Feminism In The 19th Century

The purpose of this research bibliography was to present the most important theories about feminism in the 18th and 19th century. One of them was Liberal Feminism which was discussed in the book Feminist thought. For all the ways liberal feminism may have gone wrong for women, it did some things very right for women along the way. Women owe to liberal feminists many of the civil, educational, occupational, and reproductive rights they currently enjoy. They also owe to them the ability to walk increasingly at ease in the public domain, claiming it as no less their territory than men’s. Perhaps enough time has passed for feminists critical of liberal feminism to reconsider their dismissal of it.
The other interesting aspect was Theosophy – a vital aspect of the third strand of socialist thought-ethical socialism, which was largely eclipsed by social-democracy and Marxism in the 1920s. The various stages
through which the Theosophical Society developed, pointing to the contradictory aspects of notions of the 'essentially feminine', and ‘Motherhood' brought forward by the Theosophical Society. Many of the debates and developments in the late Victorian feminist movement are stages that the modern movement has also passed through and by demonstrating a spiritual as well as political continuity between the feminist movements of the later Victorians and the present day; Dixon opens up the history of the contemporary movement as well.
Furthermore, what I found obviously crucial in my paper was the detailed description of women’s life during the 18th and 19th century, because looking at their pre-revolutionary social status and the rules they used to have followed, it was very helpful for me to understand the real reasons of feminist movement and their fight for a new regulation in “female rules”.
Another helpful source was the book The Burke-Wollstonecraft Debate allowing me to take a deep insight into distinctions in their ideologies and understanding the dispute over democracy as a force tending toward savagery or toward civilization; how they developed their own unique ideas about what was involved in the civilizing process.
The research bibliography could only give a first impression about the often highly complex theories the theorists have established. Nevertheless, it can be the key to find a solid definition for the intellectual immersion which opens a new dimension of the feminism and to personal transcendence in the process of constructing meaning in a feminism and in understanding
it.