In this chapter, the early twentieth-century formulations of ‘feminism’ are explored, as an ident... more In this chapter, the early twentieth-century formulations of ‘feminism’ are explored, as an identity developed in active defiance of ‘suffragism’. While some suffragists later came to identify as feminists, for a brief period feminism provided an intellectual and political space for a very different kind of Edwardian politics, heavily influenced by the modernist Anglo-American avant-garde.2 I consider the replacement of the ‘double affiliations’ of suffragism (suffrage-socialist, suffrage-liberal) with the single term ‘feminism’ amongst some Edwardian women in Britain, and what this meant for suffrage politics. Many of the ‘advanced’ or ‘vanguard’ women who came to describe themselves as feminists were motivated by their former experiences as suffragists. They retained a complex relationship with suffrage organisations, unable to ignore or move on from suffrage, yet unwilling to let it dominate or eclipse their political ideals and intellectual forums.
The report was commissioned by HM Prison & Probation Service and funding for the project came fro... more The report was commissioned by HM Prison & Probation Service and funding for the project came from them. Their aim was to improve their institutional memory and prepare their evidence to the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse. Further details of the research questions agreed with them can be found in the appendices of the report at page 69.
Genius in its nineteenth-and twentieth-century formations has powerful connotations of elitism, a... more Genius in its nineteenth-and twentieth-century formations has powerful connotations of elitism, and is likely to have boundaries that exclude the socially marginalized or disempowered. It was a common assumption in Victorian and Edwardian Britain that women were by nature unlikely to display genius. Nonetheless, “genius” proved a captivating and, on occasion, workable concept for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminists. The significance of creative, prophetic, and “superbest” individuals fascinated many within the women’s movement, despite unpromising late Victorian scientific formulations of genius. This chapter examines the lives and writings of two feminist figures that theorized genius and attempted to enact it in their own lives. The British writer Edith Ellis and the South African Olive Schreiner were both born in the mid nineteenth century, but their writings stretch into the twentieth century. This chronological span serves to demonstrate the changing uses of “genius” in a rapidly changing sociocultural context. Though both Ellis and Schreiner were best known as novelists, this chapter will examine the correspondences, memoirs, lectures, and photographs produced by these two writers. Not only are these ephemera sources much less well known, but they also display very direct engagement with concepts of “genius.” These sources enable a closer examination of both change over time and the visual lexicon of genius than the much smaller numbers of novels that each wrote.
For those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual a... more For those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual abuse, different genres and forms have been available to narrate and evaluate that abuse. This article explores the reception and practical results of such disclosures: the unpredictable effects of telling, and the strategies of containment, silencing, or disbelief that greeted disclosures. I make note of the ethical challenges of writing the history of child sexual abuse and conclude that twenty-first-century observers have been too ready to perceive much of the previous century as a period of profound silence in relation to child sexual abuse. At the same time, historical and sociological accounts have also been too ready to claim the final third of the twentieth century as a period of compulsive disclosure and fluency in constructing sexual selves. The history of child sexual abuse reveals significant barriers to disclosure in the 1970s and 1980s, despite new visibility of child sexual...
