from the sort of thing allowable to articulate in papers. People did begin to offer a description, short usually of research interests conventionally understood (what X is publishing or working on right now or has done). But happily finally the listowner, suggested this was a hard question to answer and told of his research areas and interests as his life’s work over years of living, teaching, being alive.
So I wrote in too, and thought I’d put my posting here as a blog since this blog is turning into an academic-style one where I write in a familiar letter manner about my serious scholarly interests (as it might be put in describing a resume).
I agree with Kevin Berland that this is — or was — a hard question to answer as posed. Areas of research interest for people who do it as central to their lives over a long period of time morph as our lives morph so it’s not just a question of new areas of interest coming out of projects but the way we go about it changing. For me too some of the areas I’ve gotten involved in have been the result of relationships and events (meeting people and joining groups) so I was commissioned to write a book on Anthony Trollope for the Trollope Society and having spent five years on it altogether found myself a Trollopian and have stayed with it — going to two conferences with papers, and recently (last month) publishing a review of a book that emerged from one of these conferences. I do love the man’s books and have grown to like him too, but it was an external event or meeting someone that diverted or expanded my interests. And now I’ve published on George Eliot too (and love her novels and letters and criticism about her, and biographies) and moved out further to Margaret Oliphant.
John Atkinson Grimshaw, one of my favorite Victorian painters, this is Leeds, autumn 1893, Golden Light — a copy hangs on one of the walls of my room
While the career trajectory often demands that one stay within a given period or interest, it’s not been that way for me. Early on I changed areas too: I began as an Early Modern specialist with an interest in poetry, dropped that to move to the 18th century and wrote my dissertation on Richardson’s Clarissa and Grandison. There I can formulate it a usual way: I was gripped by the book (Clarissa), still am (!), but also interested to answer the question, how the modern novel with its deep subjectivity developed out of the earlier romance forms. I wanted to know how this creative mood whereby when a reader reads a novel she will think she is literally “in” the book somehow, lose a sense of the world around her, and imagine herself in this world to the point you have to be proded to half-wake up to reality. I thought it was located in the reveries of epistolary narrative. I’m still fascinated by epistolary narratives, but have moved on to gothic, female gothic, French novels (as important to this process of creating the modern novel). I love French literature, and especially texts by women from the later 17th into our own time. Never tire of them 🙂
Again Nell Blaine, this time Cosmos, Night Interior, 1976
No small joy for me has been 18th century picturesque and rococo art:
Canaletto, Northumberland House, 1752 (the wallpaper for this main computer I write on and look at all the time),
landscape poetry, but it also helped that Robert Adams Day advised me a paper I wrote on Clarissa had a dissertation topic in it and said he would be my advisor. It was that offer that drew me to the 18th century as the problem of finding an advisor and a topic to write about that would be acceptable by some authority was solved.
But I didn’t give up my poetry and in the end instead of writing a scholarly researched book translated the complete oeuvres of two Italian Renaissance poets; Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara, and kept up that one too — I wrote a review of a recent translation of part of Colonna’s oeuvre. I’m interested in women’s poetry and wrote a series of essays on “foremother poets” for a poetry festival online organized by a group of women poets, an offshoot of a listserv; we (a larger group) then published an anthology of poems by us (one a person in the book) called Letters to the World. Anna Barbauld belongs here for me as a central woman poet only now beginning to be adequately read.
Giovanni Volpato and Louis Ducrois, The Temple to the Sybil at Tivoli, 1750s (the wallpaper for my laptop on my library table)
And one develops new interests — one which is partly the result of teaching is film studies, film adaptations of novels. Students and lots of people “get their stories” from movies nowadays, and movies influence how books are read or make visible how they are read at a given time, and I’m now engaged in a book project, the Austen movies — as well as an article project on Trollope, the Palliser films. And now I’ve grown fascinated with the work of Andrew Davies. My respect for him increases daily — or nightly. The other night I watched a masterwork by him (and Tristram Powell, the director, son of Anthony who wrote Dance to the Music of Time), Falling, an adaptation of a novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard (and I love and read all the time women’s memoirs and novels, an interest which began to be scholarly back with Clarissa).
