The limits of Barbauld's feminism: re-reading "The Rights of Woman"

Bradshaw, Penelope ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7240-9206 (2005) The limits of Barbauld's feminism: re-reading "The Rights of Woman". European Romantic Review, 16 (1). pp. 23-37. Full text not available from this repository.

Abstract

This essay considers the evidence by which our critical understanding of Barbauld's attitude toward eighteenth-century feminist debates has been reconstructed and questions current critical interpretations of her position on the gender politics of the period. It focuses on her widely anthologized poem “The Rights of Woman” and examines why this text has been frequently interpreted as a reactionary response to Wollstonecraftian feminism. The essay challenges this assumption and, after considering a range of textual and contextualizing evidence, argues that far from revealing hostility to the cause of women's rights, this poem actually offers a perceptive analysis of the ideological and legal impediments to that cause.

Item Type:	Article
Journal / Publication Title:	European Romantic Review
Publisher:	Routledge
ISSN:	Print: 011050-9585, online: 1740-4657
Related URL(s):	Publisher
Depositing User:	Insight Administrator
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2010 11:38
Last Modified:	11 Jan 2024 17:00
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/387