Selfishness and Selflessness: New Approaches to Understanding Morality ed Linda Layne, 2020
Commentators have often been tempted to explain moral change using broad-brush categories and lin... more Commentators have often been tempted to explain moral change using broad-brush categories and linear narratives. Conjuring categories of 'Respectables', 'Puritans' or 'Mutualists', they have tended to offer sweeping accounts of the forces of permissiveness or convention (Collins 2003, 2007; Fisher 1993). One such narrative has asserted that late twentieth century Britain-sometimes characterized as 'Thatcher's Britain'-saw a turn to selfishness, operational-ized through acquisitiveness and individualism. Recent scholarship has challenged this narrative, and identified more politically diverse forms of popular individualism and entitlement (Lawrence 2019; Robinson et al. 2017; Sutcliffe-Briathwaite 2018). This chapter similarly decentres the neoliberal or Thatcherite sources of thinking about selfishness, and instead traces some diverse discourses of selfishness and selflessness that were influential in organizing intimate lives and social movements. Through surveying the moral categories and judgements historical actors made about themselves, their politics and their society, I hope to shed some light on how morality has figured in historical landscapes, and how our methodologies might be more explicit in thinking about moral change. The discussion that follows centres on the naming of selves and practices as selfish by men in the late twentieth century, in response to a historically specific moment of feminist critique, circa 1971 to 1991. Through periodicals, pamphlets, oral histories and memoirs, I chart a critique of 'selfish masculin-ity', understood by anti-sexist (or profeminist) men and feminist women as an important component of male hegemonic power over women. This is juxtaposed to profeminist men's attempts to develop a selfless form of politics-a giving up of male power and privilege in favour of women's empowerment. A 'selfless' men's politics was simpler to announce than to achieve, and many women involved in women's liberation were profoundly sceptical about the extent to which selfless motives underlay men's anti-sexism. Over time, many
The Freewoman has commonly been read as an example of
New Woman periodical publishing, through i... more The Freewoman has commonly been read as an example of New Woman periodical publishing, through its focus on women’s sexuality and autonomy from men. The journal appears to offer a more daring, twentieth-century and modern ‘new woman’, more willing than even her 1890s counterpart to embrace free unions or sexual experimentation. The Freewoman’s extraordinary discussions of sexuality have tended to distract historians’ attention from other elements of the debates it engendered. In particular, the political argument found within its pages has received insufficient attention; the journal tends to be misread as a socialist publication. Placing the journal as part of the New Woman narrative lends itself to an alternative view of the political subject of The Freewoman; the New Woman focus on individuality, autonomy and creative genius plays an important part in the distinctive political debates found within the journal. Although the suffrage struggle dominated Edwardian feminist activism, many Freewoman contributors rejected the vote entirely. In a period when new liberal or Fabian conceptions of an increasingly interventionist state appeared to sit comfortably with feminist demands for a more inclusive and socially responsible state, The Freewoman took an anti-statist stance. Rejecting the common suffragist metaphor of the state as the home writ large, Freewoman contributors saw the state as machine-like. The author explores the motivations for these positions, and the development of an individualist-feminist, or even egoist stance. Specifically, she outlines contributors’ rejection of militant suffrage activism, and their contestation of the citizen as a rights-holding and consenting political subject, and maps the alternative political structures suggested within The Freewoman, and the manner in which concepts of individuality found within New Woman discourse served to construct a disturbingly elitist and even coercive feminist politics.
In this chapter, the early twentieth-century formulations of ‘feminism’ are explored, as an ident... more In this chapter, the early twentieth-century formulations of ‘feminism’ are explored, as an identity developed in active defiance of ‘suffragism’. While some suffragists later came to identify as feminists, for a brief period feminism provided an intellectual and political space for a very different kind of Edwardian politics, heavily influenced by the modernist Anglo-American avant-garde.2 I consider the replacement of the ‘double affiliations’ of suffragism (suffrage-socialist, suffrage-liberal) with the single term ‘feminism’ amongst some Edwardian women in Britain, and what this meant for suffrage politics. Many of the ‘advanced’ or ‘vanguard’ women who came to describe themselves as feminists were motivated by their former experiences as suffragists. They retained a complex relationship with suffrage organisations, unable to ignore or move on from suffrage, yet unwilling to let it dominate or eclipse their political ideals and intellectual forums.
The report was commissioned by HM Prison & Probation Service and funding for the project came fro... more The report was commissioned by HM Prison & Probation Service and funding for the project came from them. Their aim was to improve their institutional memory and prepare their evidence to the Independent Inquiry on Child Sexual Abuse. Further details of the research questions agreed with them can be found in the appendices of the report at page 69.
