Our Lady of Victorian Feminism: The Madonna in the Work of Anna Jameson, Margaret Fuller, and George EliotOhio University Press, 2001 - 300 pages Our Lady of Victorian Feminism is about three nineteenth-century women, Protestants by background and feminists by conviction, who are curiously and crucially linked by their extensive use of the Madonna in arguments designed to empower women. In the field of Victorian studies, few scholars have looked beyond the customary identification of the Christian Madonna with the Victorian feminine ideal--the domestic Madonna or the Angel in the House. Kimberly VanEsveld Adams shows, however, that these three Victorian writers made extensive use of the Madonna in feminist arguments. They were able to see this figure in new ways, freely appropriating the images of independent, powerful, and wise Virgin Mothers. In addition to contributions in the fields of literary criticism, art history, and religious studies, Our Lady of Victorian Feminism places a needed emphasis on the connections between the intellectuals and the activists of the nineteenth-century women's movement. It also draws attention to an often neglected strain of feminist thought, essentialist feminism, which proclaimed sexual equality as well as difference, enabling the three writers to make one of their most radical arguments, that women and men are made in the image of the Virgin Mother and the Son, the two faces of the divine. |
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Adam Bede American Angel Anglican Anna Jameson argues arguments art historian artistic Barbara Bodichon beliefs Bodichon Catholic Catholicism century Christ Christian Church claims Commonplace Book critics Daniel Deronda Dinah discussion divine doctrine domestic Dorothea Eliot Letters Elizabeth Elizabeth Cady Stanton emphasized England English example faith father female femi feminine feminism feminist Feuerbach figure Florence George Eliot goddesses Grimké Harriet Hosmer heroine holy Hosmer human ideal images inheritance intellectual Jesus Lady Legendary Art Legends Macpherson Madonna Madonna-figure male Margaret Fuller Marian Mariology marriage Mary's masculine maternal Middlemarch Mirah modern nature Newman nineteenth nineteenth-century novel Oxford Movement painters paintings Patmore poem political Protestant purity religion religious art Renaissance representations represented role Roman Romola Ruether Ruskin Sacred and Legendary saints Savonarola scholars seems sexual social soul Spanish Gypsy spiritual Stanton suggests symbol thought three writers tion tradition Victorian Virgin Mary Virgin Mother wife woman women