Precursors of Modern Feminism

This research examines connections and disconnects between modern feminism and the writings of Katherine Philips (1631-1664) and Margaret Cavendish (1624-1674), two genteel 17th-century English women who have been identified as significant precursors of modern feminism. The research will set forth the historical and cultural context in which nascent or facilitative feminism as formulated in contemporary social critique has been attributed to the work of Cavendish and Philips, and then discuss, more generally, whether and to what extent modern feminist thought may appropriately be classed in sympathy with texts of representative women writers of 17th-century England.

The works of some 17th-century women writers have been analyzed as forms of resistance to the patriarchal doctrine of the time and are credited with expediting proto-feminist thinking. For example, Kendrick cites Rogers's argument that royalist poet and prose writer Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, who sometimes had science as her subject, "turn[ed] the doctrine of spiritualized matter into an antipatriarchal principle, using it as the chief support for a feminist politics." Citing a passage from CCXI Sociable Letters, in which Cavendish looks askance at marriage ("a woman has no such reason to desire children for her own sake. For first her name is lost . . . in marrying, for she quits her own and is named as her husband; also, . . . neither name nor estate goes to her family according to the laws and

at evidence of some women's social autonomy and privilege does not prove that the inequities of social structure have been transformed in whole but only that women of privilege have not brought powerless women along with them. It seems possible to consider Cavendish and Philips exceptions within MacKinnon's meaning. Despite evidence of referents in Cavendish and Philips texts that are consistent with modern feminist articulations, however, looking at women as a social group does not appear to have been a significant feature of their work. Greer speaks directly on point in her discussion of 17th-century women writers: The experiences they choose to articulate are just that; in most cases they have less to do with life than with literature. Early modern women enduring childbirth disasters describe them in biblical not visceral terms. Their relations with their husbands are exemplary (usually because their husbands are publishing their memoirs as exempla) and evidence of resistance or even resentment is hard to find. It is important to recognize that Greer is not saying that these women writers were immune from social oppression as modern feminism understands it, even if they were too privileged and comfortable to recognize the f

Category: History - P