Genius in its nineteenth-and twentieth-century formations has powerful connotations of elitism, a... more Genius in its nineteenth-and twentieth-century formations has powerful connotations of elitism, and is likely to have boundaries that exclude the socially marginalized or disempowered. It was a common assumption in Victorian and Edwardian Britain that women were by nature unlikely to display genius. Nonetheless, “genius” proved a captivating and, on occasion, workable concept for late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminists. The significance of creative, prophetic, and “superbest” individuals fascinated many within the women’s movement, despite unpromising late Victorian scientific formulations of genius. This chapter examines the lives and writings of two feminist figures that theorized genius and attempted to enact it in their own lives. The British writer Edith Ellis and the South African Olive Schreiner were both born in the mid nineteenth century, but their writings stretch into the twentieth century. This chronological span serves to demonstrate the changing uses of “genius” in a rapidly changing sociocultural context. Though both Ellis and Schreiner were best known as novelists, this chapter will examine the correspondences, memoirs, lectures, and photographs produced by these two writers. Not only are these ephemera sources much less well known, but they also display very direct engagement with concepts of “genius.” These sources enable a closer examination of both change over time and the visual lexicon of genius than the much smaller numbers of novels that each wrote.
For those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual a... more For those who by the end of the twentieth century came to be termed “survivors” of child sexual abuse, different genres and forms have been available to narrate and evaluate that abuse. This article explores the reception and practical results of such disclosures: the unpredictable effects of telling, and the strategies of containment, silencing, or disbelief that greeted disclosures. I make note of the ethical challenges of writing the history of child sexual abuse and conclude that twenty-first-century observers have been too ready to perceive much of the previous century as a period of profound silence in relation to child sexual abuse. At the same time, historical and sociological accounts have also been too ready to claim the final third of the twentieth century as a period of compulsive disclosure and fluency in constructing sexual selves. The history of child sexual abuse reveals significant barriers to disclosure in the 1970s and 1980s, despite new visibility of child sexual...
Selfishness and Selflessness: New Approaches to Understanding Morality ed Linda Layne, 2020
Commentators have often been tempted to explain moral change using broad-brush categories and lin... more Commentators have often been tempted to explain moral change using broad-brush categories and linear narratives. Conjuring categories of 'Respectables', 'Puritans' or 'Mutualists', they have tended to offer sweeping accounts of the forces of permissiveness or convention (Collins 2003, 2007; Fisher 1993). One such narrative has asserted that late twentieth century Britain-sometimes characterized as 'Thatcher's Britain'-saw a turn to selfishness, operational-ized through acquisitiveness and individualism. Recent scholarship has challenged this narrative, and identified more politically diverse forms of popular individualism and entitlement (Lawrence 2019; Robinson et al. 2017; Sutcliffe-Briathwaite 2018). This chapter similarly decentres the neoliberal or Thatcherite sources of thinking about selfishness, and instead traces some diverse discourses of selfishness and selflessness that were influential in organizing intimate lives and social movements. Through surveying the moral categories and judgements historical actors made about themselves, their politics and their society, I hope to shed some light on how morality has figured in historical landscapes, and how our methodologies might be more explicit in thinking about moral change. The discussion that follows centres on the naming of selves and practices as selfish by men in the late twentieth century, in response to a historically specific moment of feminist critique, circa 1971 to 1991. Through periodicals, pamphlets, oral histories and memoirs, I chart a critique of 'selfish masculin-ity', understood by anti-sexist (or profeminist) men and feminist women as an important component of male hegemonic power over women. This is juxtaposed to profeminist men's attempts to develop a selfless form of politics-a giving up of male power and privilege in favour of women's empowerment. A 'selfless' men's politics was simpler to announce than to achieve, and many women involved in women's liberation were profoundly sceptical about the extent to which selfless motives underlay men's anti-sexism. Over time, many
The Freewoman has commonly been read as an example of
New Woman periodical publishing, through i... more The Freewoman has commonly been read as an example of New Woman periodical publishing, through its focus on women’s sexuality and autonomy from men. The journal appears to offer a more daring, twentieth-century and modern ‘new woman’, more willing than even her 1890s counterpart to embrace free unions or sexual experimentation. The Freewoman’s extraordinary discussions of sexuality have tended to distract historians’ attention from other elements of the debates it engendered. In particular, the political argument found within its pages has received insufficient attention; the journal tends to be misread as a socialist publication. Placing the journal as part of the New Woman narrative lends itself to an alternative view of the political subject of The Freewoman; the New Woman focus on individuality, autonomy and creative genius plays an important part in the distinctive political debates found within the journal. Although the suffrage struggle dominated Edwardian feminist activism, many Freewoman contributors rejected the vote entirely. In a period when new liberal or Fabian conceptions of an increasingly interventionist state appeared to sit comfortably with feminist demands for a more inclusive and socially responsible state, The Freewoman took an anti-statist stance. Rejecting the common suffragist metaphor of the state as the home writ large, Freewoman contributors saw the state as machine-like. The author explores the motivations for these positions, and the development of an individualist-feminist, or even egoist stance. Specifically, she outlines contributors’ rejection of militant suffrage activism, and their contestation of the citizen as a rights-holding and consenting political subject, and maps the alternative political structures suggested within The Freewoman, and the manner in which concepts of individuality found within New Woman discourse served to construct a disturbingly elitist and even coercive feminist politics.