I keep up with publications on the science of medicine (its history too) because I teach continually a course called Advanced Composition on the Natural Sciences and Technology. Often as much as a third of my class is made up of young and older adults who work in the worlds of medicine.
I see I forgot Austen. I first read her when I was 12 or 13 and have never stopped. She never fails me, and I keep my bookcase full of books by and about her, and essays and all sorts of things near my desk in my workroom. Close at hand, near to heart. In fact reading women’s memoirs and novels that come out of the Austen tradition or are like her books in their woman-centered point of view and interest in subjectivity and the private life impinged on by public are a need for me. I find comfort and strength in such books.
My favorite of all the heroines, Elinor Dashwood as enacted by Hattie Morahan in the 2008 S&S (by Davies and Pivcevic), in a moment where she sounds and has a facial and bodily expression like that of Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet
And also feminism. In the middle 1990s I had a conversion experience. I realized I had misunderstood the feminist movement, had (wrongly) seen it as a movement of elite women seeking to improve their career prospects and create power and prestige for themselves. This was the result of being here in cyberspace online and reading many woman’s postings and being on all sorts of lists. I realized feminism could and would help me, free me, enable me to understand what had happened to my in my life better and also read literature in a new way that made it meaningful for me, so that I could and did find myself in books in ways I could not see before — and for the first time. This has not changed what I read, but the way I read it and how I write about it. I could never have written the paper, “Rape in Clarissa” in the 1980s nor delivered it in public the way I did. Nowadays I discern four phases, here outlined, and these influence the way I see books and writing today too:
The first phase: officially visible started in 1848, in the US, by a conference in upper New York State, familiar to us in the suffragette movement where women asked for what in the western world is mostly at least in lipservice granted:
the vote, for career and education equality, for prohibition, critiquing the family structure strongly as such for hurting women physically and financially; this phase includes a demand for prohibition because when men, husbands and fathers are drunk, they don’t work and make money for the family, and they are frequently violent;
The second phase I’d sum up as the most radical and what makes feminism an object for attack, and is still hotly contested (this area includes discussions of say rape). Voices here are Catherine MacKinnon, Andrea Dworkin, Simone de Beauvoir, Lilian Robinson, lots of famous names:
they moved to a demand for freedom for their bodies, they analyzed the role of sexuality and wanted to change the terms of sexuality and indeed the experience and said society was structured to give men power over women in each particular (the analogy would be with Marxists showing the economic basis of oppression), so a strong socialism model underlies this. It is this group of women who are called man-haters and prigs and accused of not liking sex. Well, they don’t like to be raped.
Third-phase sometimes seen as a reaction against feminism, and a qualification by women in order to deflect the backlash; here you paradoxically also find people like Linda Hirshman so insistent on getting power, be in corridors of power and angry too:
Motherhood is power once again (at least to some), if women find power in sexuality the way it’s done, that’s power (the argument against is this is no power the way it’s experienced, or only fleetingly); strong individualism (a US value), seek power for yourself and use it as you please; pro-families (best or to me most valued argued on the basis of how lower class and working women only get their self-esteem through their function in a family or as a mother); here you find women trying to reach out too beyond their class and race and ethncities.
And now post-feminism:
Refuge seeking, eclectic, sometimes seen as no feminism and a retreat, if so a sophisticated one. Examples found in Karen Joy Fowler’s Sister Noon, also Austen.
I say least about the last since the last has been least written about — as far as I know. I’d be grateful for any discussions of “post-feminism” others know of.
