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Some Feminist Betrayals of Women's History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Brian Harrison
Affiliation:
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
James Mcmillan
Affiliation:
University of York
Patricia Hilden
Affiliation:
Emory University

Abstract

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Type
Communications
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

1 Historical Journal, xxv, 2 (1982), 501–12.Google Scholar

2 There is no need here to expound the argument and scope of our books, but for those who seek fair-minded reviews of Harrison's Separate spheres: the opposition to women's suffrage in Britain (London, 1978)Google Scholar, these can be found in, among others, Spare Rib, Jan. 1979, p. 37; American Historical Review, Oct. 1979, p. 1057; Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 Oct. 1978, p. 20; Times Literary Supplement, 1 Dec. 1978, p. 1401; English Historical Review, Oct. 1979, p. 944; Canadian Journal of History, xiv (1979), 499500Google Scholar. For reviews of McMillan's, Housewife or harlot: the place of women in French society, 1870–1940 (Brighton, 1981), see AmericanHistorical Review, July 1982, p. 794; Choice, Dec. 1981; Association for the study of modem and contemporary France newsletter, Feb. 1982, pp. 10–11; European Studies Review, Oct. 1982, pp. 491–3.Google Scholar

3 T. B. Macaulay, ‘Life and writings of Sir William Temple’, Edinburgh Review, Oct. 1838, p. 127: Davis, N. Z., ‘“Women's history“ in transition: the European case’, Feminist Studies, iii (1976), 84–5.Google Scholar

4 N. Z. Davis, ‘women's history’, p. 85.

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8 Lougee, C., Le paradis des femmes: women, salons and social stratification in seventeenth century France (Princeton, 1976); O. Hufton, ‘Women and the family economy in eighteenth century France’, French Historical Studies, spring 1975, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

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10 N. V. Davis, ‘Women's history’, p. 90.

11 Liddington, J. & Norris, J., One hand tied behind us. The rise of the women's suffrage movement (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Walkowitz, J. R., Prostitution and Victorian society. Women, class, and the state (Cambridge, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gordon, L., Women's body, women's right: a social history of birth control in America (New York, 1976)Google Scholar; Dufrancatel, C. et al., L'histoire sans qualités (Paris, 1979).Google Scholar

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13 Quotations from Cobb, R. C., A second identity. Essays on France and French history (London, 1969), pp. 221–2; Fiona A. Montgomery, reviewing Separate spheres with other books on women's history in Scottish Historical Review, Oct. 1981, p. 198.Google Scholar

14 Young, G. M. quoted in Stern, F. (ed.), The varieties of history from Voltaire to the present (2nd edn, London, 1970), p. 28Google Scholar; Butterfield, H., The whig interpretation of history (London, 1931), p. 63.Google Scholar

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16 DuBois, E., Feminism and suffrage (Ithaca, 1978), p. 10.Google Scholar

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22 Branca, P., Women in Europe since 1750 (London, 1978), p. 99, cf. p. 106Google Scholar; see also McMillan, J. F., ‘Clericals, anticlericals and the women's movement in France under the third republic’, Historical Journal, xxiv, no. 21 (1981), 361 ff; Housewife or harlot, pp. 88–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Cott, N. F., The bonds of womanhood. ‘ Woman's sphere’ in New England, 1780–1835 (New Haven, 1977), p. 199.Google Scholar

24 Oakley, A., Housewife (London, 1974)Google Scholar; Smith, B., Ladies of the leisure class: the bourgeoises of northern France in the nineteenth century (Princeton, 1981)Google Scholar; Perrot, M., L’éloge de la ménagère dans le discours des ouvriers français au XlXe siècle’, Romantisme, 13–14 (1976), pp. 105121.Google Scholar

25 Wilson, S., Ideology and experience: Antisemitism in France at the time of the Dreyfus affair (London and Toronto, 1982).Google Scholar

26 These were the authors cited (in fns. 42, 90, 94) at the points in ch. 4 to which Hilden objects.

27 C: Degler, N., Is there a history of women? an inaugural lecture (Oxford, 1975), p. 9.Google Scholar

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29 C. N. Degler, Inaugural lecture, p. 9.

30 G. Lerner in B. Carroll (ed.), Liberating women's history, p. 362, cf. Ann D. Gordon et al., Ibid. pp. 75–6.

31 American Historical Review, July 1982, p. 794; Association for the study of modem and contemporary France newsletter, Feb. 1982, p. 10.

32 That French women could be as militant and tenacious as men in strike activity has long been known from the work of Madeleine Guilbert. Unlike Guilbert, however, Hilden refuses to face up to the fact that male trade union leaders also had occasion to castigate women workers for their lack of proletarian solidarity. The case of the Nancy print workers’ strike in 1901, where the feminist Marguerite Durand assisted the employers in their recruitment of female labour to replace 12 men on strike, became notorious. In any event, female militancy was by no means always inspired by revolutionary ardour. Guilbert cites the examples of women strikers at Mazamet in 1909, and the sardine curers of Douarez who, in 1905, invoked the intervention of the Virgin to bring about a successful outcome to their industrial action. See Guilbert, Les femmes et l'organisation syndicate, pp. 241–2.

33 Cobden quoted in P. Hollis (ed.), Pressure from without in early Victorian England (1974), p. 142.

34 C. N. Degler, Inaugural lecture, p. 14.

35 H. Butterfield, The whig interpretation of history, p. 25.

36 E. P. Thompson, Working class, p. 13.

37 Ann D. Gordon et al., ‘The problem of women's history’, in B. Carroll (ed.), Liberating women's history, p. 77.

38 J. S. Mill in Edinburgh National Society for Women's Suffrage, 3rd annual report, p. 12, cf. R. B. Haldane in House of Commons debates, 11 July 1910, c, 82.

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