Jennifer Waelti-Walters and Steven C. Hause (Essay Date 1994)

SOURCE: Waelti-Walters, Jennifer and Steven C. Hause. Introduction to Feminisms of the Belle Epoque: A Historical and Literary Anthology, edited by Jennifer Waelti-Walters and Steven C. Hause, pp. 1-13. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.

In the following excerpt, Waelti-Walters and Hause argue that France made important contributions to modern feminism even though social and legal obstacles in that country made nineteenth-century reform towards achieving women's rights slower than in England or the United States.

Many of the roots of modern feminism lie in France. This may surprise readers who are more familiar with feminism than they are with France. After all, the philosophic masterworks of early feminism, from Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) to John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women (1869), appeared chiefly in the English language. The first large organizations dedicated to seeking women's...