One more aspect of this morphing. Funny that I thought of Austen only at the end — so fundamental is she to me. I should also have brought out how we read and write differently about books and art over the years, so that not just areas of interest but how we go about them changes. Again there’s a conventional way of putting this: one takes up with say deconstruction or book history as this emerges in the scholarly world. But for me at least my engagement in such things does not come because they are there or fashionably spreading and bring up new ideas to use as perspectives. So if I nowadays bring in film studies perspectives, it’s not something external, or just that.
Emma Thompson, still my favorite actress, in a recent movie with Dustin Hoffman, Last Chance Harvey
So (I concluded on C18-l), I know lots about different things that are intertwined but also sometimes seem divagations … but are anything but. They are my life.
Ellen
Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two 
P.S. On life in cyberspace: much of what I have been able to do that’s visible comes from this arena. Its limitations for a woman I went into here:
http://www.jimandellen.org/ConferencePapers.WomenCyberspace.html
I don’t address the question of how few people read regularly (4% says Michael Berube in a recent issue of PMLA) and of that tiny minority only a small percentage read seriously and are willing to talk about their reactions, become a community.
I had a mind-pausing experience on WMST-l the other day when a group of people who use face-book in their teaching at the same time revealed a deep distrust of social life, of interacting with anyone candidly beyond a (once again this phrase) very few people.
Ellen
I liked this blog, and I like this idea of morphing. We are all a work in progress.–Linda
[…] I attended two Burney sessions. I’ll treat the second first: organized by the Burney society, the topic was fashion, and I admit I found myself uncomfortable with the acceptance of some of Burney’s cruel humor (the monkey scenes in Evelina) and also the materialism and performative point of view on life implicit in talking about fashions in Burney. The conservative and pro-establishment- and conventions point of view in Burney came so strongly, I felt this was a post-feminist Burney (on post-feminism see below and “This long morphing life”). […]
[…] my good and wise friend Ellen Moody’s thoughts on the subject which are part of a blog at https://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/areas-of-research-interest-or-this-long-changing-life/. Feminism is deeply ingrained into everything that Ellen discusses so I treat her as a […]
Talking to my good friend, Nick, I found that really I hadn’t explained clearly at all what I meant by the four phases of feminism. He also objected (partly rightly) that the third wave could be seen as a retreat and fourth wave anti-feminism. See his blog:
http://movingtoyshop.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/the-waves-of-feminism/
To which I respond or expatiate here:
yes third phase is such a retreat as to almost constitute a rejection. There is this in third phase though: in the second phase you had really mostly middle to upper class white and a lot of the emphasis on employment did constitute a despising of women who “stayed home,” of housewives. For black and other non-white women of the world respect and power of a sort and content and meaning is not only gotten from the home, they can get it no other way. So to include motherhood (though it sounds like a retreat to Victorianism and in some woman was and is) and move away from criteria beyond the reach of white working class women too is a good. Third phase is more inclusive.
Consider Michelle Fine’s description of how when young girls are raped and come to clinics and professionals they find themselves pressured into behaving in middle class styles they can’t do and are useless to them:
http://misssylviadrake.livejournal.com/16628.html
“What she shows is the suppositions, the assumptions behind this “help” are all middle class. That what these places offer is pep talk before going to and getting yourself middle class style interviews which only genuinely middle class people know how to do and can cope with. The advice offered is similarly counterproductive, for it does not take into account how the girl is returning to the same environment which has been destroying her in the first place. It is advice she can’t take and rightly sees as useless, indeed (if she is truthful to herself) grating, and which makes her feel worse. She finds herself accused of not cooperating, of being at fault herself for “not following up.” She is showed skills which in her case are unmarketable (she hasn’t the credentials, certificates, connections, knowing ways). Most of the options taught her reinforce her sense of her low position. Fine says “the option that appears valuable to a high power person may be justifiably critiqued as a charade by a lower person.” “Relational coping” is taught. (What a laugh. I’d have no patience for it and would probably be described as sullen.)”
When you are raped, you are not supposed to be angry; it’s not acceptable.