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Papers by Lucy Delap
New Woman periodical publishing, through its focus on women’s
sexuality and autonomy from men. The journal appears to offer a more
daring, twentieth-century and modern ‘new woman’, more willing than
even her 1890s counterpart to embrace free unions or sexual
experimentation. The Freewoman’s extraordinary discussions of
sexuality have tended to distract historians’ attention from other
elements of the debates it engendered. In particular, the political
argument found within its pages has received insufficient attention; the
journal tends to be misread as a socialist publication. Placing the
journal as part of the New Woman narrative lends itself to an
alternative view of the political subject of The Freewoman; the New
Woman focus on individuality, autonomy and creative genius plays an
important part in the distinctive political debates found within the
journal. Although the suffrage struggle dominated Edwardian feminist
activism, many Freewoman contributors rejected the vote entirely. In a
period when new liberal or Fabian conceptions of an increasingly
interventionist state appeared to sit comfortably with feminist demands
for a more inclusive and socially responsible state, The Freewoman
took an anti-statist stance. Rejecting the common suffragist metaphor of
the state as the home writ large, Freewoman contributors saw the state
as machine-like. The author explores the motivations for these positions,
and the development of an individualist-feminist, or even egoist stance.
Specifically, she outlines contributors’ rejection of militant suffrage
activism, and their contestation of the citizen as a rights-holding and
consenting political subject, and maps the alternative political structures
suggested within The Freewoman, and the manner in which concepts of
individuality found within New Woman discourse served to construct a
disturbingly elitist and even coercive feminist politics.
New Woman periodical publishing, through its focus on women’s
sexuality and autonomy from men. The journal appears to offer a more
daring, twentieth-century and modern ‘new woman’, more willing than
even her 1890s counterpart to embrace free unions or sexual
experimentation. The Freewoman’s extraordinary discussions of
sexuality have tended to distract historians’ attention from other
elements of the debates it engendered. In particular, the political
argument found within its pages has received insufficient attention; the
journal tends to be misread as a socialist publication. Placing the
journal as part of the New Woman narrative lends itself to an
alternative view of the political subject of The Freewoman; the New
Woman focus on individuality, autonomy and creative genius plays an
important part in the distinctive political debates found within the
journal. Although the suffrage struggle dominated Edwardian feminist
activism, many Freewoman contributors rejected the vote entirely. In a
period when new liberal or Fabian conceptions of an increasingly
interventionist state appeared to sit comfortably with feminist demands
for a more inclusive and socially responsible state, The Freewoman
took an anti-statist stance. Rejecting the common suffragist metaphor of
the state as the home writ large, Freewoman contributors saw the state
as machine-like. The author explores the motivations for these positions,
and the development of an individualist-feminist, or even egoist stance.
Specifically, she outlines contributors’ rejection of militant suffrage
activism, and their contestation of the citizen as a rights-holding and
consenting political subject, and maps the alternative political structures
suggested within The Freewoman, and the manner in which concepts of
individuality found within New Woman discourse served to construct a
disturbingly elitist and even coercive feminist politics.