Module Description: 

The first part of this module explores the rise of feminism in England from the publication of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman to World War I. We start with a survey of the main ideas propounded by Mary Wollstonecraft and John Stuart Mill and the long battle fought by English feminists to win legal and civil rights for women. We then look at early feminist novels which well epitomise the plight of women in the 19th century, starting with The Story of An African Farm by the South-African Olive Schreiner, regarded as the first New Woman novel, and finishing with two ‘scandalous’ novels by two male New Woman writers, Grant Allen (The Woman Who Did) and HG Wells (Ann Veronica), which document the new prospects education and training open to women towards the end of the 19th century.  

 

As Ibsen’s plays had an extraordinarily impact on the Victorian cultural scene, we study one of the most significant (and reviled) of his early problem plays, A Doll’s House. The revolutionary impact exercised by Ibsen’s drama on the London scene is explored through three more plays: Votes for Women, by the great American actress Elizabeth Robins, Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance and GB Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession. Furthermore, as New Woman writers contributed to the cultural and political debates of the time not only with works of fiction which were largely propagandist in nature, we shall also discuss some of the erudite essays and newspaper articles they wrote and briefly survey the ideas of Victorian thinkers, such as Darwin, Spencer, Marx and Freud, who influenced New Woman authors.  

 

The second part of the module covers the Woman Question in the US, from the Women’s Rights Seneca Falls Convention to the 19th Amendment and overlaps with the first in many ways but most especially on the issue of Abolitionism. It was in fact at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London that the seeds of Seneca Falls were planted. We study the overlapping of these two movements in Henry James’s novel The Bostonians, and the themes of the Civil War and racism in short stories by black writers Gertrude Dorsey Brown (‘Scrambled Eggs’) and Alice Dunbar Nelson (‘The Stones of the Village’). 

 

 The issue of women’s employment and factory work is explored through Edith Wharton’s New Woman novel The Fruit of the Tree and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman’s industrial novel The Portion of Labor. Controversial psychological aspects of the Woman Question are explored through two landmarks of feminist literature, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper. Finally, the dilemma of racial identity tackled in the short-stories is dramatically explored in the novella by the Danish-Black American writer Nella Larsen’s Passing, whose protagonist is a ‘flapper’, the last manifestation of the New Woman avatar. 

 

Aims and Learning Outcomes: 

The module has two main aims: 


	give students a range of historical and cultural analytical tools to approach Anglo-American feminist literature of the period between the end of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century 
	

	enhance the students’ skills and aptitudes of close reading and contextual analysis of a range of English texts through oral presentations and in written work. 
	
 

By the end of the module, students should have developed their ability to:  

· analyse critically the structure and rhetoric of different forms of feminist texts (novels, short stories, essays, newspaper articles, plays) produced in a specific historical period (French Revolution to post-World War I) 

· understand the contribution given by New Woman Literature to Modernism 

· understand the impact and significance on Victorian society of currents of thought and political movements such as: Abolitionism, Darwinism, Eugenics, Freudianism, Marxism, Fabianism, Ibsenism, Sexology and Suffragism 

· question the relevance and significance of ideas propounded by First Wave Feminists for the Woman Question in our own time 

· formulate their own research questions—hopefully to be further expanded in MA dissertations—on less explored aspects and authors of New Woman Literature 

 

Suggested Reading: 

Primary sources  

  

Novels  

  


	Grant Allen, The Woman Who Did (1895). Oxford University Press, 1995.  
	 
	

	Henry James, The Bostonians (1886). Penguin, 1984.  
	 
	
	
	Nella Larsen, Passing (1929). Penguin, 2018.   
	 
	
	
	Olive Schreiner, The Story of an African Farm (1883). Oxford University Press, 1992.   
	 
	
	
	Edith Wharton, The Fruit of the Tree (1907). Northeastern University Press, 2000.  
	 
	
	
	Mary Elizabeth Wilkins Freeman, The Portion of Labor (1901). Aegypan Press, s.d.  
	 
	

	HG Wells, Ann Veronica (1909). Penguin, 2005.  
	 
	
  

Short fiction  

  


	Kate Chopin, The Awakening (1899). The Awakening and Other Writings. Penguin, 1984, pp. 43-177.  
	 
	

	Gertrude Dorsey Brown, ‘Scrambled Eggs’ (1905). American Local Color Writing, 1880-1920. Penguin, 1998, pp. 101-122.  
	 
	
	
	Alice Dunbar-Nelson, ‘The Stones of the Village’ (1910-1920). American Local Color Writing, 1880-1920. Penguin, 1998, pp. 47-71.  
	 
	
	
	Charlotte Perkins Gilman, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ (1890). The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories, Oxford World’s Classics, 1995, pp. 3-19.  
	 
	
  

  

Plays  

  


	Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House (1879). Four Major Plays, trans. James McFarlane. Oxford University Press, 1961 (rep. 1981), pp. 1-88.  
	 
	
	
	Elizabeth Robins, Votes for Women (1907). Votes for Women and Other Plays, Aurora Metro Press, 2007, pp. 21-107.  
	 
	
	
	George Bernard Shaw, Mrs. Warren’s Profession (1894). Plays Unpleasant, Penguin, pp. 179-286.  
	 
	

	Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance (1893). The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, Penguin, 2000, pp. 101-175.  
	 
	
  

Essays  

  


	John Stuart Mill and Helen Taylor, The Subjection of Women (1869). On Liberty and The Subjection of Women, Wordsworth Classics, 1996, pp. 144-163.  
	

	Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1793). Penguin, 1985 (rep. 1992).  
	
 