On fourth phase feminism, what is the truth is that only a tiny part of it is feminism, the rest is not just retreat but reversal. But that tiny part is found in literary women. I instance Karen Joyce Fowler. Again it’s an attempt to bring along something that was excluded: women like reading romances and they like wearing make-up and they are driven to dress sexily — to get a man. When you come across this when it is post-feminism, the perspective is what’s feminist on this retrograde content. You have someone seeking refuge; you say to her that this won’t do, there is none. Leave it at that and she hates you and reads her romances anyway. Write romances which include in their perspective that the reason women seek refuge, dress sexily is they have no other choice, and admit it consoles, and you have a fourth-wave feminist piece.
Feeble stuff. Quite right: what’s needed is a return to phase 1 and 2 and bring alone the qualifications and inclusions not originally there. What is striking is how quickly when pressed, the people writing about it, making films stopped demanding 1) economic equality and justice, and 2) genuine sexual liberation. These women who lead movements are themselves middle class and have resources or know how to get and make money and themselves often despise women who don’t have what Victorians called “women’s pride” over sex (they themselves in their relationships know how to dominate or not be dominated).
Ellen
Diana B wrote:
“I was interested and carefully read both Ellen’s blog and Nick’s on the four phases of feminism, but without, I fear, being very much forwarder. As Ellen says, they are such abstract concepts. Maybe that is why they are always written about in such academic terms. This I feel is off-putting, for after all, do these matters not affect all women? All people? Why then are they so inaccessible and difficult to comprehend?
I have no trouble with First Wave Feminism. Suffragists. Fine. (I embrace it with my soul.)
I think I understand Second Wave Feminism. Sexual Politics. All that. (It put me off in 1960, and it puts me off now. Sorry, that’s just how it is and how I am.)
I think I understand Third Wave Feminism. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I sympathize with that a lot more than with Second Wave, although generationally I ought to be a thoroughly Second Wave Person. Yet Third Wave, much as I identify with it (having been a fun loving girl myself), makes me sad. What a shame to turn one’s back on all the hard fought, painfully won advances of the past (if that is what they are doing).
But Fourth Wave Feminism? I have not a clue what it means or what is going on. Perhaps that’s because it is just emerging. How it differs from
Third Wave is not clear. This is a generation that on the one hand has not the opportunities for material enrichment its parents had – but at the same time they have all the information revolution richness that their parents had not. Joanna, my 13-year-old cousin in New York, a very bright girl who was a physically active and adept child, has now fallen so deeply into the
magic of the internet that she never moves. Who can blame her? Everyone I know has fallen in, too. It’s truly a Wonderland. But she should be running and swimming and dancing, when she isn’t reading books. No. She won’t
budge from Facebook. Her mother has taken to disconnecting the router for certain hours a day, and this has not conduced to peace in the household!
So Joanna and her generation (I don’t mean to single her out as a representative like Joyce horrible Maynard) are experiencing something that is quite new under the sun, unknown to all generations before. As the Scottish
song says, “What will they make of the earth, wind, and sky?” Comes the answer: “Nothing. They won’t see any of them, they’ll be online.” What will her form of feminism be? Fourth wave? Fifth?
After the big changes of the real work of feminism, do the responses of successive “waves” of women mean anything if they are not tangible work, but just backlash and pieces in Salon about more women quitting law firms to have babies? Maybe it’s a misnomer to think of it at all in terms of “waves.” I’m close to that conclusion. Does life neatly wave? Or are there huge tyrannic jolting earthquake changes, and then for a millennium, nothing.
Diana
You did get my meaning anyway, Diana.
I should give the URL to Nick’s blog:
http://movingtoyshop.wordpress.com/2010/09/07/the-waves-of-feminism/
He considers that economic independence the central of the first phase and most important. I add something else to it: a woman should not have to be answerable with her body to anyone, husband, children, the world outside, no way no how. That’s what she was before 1891. And it’s the equivalent of slavery.
