About this item
Highlights
- For many, Mary Wollstonecraft functions as Western feminism's indisputable origin point and anchor.
- About the Author: Julie Murray is Associate Professor of English at Carleton University.
- 264 Pages
- Literary Criticism, Feminist
Description
Book Synopsis
For many, Mary Wollstonecraft functions as Western feminism's indisputable origin point and anchor. Once scorned as scandalous, later rehabilitated by the Victorians as a figure of hardworking traditional femininity, Wollstonecraft is today incorporated into a story of feminism as the West's cherished export to the rest of the world.
With Wollstonecraft as its guide, this book argues that Western feminism and global modernity are not the natural intellectual and political allies they have long been made out to be, but have in fact been at odds for over two centuries. Julie Murray explores those aspects of Wollstonecraft's work that call us to understand modernity, and the form of white womanhood it celebrates, as a problem with which feminism must contend.
Refracting the history of feminism through the reception of Wollstonecraft's life and thought by contemporaries such as Mary Hays and Elizabeth Hamilton as well as by twentieth-century thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Betty Friedan, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, Murray offers a potent critique of how liberal feminism tells celebratory tales of extraordinary women in part to manage its own contradictions. Reclaiming Wollstonecraft from the genre of feminist biography, this book ultimately finds her an astute critic of Western feminism itself.
Review Quotes
"Mary Wollstonecraft Against Modernity will find its readers amongst those who are interested in exploring where feminism stands now, what it still promises and what it lacks as a coherent political platform." --Christina Lupton, University of Pennsylvania
"In celebrating Mary Wollstonecraft as a feminist foremother, have scholars misunderstood her critical resistance to both liberal feminism and global modernity? Part historical revision, part theoretical provocation, this book takes the well-worn theme of inheritance in feminism in surprising directions." --Robyn Wiegman, Duke University
About the Author
Julie Murray is Associate Professor of English at Carleton University.