LIT218 The 'Woman Question' in Nineteenth-Century England and America (8)

CSU Discipline Area: English (ENGLI)

Duration: One session

Abstract:

An introduction to seminal nineteenth-century English and American literary and expository writing about the nature, role and rights of women.

+ Subject Availability Modes and Locations

Session 2
Internal	Bathurst

Continuing students should consult the SAL for current offering details: LIT218

Where differences exist between the Handbook and the SAL, the SAL should be taken as containing the correct subject offering details.

Enrolment restrictions:

Cannot be taken with LIT312 The 'Woman Question' in Nineteenth Century England and America

Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this subject, students should:

.improve their skills in research techniques and in literary interpretation and analysis
.demonstrate an historical understanding of the foundations of modern liberal feminist thought and of the major arguments against feminism
.read key feminist and antifeminist literary texts in an appropriate philosophical and cultural context.

Syllabus:

The subject will cover the following topics:

.a reading of Wollstonecraft's The Vindication of the Rights of Woman (published 1792) in order to isolate both the radical and conservative elements in her ideas about women as the basis of feminist arguments in the C19th .the contrast between Wollstonecraft's sexual conservatism and the libertarianism of Byron in Don Juan which reveals a surprising degree of (reluctant) feminism in Byron's otherwise outrageously antifeminist poem .formulation of the main issues of the subject : the franchise; labour; sexuality and sexual politics; marriage and divorce; education; professionalism; gentility; the right to a literary voice .examination of these issues in both English and American texts in such a way as to foreground their philosophical and cultural contexts

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