John Stuart Mill (1806 –1873) was a British philosopher, economist, and civil servant, and the husband of Harriet Taylor Mill (née Harriet Hardy) (1807 –1858) who was a philosopher and women’s rights advocate.
Together (with their daughter Helen’s help after Harriet’s death) they wrote
The Subjection of Women. Some scholars have supposed that John wrote it alone, but John himself credited his wife as co-author. It should also be noted that some of the book’s arguments are similar to those in Harriet Taylor Mill's essay The Enfranchisement of Women, which was published in 1851. The
Subjection of Women was published in 1869, and made John one of the earliest male writers to write on the subject of women’s equality. The book promoted women’s suffrage, education for women, and the reform of marriage laws, all on the grounds of utilitarianism – in summary, the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
The Enfranchisement of Women can be read in English
here.
The Subjection of Women can be read in English
here.
Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli, commonly known as
Margaret Fuller (1810 – 1850) was an American journalist, critic, and women's rights advocate.
Her book
Woman in the Nineteenth Century, published in 1845, is considered the first major feminist work in the United States. Some scholars have suggested Woman in the Nineteenth Century was the first major women's rights work since Mary Wollstonecraft's
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, beginning with a comparison between the two women made by Mary Ann Evans (pen name George Eliot) in her 1855 essay "Margaret Fuller and Mary Wollstonecraft.”
A shorter version of the
Woman in the Nineteenth Century had been published in 1843 in serial form for the Transcendentalist magazine
The Dial, which Fuller edited; it was then called "The Great Lawsuit: Man 'versus' Men, Woman 'versus' Women."
The book declared that marriage should be a union between two independent and self-sufficient individuals, rather than having the woman dependent on the man. Fuller thought that equality between men and women would enable them to share a divine and transcendental love.
Woman in the Nineteenth Century can be read in English
here.
Camilla Collett (1813-1895) is often considered the first Norwegian feminist, and was one of the first realist writers in Norwegian literature.
Her most famous work is her only novel,
Amtmandens Døtre (The District Governor's Daughters) which was published anonymously in two separate parts in 1854 and 1855. The book is considered one of the first political and social realist novels in Norway and deals with the difficulties of being a woman in a sexist society in general and forced marriages specifically. It is believed that her personal experiences in life, specifically her relationship with her brother’s literary opponent Welhaven, influenced the book. Both her father and her brother were opposed to this relationship, and it eventually ended.
After the writing of
Amtmandens Døtre, Collett focused largely on reviews and essays about literature, making her the first feminist literary critic in Norway.
Her complete works can be read in Norwegian
here.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 –1902) was a leader of the women’s suffrage movement in America, as well as an advocate for divorce reform, birth control, women's parental and custody rights, women’s property rights, and women’s employment and income rights.
She was the main writer of the
Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions, which was presented at the first American women's rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.
It was based on the form of the Declaration of Independence, and caused much controversy, particularly with its support of women’s suffrage, which even many women’s rights supporters thought was too radical and would damage other causes such as women’s property rights.
Furthermore, her controversial publishing of
The Woman's Bible in 1898 (a feminist criticism of the Bible, written by herself and a “Revising Committee”) alienated many religious suffragists, although criticism of sexism in the Bible would become more popular in the 1970s, when much of Stanton’s writing was rediscovered. Stanton declared in
The Woman's Bible that the Bible "in its teachings degrades Women from Genesis to Revelations." However she and the other contributors found some things to admire in the Bible, particularly some of the women in the Old Testament.
The
Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions can be read in English
here.
The Woman's Bible can be read in English
here.
Charlotte Brontë (1816 –1855) was an English novelist and poet, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters who survived into adulthood, whose novels are classics of English literature. She published
Jane Eyre in 1847 under the pen name Currer Bell. Jane Eyre, which tells the story of a governess who falls in love with her employer, is written in the first person, and is considered an influential feminist text because of its in-depth exploration of a strong female character's feelings. Jane’s insistence that she will continue to work as a governess even after she marries was also quite radically feminist for the time.
Jane Eyre can be read in English
here.
Concepción Arenal (1820 –1893) was a Spanish feminist writer and activist. She is considered the founder of the feminist movement in Spain due to her writing, in works such as
The Woman of the Future (1869),
The Education of Women, The Current State of Women in Spain, The Work of Women, The Woman of the House (1883),
The Woman With Prospects, and
Domestic Service.
