Feminism

by Margaret Walters

  migration is a way of improving their lives. But more often, migrant workers – often unqualified, sometimes barely speaking the language of their new home – get poorly paid, insecure jobs, that 135

  leave them isolated and unprotected in all kinds of ways. They often have no idea of what their rights might be – or how to demand them if they do. They rarely have any kind of support network, though in America some campaigning groups have sprung up to their defence.

  Their very existence poses Western feminists with a painful paradox; they challenge us to look more closely at how we may be conniving in the oppression of other women.

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  Afterword

  So what is the future, or even, is there a future, for feminism? Is it, at least in the affluent West, needed any longer? In 1992 the American Susan Faludi argued cogently, and in chilling detail, that feminists have been experiencing what she terms a ‘backlash’, with women who had undoubtedly benefited from the movement – as well as men, who had perhaps also benefited, though they rarely acknowledged the fact – anxiously remarking that it had all gone too far. As Juliet Mitchell and Ann Oakley suggested in their third collection of essays, Who’s Afraid of Feminism? Seeing Through the Backlash, feminism makes many people uncomfortable, in part because the ‘whole subject of who women are and what they want challenges our division between public and private life’.

  In the 20th century, ‘first-wave’ feminists had demanded civil and political equality. In the 1970s, ‘second-wave’ feminism concentrated on, and gave great prominence to, sexual and family rights for women. It is these demands, now, that have become the main target of reaction. ‘The personal is the political’ was a popular 1970s slogan that some contemporary feminists seem to want to reverse. The political is reduced to the merely personal, to questions of sexuality and family life – which, of course, also have political implications which still, and urgently, need to be considered..

  Natasha Walter, in The New Feminism (1998), while admitting that 137

  women are ‘still poorer and less powerful than men’, argues that the task for contemporary feminism is to ‘attack the material basis of economic and social and political inequality’. An important point –

  but she remains extremely vague about precisely what that attack would imply. In one interview, she remarked, as if she had come up with a new idea instead of one that had been around for decades, that ‘we want to work with men to change society and not against men’: ‘After all, especially if things are to change in the domestic arena, that’s about men taking on a fair share of domestic work as about women moving more and more out of the home.’ Or again,

  ‘we must join hands with one another and with men to create a more equal society’.

  But if at one moment she criticizes the older movement for being too personal, a few pages later Walter remarks that it was too political – or, even worse, that its members were ‘humourless or dowdy or celibate’. (That is certainly not the way I remember it.) She goes on to describe Margaret Thatcher as ‘the great unsung minism

  heroine of British feminism’, who normalized female success. But Fe

  Thatcher had no interest whatsoever in women’s concerns, and was notoriously unsupportive of other women politicians.

  Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman (1999) was written partly in angry and effective response to Natasha Walter’s book and its

  ‘unenlightened complacency’. Walter, Greer argues, assumes that feminism is all about ‘money, sex and fashion’. Though, she adds: it was not until feminists of my own generation began to assert with apparent seriousness that feminism had gone too far that the fire flared up in my belly. When the lifestyle feminists had gone just far enough, giving them the right to ‘have it all’, i.e. money, it would have been inexcusable to remain silent.

  People are undoubtedly alarmed by the threat of personal change, as much as by change itself. So some cling, nostalgically, to an imaginary golden age of fixed gender identities, the dream of a 138

  relationship between a man and a woman, that, whatever its inequities, was comfortably predictable. On the other hand, others insist – in Naomi Wolf ’s vivid phrase – that there has been a

  ‘genderquake’, with more women than ever in powerful positions.

  Women, Wolf argues in Fire with Fire (1983), must give up what she styles ‘victim’ feminism, stop complaining, and embrace ‘power’

  feminism. But, as Lynne Segal remarks, movingly, at the end of her 1999 Why Feminism? , the movement’s most radical goal has yet to be realized :

  a world which is a better place not just for some women, but for all women. In what I still call a socialist feminist vision, that would be a far better world for boys and men, as well.

  The long, and at times radically innovative, history of feminism is all too easily forgotten. When ‘second-wave’ feminism emerged in the late 1960s, it seemed, at the time at least, unexpected, Af

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  surprising, exciting. One big difference during the years since then rwo

  has been the way Western women have become much more aware rd

  of other feminisms – not just in Europe, but across the world – that, hopefully, may challenge our cherished ideas and certainties, and undermine any complacency that we may have developed.

  That wider awareness is due to a number of factors. Technical advances are certainly important: the fact, for example, that feminists in different countries can now communicate quickly and effectively, share experiences and information with large numbers of people, through the Internet. Academic feminism has played an important role in this. A great many universities, certainly in most Western countries, now run courses on women’s studies, and specifically on feminism. Academic research has given us extremely valuable insights into women’s lives at other times and in other cultures; inviting us to think about differences, as well as about common causes. Academic theses, scholarly articles and texts, as well as conferences, have all helped disseminate important information about feminism across the world.

