Chastity and transgression in women's writing, 1792-1897

"Two important moments in women's history frame Roxanne Eberle's project: 1790s proto-feminism and 1890s 'first-wave' feminism. The first half of her study focuses upon the interrelationship between early political tracts, including Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman and a series of novels in which 'fallen women' appear as heroic outcasts who challenge prescriptions of female chastity and the legal, educational, and economic structures that enforce them. The second half of the book examines interruptions of 'the harlot's progress' in the work of Victorian writers, including Elizabeth Gaskell and Christina Rossetti, writers who insistently figure a split between the sexualized 'victim' and her 'sister savior'. Eberle concludes her examination of the intertwined histories of feminism and sexual transgression by exploring the New Woman writer's investment in 'purity' narratives, whether she takes as her text Wollstonecraft's life, the Contagious Diseases Acts, or the role of the twentieth-century feminist philosopher."--Jacket.