She herself accomplished many firsts for women, as she was the first woman in Spain to attend any university. She attended the Complutense University of Madrid, where she was forced to wear masculine attire. She also attended political and literary debates, unheard of at the time for a woman.
Her complete works can be read in Spanish
here.
Henrik Ibsen (1828 –1906) was a famous Norwegian playwright, one of the founders of Modernism in theater. One of his major works, A Doll’s House (1879), is considered a feminist classic by many, although Ibsen himself declared that he "must disclaim the honor of having consciously worked for the women's rights movement," saying he wrote "without any conscious thought of making propaganda," but rather for "the description of humanity."
In any case, A Doll’s House is extremely critical of 19th century marriage norms, and was very controversial when it was first written. It ends with Nora leaving her husband in order to discover herself, although for the play’s debut in Germany Ibsen wrote an alternative ending where she stays, as the production's lead actress refused to play the part of Nora unless Ibsen changed the ending; Ibsen himself referred to this new ending as a “barbaric outrage.” However, in Norway the original ending was kept and every performance of its first run was sold out.
A Doll's House was based on the life of Laura Kieler (maiden name Laura Smith Petersen), who was a good friend of Ibsen. In real life, when Victor found out about Laura's secret loan, he divorced her and had her committed to an asylum, but two years later, she returned to her husband and children at his own request. She went on to become a well-known author, living to the age of 83. Ibsen wrote A Doll's House when Laura Kieler had been committed to the asylum; Laura had asked him to intervene at a crucial point in the scandal, but he did not.
A Doll's House can be read in English
here.
Kate Chopin, born Katherine O'Flaherty (1850 –1904) was an American author of short stories and novels. She is considered by many to be a forerunner of feminist authors of the 20th century. Her short story "The Story of An Hour " (1894) is particularly remarkable in that it shows a woman made happy by her husband’s death due to the oppression of her marriage, a very daring statement for the time.
The Awakening (1899) is also a story of a woman made unhappy by her marriage, which features frank (for its time) depictions of female sexual desire, even outside of marriage. Reviews ranged from condemnation to praise, though the public reaction was almost completely opposed. She never published another novel, and had difficulties even publishing short stories, but
The Awakening is now considered a landmark of feminist literature. Furthermore, Chopin was recognized as one of the leading writers of her time within a decade of her death.
The Story of An Hour can be read in English
here.
T
he Awakening can be read in English
here.
Olive Schreiner (1855 –1920) was a South African author (born in present-day Lesotho) and anti-war campaigner. She is best remembered today for her novel
The Story of an African Farm (1883), which is considered one of the first feminist novels, and was a bestseller. There is little plot to the novel, which concerns the lives of three people from childhood through adulthood, and caused some controversy over its advocacy of free thought and feminism, and its frank portrayal of premarital sex, pregnancy outside of wedlock, and transvestitism.
The Story of an African Farm can be read in English
here.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935) was a prominent American sociologist, writer, and lecturer for social reform.
Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. It concerns a woman who is confined to a room for three months for the sake of her health, and who becomes insane as a result; Gilman herself had endured the then-popular “rest cure” as a treatment for her post-partum psychosis, and felt she had come near to losing her own sanity. She sent Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who had prescribed the rest cure for her, a copy of the story. She claimed he had changed his methods as a result of this, but in fact (possibly unknown to her) he had not.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote many other feminist works which have not been as popular as
The Yellow Wallpaper. Her greatest work is often considered to be
Women and Economics (1898), in which she described and opposed women’s financial dependence on men.
In order to end this, she was one of the first to support the professionalization of housework, to be done by housekeepers and cooks for money rather than by mothers for nothing. She also suggested cooperative kitchens in city apartment buildings where cooking would be shared rather than being the private chore of each family. However, she still insisted that motherhood was “the common duty and the common glory of womanhood,” and that women would choose “professions compatible with motherhood.”
Women and Economics received overwhelmingly positive reviews and caused Gilman to be considered the leading intellectual of the women’s movement. It was even compared favorably to
The Subjection of Women. However, Gilman did not call herself a feminist, as she was very uncomfortable with the ideas of sexual liberation that had become an important part of feminist thought.
The Yellow Wallpaper can be read in English
here.
Women and Economics can be read in English
here.