Nick does say that many of the kinds of housekeeping jobs immigrant women end up taking become forms of slavery because they are coerced into being answerable with their bodies.
Now for me the second phase is the most important and central. It gives me and others words with which to describe our real experience of sexuality in this society and not blame or hate myself or feel shame, but see how what I experiencd is what was wanted to be inflicted on me. Controlling women’s sexuality is to my mind the center of repressing women — on behalf of men; they are to sacrifice themselves in every way for others and hate themselves at the same time (that’s how you teach a person to repress herself).
The insistence on big economic success, yes, for me that’s a problem and scorning those women who can’t pull it off or don’t want it. That was the core danger of ERA where the second phase women were willing to throw into the hands of supreme court justices decades of protective legislation, compensatory: women might just have lost their right as life-long wives to the husband’s pension or social security given our present reactionary court.
The third phase is about more than “girls just wanna have fun:” it’s an attempt to be more inclusive, to take on board women for whom marriage, motherhood are the only options for self-respect and meaning; to take on board all races, all ethnic types, to be global. Yet it’s also a retreat to move away from an insistence on economic power too, for that is central to independence and liberation.
As Diana says, the fourth phase is still emerging. It may be in effect a partial retreat that is rationalized. But only partial for the last few decades have seen certain groups of women in society make real gains. These are at risk from renewed assaults by the right wing, religious groups, many men, traditionalists and misogynists everywhere.
Ellen
Diane Reynolds:
“I would agree that first wave feminism was about concrete political realities, such as the vote; second wave more about achieving equal economic opportunity than sexual liberation, though sexual liberation was a big part of it. I know that even in the late 1970s, when I
entered college, young women were determined to get over shame and fear about sex, though they/we often went about it in what we would now recognize as un(emotionally) healthy ways. Third wave–when I
turned sharply away–seemed to be about a bubble headed individualism and “empowerment” that said “I can do whatever I want and if that means slaving for “the man” to save up money for a full plastic surgery job — boobs, nose, lips, not to mention slutty designer clothes, etc–so that I can look like a male fantasy of female “beauty”–because *I* decided, because “nobody is the boss of me–“ergo, I’m a feminist. Or, let’s get behind those prostitutes in Thailand because they’re “empowered” by earning their own money. They retire at 30! And are supported by their nieces who start at 15 and
can retire themselves by 30! What a deal! Fourth wave, finally(!,) seems to be critiquing that viewpoint, and saying choosing to align oneself with male ideology on the basis of mindless so-called individualism or earning a few bucks is not feminism.
I see the difference between second wave feminism and “third morphing into fourth” by comparing Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin. I want to say from the outset that I utterly loathe Sarah Palin and her politics–utterly loathe, utterly loathe–because I am going to seem to say “good” things about her.
Hilary seems a typical second waver– entering the “male” job realm, pursing the law degree at a male university, getting the male job on male terms and playing by the rules. Even leveraging off the privilege of her husband’s status (which she worked tirelessly to help create) seems very phase two to me. Like so many women, HC became a “female male.” I remember so many of those woman from the 80s, carrying briefcases, wearing little floppy bows at their necks, navy blue suits … and many, like Hilary Clinton, getting punished for it and the hurt and bewilderment it engendered.
Sarah Palin, who, let me mention again I loathe, I also identify with on a generic level, because her life reflects what my life and so many of my friends lives have been: rejecting the “do it just like a man” paradigm and instead, making it up as we go along. In Sarah’s case, I suspect it has more to do with lack of impulse control than anything else, but for many of us, it has been the more disciplined result of taking a cold, hard look at the playing field and saying if we don’t adapt (make it up) as we go along, we’re guaranteed to be screwed. We’re probably screwed anyway, but at least (third wave) we’re having fun. Why I bring Sarah into the picture is that she has successfully aligned this third wave feminism (and I know people are going to object to calling her a feminist, but I would argue she IS: she was governor of a state) with politics. She’s important because feminism needs to re-politicize, but NOT along the ideological lines of Sarah Palin.
