European Feminisms, 1700-1950

by Offen, Karen M.

• ISBN13: 9780804734196
• ISBN10: 0804734194
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-09-01
• Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr

Summary

This ambitious book explores challenges to male hegemony throughout continental Europe. It focuses especially on France, but it also offers comparative material on developments in the German-speaking countries and in the smaller European nations and aspiring nation-states. Spanning 250 years, the sweeping coverage extends from Portugal to Poland, Greece to Finland, Ireland to Ukraine, and Spain to Scandinaviaas well as international and transnational feminist organizations. The study has several objectives. For general readers and those interested primarily in the historical record, it provides a comprehensive, comparative account of feminist developments in European societies, as well as a rereading of European history from a feminist perspective. By placing gender, or relations between women and men, at the center of European politics, where the author argues that it belongs but from which it has long been marginalized, the book aims to reconfigure our understanding of the European past and to make visible a long but neglected tradition of feminist thought and politics. On another level, by providing a broad and accurate historical analysis, the book seeks to disentangle some misperceptions and to demystify some confusing contemporary debates about the Enlightenment, reason, nature, equality vs. difference, and public vs. private, among others. The author argues that historical feminisms offer us far more than logical paradoxes and contradictions; feminisms are about sexual politics, not philosophy. Feminist victories are not, strictly speaking, about getting the argument right, nor is gender merely "a useful category of analysis"; sexual difference lies at the heart of human thought and politics.

Author Biography

Karen Offen is an independent scholar and historian who is affiliated as a Senior Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, Stanford University. Her most recent books are Paul de Cassagnac and the Authoritarian Tradition in Nineteenth-Century France (1991) and Writing Women’s History: International Perspectives (with Ruth Roach Pierson and Jane Rendall, 1991).

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Chronology: A Framework for the Study of European Feminisms	xix
Prologue: History, Memory, and Empowerment	1	(18)
Thinking About Feminism in European History	19	(8)
Part I: The Eighteenth Century	27	(50)
Reclaiming the Enlightenment for Feminism	31	(19)
Challenging Masculine Aristocracy: Feminism and the French Revolution	50	(27)
Part II: The Nineteenth Century	77	(174)
Rearticulating Feminist Claims, 1820-1848	87	(21)
Birthing the ``Woman Question,'' 1848-1870	108	(36)
Internatinalizing Feminism, 1870-1890	144	(38)
Feminist Challenges and Antifeminist Responses, 1890-1914	182	(31)
Nationalizing Feminisms and Feminizing Nationalisms, 1890-1914	213	(38)
Part III: The Twentieth Century	251	(148)
Feminism Under Fire: World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the Great Backlash, 1914-1930s	257	(20)
Feminist Dilemmas in Postwar National Political Cultures: England, Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Germany	277	(34)
More Feminisms in National Settings: Portugal, Ireland, Spain, and Sweden	311	(30)
Globalizing and Politicizing European Feminist International Activity, 1919-1945	341	(58)
Epilogue: Reinventing the Wheel?	379	(20)
Notes	399	(110)
Bibliography	509	(12)
Index	521