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  But there is perhaps a loss involved, which is not often addressed or even acknowledged. I often recall, affectionately, the remark by Rebecca West that I quoted at the opening of this book: I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is.

  I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.

  All previous feminisms have had an air of excitement, of transgression, or of risk about them: sometimes the excitement of the pioneer, sometimes of the outsider challenging convention.

  More recently, perhaps, there has been, in addition, the excitement of rediscovering our past, but also – and therefore – of re-inventing something. In the late 1960s and the 1970s, women’s liberation was exciting. We felt that we were ‘making it new’, that we were exploring both past and present, committing ourselves to something that was new and radical and adventurous. But the girls I talked to recently have never had any comparable experience.

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  They seem uninterested in feminism, partly because they see it Fe

  simply as an academic subject – something fed to them, which they need not discover for themselves – and it is therefore respectably dull. (Except, of course, for the high-flyers who themselves aspire to academic jobs.) Feminism has, as it were, been spoon-fed to this younger generation of women, so, perhaps naturally and even healthily, they have a sneaking yearning to be politically ‘incorrect’.

  Rejecting academic feminism, at least, seems one way of moving forward. Re-inventing feminism in terms of their own experience may, in the long run, prove another.

  But the other difficulty – and it seems to me a crucial one – is that academic feminism has developed a language that makes sense only to a closed circle of initiates. Too many women feel shut out, alienated. This is not only true of feminism, of course
; this morning as I was writing this, I opened the newspaper to find an exhilarating attack by the journalist Robert Fisk on what he calls the

  ‘preposterous’, even ‘poisonous’, language so often used by 140

  academics in general; used even, perhaps especially, by those who address urgently important political issues. ‘University teachers . . .

  are great at networking each other but hopeless at communicating with most of the rest of the world, including those who collect their rubbish, deliver their laundry and serve up their hash browns.’ He ends by jokingly quoting a famous remark by Winston Churchill:

  ‘This is English up with which I will not put.’ It would be all too easy to make the same case specifically against academic feminism.

  Fisk’s point is one that we ignore at our peril. If feminism is to be something living and evolving, it will have to begin by re-inventing the wheel – which in this case means finding not just new issues, but a new language. In spite of everything, I still have faith that feminism will take us by surprise again, that it will re-invent itself, perhaps in unforeseen ways, and in areas we have thought little about. It will almost certainly come from outside the academy, and will probably – hopefully – challenge us in ways that, as yet, we Af

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  cannot even glimpse.

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  References

  Chapter 1

  Hildegarde of Bingen, Selected Writings, tr. Mark Atherton (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2001), especially pp. 163–226.

  The Book of Margery Kempe, tr. and ed. Barry Windear (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1986).

  Elizabeth Spearing, Medieval Writings on Female Spirituality (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2002 ); for Julian of Norwich, see pp. 175–206 (especially p. 201, on the motherhood of God).

  Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991).

  Stephanie Hodgson Wright (ed.), Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period, 1588–1688 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002); see especially ‘Jane Anger: her protection for women, 1589’, pp. 2–6; Aemilia Lanyer, ‘Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum, 1611’, pp. 20–1, and also pp. 22–77; Anna Trapnel, pp. 212–17.

  Keith Thomas, ‘Women and the Civil War Sects’, Past and Present, 13

  (1958).

  Elaine Hobby (ed.), Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing, 1649–88 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989) is an invaluable collection; she includes extracts from Jane Anger, Aemilia Lanyer, and Anna Trapnel.

  H. N. Brailsford, The Levellers and the English Revolution (London: The Cresset Press, 1961), especially p. 119 and pp. 316–17.

  On Margaret Fell, see Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Women’s Lot 142

  in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Phoenix Press, 1984), pp. 448–60; and Sherrin Marshall-Wyatt, ‘Women in the Reformation Era’, in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1977).

  On Eleanor Davis, see Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Women’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Phoenix Press, 1984), pp. 188–94.

  Chapter 2

  Queen Elizabeth, quoted in Stephanie Hodgson Wright (ed.), Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period, 1588–1688 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), p. 1.

  Bathsua Makin, quoted in Stephanie Hodgson Wright (ed.), Women’s Writing of the Early Modern Period, 1588–1688 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002), pp. 287–93. Also see Hilda L.

  Smith, Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenth-Century English Feminists Referenc

  (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

  On Lady Mary Wroth, see The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth, ed.

  es

  Josephine A. Roberts (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983); and a brief but illuminating comment by Germaine Greer in Slip-Shod Sibyls (London: Penguin Books, 1999), pp. 15–16.

  On Margaret Cavendish, see Katie Whitaker, Mad Madge (London: Chatto and Windus, 2003); and also Dolores Paloma, ‘Margaret Cavendish: Defining the Female Self ’, Women’s Studies, 7 (1980).

  Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own and Three Guineas, with introduction by Hermione Lee (London: Vintage, 2001).

  Mary Manley, quoted in Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Women’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Phoenix Press, 1984), p. 409.