We need a lefty Sarah, with the ability to adapt to circumstances and stay one step ahead, but aligned to a politics that really will help the average woman (and hence man.)
Women like Nancy Pelosi are wonderful, but they’re too locked into the system to do it alone.
My earlier posting this morning on the age-old accusation of women as baby-killers was meant as part of this thread. Women have been answerable with their bodies from the time we find written histories as slaves by definition are.
[Insert of posting: This newsletter sends out bulletins on the state of women everywhere. The present one features through a headline a continuing rape rampage, but in the “cheers” section is something sobering and connected both to all waves of feminism and the Susan Hill book:
“Seven women in Mexico serving prison terms of up to 29 years for the death of their newborns were freed Sept. 7 after a legal reform enacted in the state of Guanajuato lowered their sentences, reported the Associated Press. The women claim they suffered miscarriages and did nothing to harm their unborn children. State prosecutors maintained that the women’s trials were fair, that their babies were born alive but died because of mistreatment or lack of care, a crime defined under state law “homicide against a relative.” The women were not absolved, but rather released under a legal reform passed after the state government concluded that their sentences “were inappropriate, given that they were excessively punitive and ranged from 25 to 35 years.” The reform reduced the sentences to 3 to 8 years, the time already served by the women, the article reported.”
Even now in our much vaunted west, there is this continuing attack on women’s bodies through this suspicion that they kill their babies at a moment’s notice, want to kill them. This is one source of the anti-abortion lobby’s deepest fuel.
In the review I instanced
http://www.jimandellen.org/Reviewers.Corner.McDonagh.Craciun.html
I included a tiny summary of a case of a British young woman nearly jailed for a long time for the murder of her baby — the evidence that she hid the pregnancy. This demand that women not hide their pregnancy is age-old; in communities in Europe for unwed non upper-0class women and some married lower and middle class woman it was just acceptable for women of the community to charge her bodily and inspect her body to see if she was pregnant.
The books under review by both women were troubling too. McDonagh’s style and some of her arguments implied an acceptance of the murder of new-born and unwanted children on Ernest Renan’s grounds: the building of a stable society and shared culture depend the enactment and erasure from public memory of violent acts.
At the core of many “great” books is a dead baby: Christina Stead’s Man who Loved Children is a rare modern instance where this is explicit and made explicitly central to its central themes which include a husband inflicting many children on his wife.
Craciun’s acceptance of violent women is troubling to me — because its real basis seemed to me she felt she was personally not threatened (as a result of her position, past, perhaps her character).]
Back to responding to Diane R:
The problem with dividing feminism into phases are there are continual needs for rights not met as well as continual assaults on women; further, where do you stop dividing. I mentioned one aspect of third wave was it was meant to be more inclusive, specifically to include black and minority women and women in traditional societies.
bell hooks belongs to both the 2nd wave (economic justice for all, including women) and 3rd wave (a black woman who knows “her sisters” value themselves as heads of their households).
There’s a series of blogs right now using hooks to respond to present day issues. Now it’s impossible to categorize this blog:
http://msmagazine.com/blog/blog/2010/09/10/breaking-news-lindsay-lohan-benefits-from-white-privilege/
With the best will in the world to agree with Diane R, it does bother me not that she instances Sarah Palin as a third-wave feminist but that she continually says she loathes her at the same time without saying why.
Sarah Palin’s a fake. It may be some women claiming 3rd wave feminism said feminism meant whatever the particular woman wanted was feminism, but while trying to be inclusive, I go with Katha Pollit and say we have to draw lines and say what is not feminism or we end with nothing. That’s how language works for a start. A thing is X or not X or we end up talking without content.
Ellen
I particularly liked Diane’s comment that aligning oneself with the male ideology in order to earn a few bucks is not feminism. I admit I don’t understand what the 4th wave or post-feminist movement is either.
Greetings, all.
