Feminism In Literature

The past would suggest that female empowerment has been perpetually suppressed by the patriarchy, and this is evidenced by centuries worth of literature. The beginnings of feminist literature began when A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was written in 1792 by Mary Wollstonecraft who sought for equality between the two sexes. The establishment of the term ‘feminism’ did not occur until the 1896 women’s congress held in Berlin when Eugénie Potonié-Pierre and the women’s group Solidarité reported on the position of women in France and established the concept. Soon after, the term circulated around the globe, and France became known for pioneering the course on women’s studies. Modern feminism, however, emerged and was only fully established in the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth century as a result of industrialization, liberalism, and socialism. Its aim, as it always has been, was to grant women the same rights and privileges given to men – the right to vote, the right to enter exclusively male professions, the right to legal distribution of property, et cetera – and to be seen as their equal. The feminist movement continues to develop rapidly, and has now branched

The status of women in Britain, unlike other countries in Europe, took much longer to be fully recognized by society, though a new self-awareness was gained by these women. This evolving perspective was expressed by writers of the time, and the image of women was reinvented as something beyond being the ‘angel of the home’. Women in literature were depicted as capable of having their own thoughts and ideas, and could be free to express themselves, experience new things and to be almost completely independent. These writers altered the idea of being a woman in Victorian England, and launched the beginnings of feminist