Anti-feminism in the Victorian Novel

Book excerpt: The beginnings of the modern idea of feminism are usually traced to the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women in 1792. Since then, women's emancipation has been a constantly debated and topical subject. This series entitled Victorian and Edwardian Anti-Feminism will present the other side of the debate - anti-feminism - more or less obviously through novels and other writings of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Anti-Feminism in the Victorian Novel is a collection of five rare novels depicting various aspects of the anti-feminist ideology that was making a strong stand against the increasingly widespread movement towards feminism and suffrage in late 19th-century Britain. the debate. The concept of women and the family is represented by Eliza Lynn Linton's The Rebel of the Family (1880); women and politics by Walter Besant's The Revolt of Man (1890); women in medicine by Arabella Kenealy's Dr Janet of Harley Street (1893); women in art by C.E. Raimond Elizabeth Robins], George Mandeville's Husband (1894); and women and sex by Grant Allen, The Type-Writer Girl (1897). The set should be of interest to scholars of women's studies and 19th-century history.