I think I understand Third Wave Feminism. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.
>
This description is more consistent with what has been termed “post-feminism/s.” In post-feminism, there is simultaneous acceptance of the gains of second wave feminism (most particularly, economic advancements) and
rejection and repudiation of the label “feminist.” There is a sense that feminism has achieved all that it set out to achieve, and that it is no longer necessary.
Consequently, there is intersection with neoliberalism, in
that the social causes of inequity are obscured, and women’s perceived “failures” to succeed are a consequence of their own individual psychopathologies, e.g., not wanting success badly enough, being
“co-dependent” etc. Katie Roiphe’s work is a good example of post-feminism; Rosalind Gill (2007) and Ann Braithwaite (2002) both have great articles concerning post-feminism.
Third Wave feminism focuses on issues of intersectionality, and arose from the critique of Second Wave Feminism being primarily a movement that privileged the concerns of white, middle class, straight women. Rebecca Walker’s (1992) article on the Third Wave is considered to be the piece that defines third wave concerns.
The notion of “wave” as it applies to feminism is also a strongly contested term. There is much good literature interrogating the notion of “wave” and its usefulness in capturing feminist discourses.
I hope this brief missive helps to clarify any confusion.
fiona
If Katie Roiphe’s work is an example of post-feminism, then I’d say yes it’s anti-feminism.
When does Fiona think post-feminism began? who are its leading advocates?
Ellen
Diane Reynolds:
“Ellen brought up the other day defining feminism, as it has been stretched to mean anything. I tend not to want to align it with a particular party’s politics, especially as that doesn’t work on an international context.
I would, as a first stab, define feminism, first, as women stepping out of their culturally designated “sphere,”
and second, a movement that promotes the fullest inclusion of women as a whole into the entire spectrum of humanity, that thus works to counter any limiting of women’s options as a smaller subset of male options.
The first part of my definition would at least question the
appellation of “feminist” to women like Lady Gaga, because arguably she is remaining firmly in the designated female sphere of woman as titillating sex object. The second would call into question any female political figure whose work would legally reduce women’s options.”
A recent edition of Margaret Atwood’s Edible Woman contains a modern preface where Atwood calls herself a proto-feminist. On my WWTTA list Linda Ribas wrote about this preface:
“Her preface in interesting, wherein she talks about writing this book in 1965, before the big feminist movement. She calls her work proto-feminist. She also comments that the feminist movement didn’t accomplish that much–and that we are not in a post-feminist phase. This is something we have talked about briefly here.
She says that anyone who claims this is just tired of dealing with the whole thing. An interesting perspective.”
Actually we’ve talked about this at length here. I agree with Atwood that post-feminism is no feminism in the way of the 2nd wave. I’d say that the 3rd wave was the first retreat. While the 3rd wave did try to make it clear they meant the feminist movement to include more than middle to upper class white women seeking careers and to gain sexual liberation so for example, said we don’t mean at all to denigrate motherhood (as this was where working class women did gain respect and a modicum of power in the home), they did not go on to celebrate motherhood as if we were back in the Victorian period. The 3rd wave was a distortion (anything you want is feminism), and went backwards (especially on sex) under the onslaught of the backlash.
For anything practical post-feminism is nothing. But the feeling or way of writing and thinking exists: it’s this: the writer (overwhelmingly women) now writes with the feminist movement in mind. The options she puts out in the way she discusses are the result of understanding and adhering to feminist thought — like there is such a thing as false consciousness and when a woman will not say she’s been raped when she has, she’s been incultured to think against herself. Such texts are usually ironic: Karen Joy Fowler’s books are of this type; Suzy McKee Charnas’s criticism is of this type.
It’s better than the large majority of women who seem not to know or understand feminism at all. I saw quite a number of such women at JASNA.
Ellen
[…] before on this blog in an attempt to talk about myself and my conversion experience into feminism: This long morphing life so have used a different picture to capture a summer’s day (what it is as I type this) in a […]