Book Description
Secondhand. Good condition. Wear to book corners and edges, particularly at spine top and tail. Dust jacket has light creasing at top edge and a repaired tear to front cover tail.
Rose Scott (1847-1925) is a central figure in the history of feminist thought and reform in Australia. Judith A Allen's path-breaking study provides the first detailed account of Scott's remarkable record of cultural criticism and activism.
Tracing several elements of that record, including Scott's place in a complex colonial family history, her diverse web of friendships and networks, her involvement with woman suffrage and with movements concerned with sexuality, pacifism, sex equality, social policy and government, Allen identifies a crucial transformation in Scott's feminism.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Scott's initial feminist vision featured a united polity of women citizens working, through legal and political measures, to end the 'degradation' of their sex. By the 1920s Scott had revised her understanding and strategy towards a focus on the pursuit of sexual 'emancipation'. This shift reflected the impact of Scott's confrontation with the differences in position and interests between women. Hitherto, such differences, including those organised around aboriginality, race, ethnicity, class, sexual and conjugal identities, had not threatened the unity of women in the minds of Scott and her feminist peers.