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Fiction and 'the Woman Question' from 1830 to 1930

Research Output: Book/Report Edited book

Open access

Sustainable Development Goals

  • SDG 5 - Gender Equality
    SDG 5 Gender Equality

Abstract

This book is about how ‘The Woman Question’ was represented in works of fiction published between 1850 and 1930. The essays here offer a wide-ranging and original approach to the ways in which literature shaped perceptions of the roles and position of women in society. Debates over ‘The Woman Question’ encompassed not only the struggle for voting rights, but gender equality more widely. The book reaches beyond the usual canonical texts to focus on writers who have, in the main, attracted relatively little critical attention in recent years: Stella Benson, Kate Chopin, Marie Corelli, Dinah Mulock Craik, Clemence Dane, Arthur Conan Doyle, George Gissing, Ouida, and William Hale White (who wrote under the pseudonym ‘Mark Rutherford’). These writers dealt imaginatively with issues such as marriage, motherhood, sexual desire, adultery and suffrage, and they represented female characters who, in varying degrees and with mixed success, sought to defy the social, sexual and political constraints placed upon them. The collection as a whole demonstrates how fiction could contribute in striking and memorable ways to debates over gender equality—debates which continue to have relevance in the twenty-first century.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Book/Report Edited book

Original language

English

Publication milestones

  • Published - 01/08/2020

Publication status

Published - 01/08/2020

Place of publication

Newcastle Upon Tyne

Publisher

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Publication series

  • Publication series name: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

ISBN (Print)

9781527550414

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/624219
  • ORCID: /0000-0003-0506-4380/work/76843877

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