  On Aphra Behn, see Angeline Goreau, Reconstructing Aphra: A Social Biography of Aphra Behn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980); Elaine Hobby (ed.), Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing, 1649–88 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1989), pp. 15–127; and Germaine Greer, Slip-Shod Sibyls (London: Penguin Books, 1999), chapters 6 and 7.

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  Chapter 3

  On Mary Astell, see Ruth Perry, The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

  On Mary Wollstonecraft, see Collected Letters, ed. Janet Todd (London: Allen Lane, 2003). There are many modern editions of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; I have used the edition with introduction by Miriam Brody (London: Penguin Books, 1992), Mary and the unfinished Maria; Or the Wrongs of Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980; or London: Penguin Books, 1992).

  There are also several good biographies of Wollstonecraft: most recently, Diane Jacobs, Her Own Woman: The Life of Mary Wollstonecraft (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000) and Lyndall Gordon, Mary Wollstonecraft: A New Genus (London: Little Brown, 2005).

  Chapter 4

  Marion Reid, A Plea for Women (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1988 [1843]).

  Caroline Norton, English Laws for Women in the Nineteenth Century minism

  [1854]; reprinted as Caroline Norton’s Defense (Chicago: Academy, Fe

  1982).

  John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women, ed. and introduced by Susan M. Okin (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 1985).

  For Florence Nightingale, see Cecil Woodham Smith, Florence Nightingale (London: Penguin Books, 1951; revised edn., 1955); and Nancy Boyd Sokoloff, Three Victorian Women Who Changed Their World (London: Macmillan Press, 1982).

  For Harriet Martineau, see her Autobiography, with Memorials by Maria Weston Chapman (London: Virago, 1983 [1877]); and R. K. Webb, Harriet Martineau, A Radical Victorian (London: Heinemann, 1960).

  For Frances Power Cobbe, see Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992).

  Chapter 5

  Sheila B. Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 1985): 144

  George Eliot is quoted on p. 71, Mrs Gaskell on p. 80, Elizabeth Barrett Browning on p. 82.

  Melanie Phillips, The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind It (London: Little, Brown, 2003), chapter 5.

  For Emily Davies, see Margaret Forster, Significant Sisters: The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839–1939 (London: Penguin Books, 1986), and also Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), chapter 3.

  Jo Manton, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson: England’s First Woman Physician (London: Methuen, 1965).

  On Josephine Butler, see Jane Jordan, Josephine Butler (London: John Murray, 2001); and Barbara Caine, Victorian Feminists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), chapter 5.

  Roger Manvell, The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh (London: Elek Books, 1976).

  Referenc

  Chapter 6

  Melanie Phillips, The Ascent of Woman: A History of the Suffragette es

  Movement and the Ideas Behind It (London: Little, Brown, 2003), pp. 98–103, 136–9.

  Sheila B. Herstein, A Mid-Victorian Feminist, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 1985), pp. 156–69 and chapter VI.

  Roger Fulford, Votes for Women (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), pp. 33–4.

  Florence Nightingale is quoted in Martin Pugh,
The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage 1866–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 55.

  Chapter 7

  Martin Pugh, The March of the Women: A Revisionist Analysis of the Campaign for Women’s Suffrage 1866–1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) is essential reading: a detailed, scholarly, and thought-provoking account of the prolonged struggle for the vote.

  Also see Melanie Philips, The Ascent of Woman: A History of the 145

  Suffragette Movement and the Ideas Behind It (London: Little, Brown, 2003); and Paul Foot, The Vote: How It Was Won and How It Was Lost (London: Viking, 2005) includes a brief but cogent chapter on women’s suffrage.

  For some memorable (and sometimes witty) examples of the way in which suffragettes expressed their message visually, see the early pages of Liz McQuiston, Suffragettes and She-Devils: Women’s Liberation and Beyond (London: Phaidon Press, 1997).

  See also Emmeline Pankhurst, My Own Story (London: Virago, 1979

  [1914]) and Syliva Pankhurst, The Suffragette Movement (London: Virago, 1977 [1931]).

  Chapter 8

  See Sheila Rowbotham, A Century of Women (London: Viking, 1997) on Sylvia Pankhurst, and the effects of the war, p. 64 ff.; and Paul Foot, The Vote: How It Was Won and How It Was Lost (London: Viking, 2005), especially pp. 232–5, on women and the war.

  See also Martin Pugh, Women and the Women’s Movement in Britain minism

  1914–1999 (London: Macmillan Press, 1992), especially chapters 1–6; Fe

  chapter 3 discusses the birth and decay of the idea of a woman’s party; pp. 49–50 and 142–3 discuss the Six Point Group; Rebecca West is quoted on p. 72.

  Roger Manvell, The Trial of Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh (London: Elek Books, 1976).

  On Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes, see Ruth Hall, Marie Stopes: A Biography (London: Andre Deutch, 1977). On Stella Browne, see Rowbotham, especially p. 194.

  Chapter 9

  Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, English translation by H. M.

  Parshley (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953). Her four autobiographical volumes and her novels are also all available in English translation.