Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash - Britain, Ireland and Australia, 1890-1920

Shame and the Anti-Feminist Backlash examines how women opposed to the feminist campaign for the vote in early twentieth-century Britain, Ireland, and Australia used shame as a political tool. It demonstrates just how proficient women were in employing a diverse vocabulary of emotions - drawing on concepts like embarrassment, humiliation, honour, courage, and chivalry - in the attempt to achieve their political goals. It looks at how far nationalist contexts informed each gendered emotional community at a time when British imperial networks were under extreme duress. The book presents a unique history of gender and shame which demonstrates just how versatile and ever-present this social emotion was in the feminist politics of the British Empire in the early decades of the twentieth century. It employs a fascinating new thematic lens to histories of anti-feminist/feminist entanglements by tracing national and transnational uses of emotions by women to police their own political communities. It also challenges the common notion that shame had little place in a modernizing world by revealing how far groups of patriotic womanhood, globally, deployed shame to combat the effects of feminist activism.

List of contents

Introduction 1. Shaming Unwomanly Women 2. Reversing the Shame of British Colonisation 3. Embarrassing the Imperial Centre 4. Shaming British-Australia 5. War and the Dishonourable British Feminist 6. Shaming Manhood to Embody Courage 7. The Shame of the Violent Woman. Conclusion

About the author

Sharon Crozier-De Rosa is a senior lecturer in history at the University of Wollongong.

Summary

This book examines how patriotic groups of womanhood used shame as a political tool. It looks at how early twentieth-century British, Irish, and Australian women embraced the reformative power of shame as they attempted to protect their gendered and national communities from "feminist corruption."

Product details

• Authors: Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Sharon (University of Wollongong Crozier-De Rosa, Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Crozier-De Rosa Sharon Crozier-De Rosa
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2019
• EAN: 9780367867393
• ISBN: 978-0-367-86739-3
• No. of pages: 260
• Series: Routledge Research in Gender and History
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History; Non-fiction book > History > Miscellaneous; Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900, European History, HISTORY / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Women's Studies, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Gender Studies, Social & cultural history, HISTORY / Modern / 19th Century, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Feminism & Feminist Theory, British & Irish history, Social and cultural history, Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000, History and Archaeology, HISTORY / Modern / 20th Century / General