Today Elizabeth Gaskell is generally considered a lesser figure in English letters and remembered as a social novelist and great female historian. Elizabeth Gaskell's status as a leader in social fiction was deeply influenced by her upbringing and her marriage states Gerins.
There is much Critical awareness of Elizabeth Gaskell through historian interpretation which more than balance out the awareness of her innovativeness and artistic development as a novelist. While historians continue to debate the precise nature of her talented work they also reaffirm the greatness of her works.
Spencer suggests that Marxist critics reassessing her novels of industrial life have praised her sympathetic rendering of working class life. Spencer states that 'Marxist concluded that she was an apologist for middle class power'. (Spencer 1-2 1993).
Feminist critics interpreting gender relations have found Gaskell deeply critical of the power structures of her society according to Spencer.
Critical awareness of Elizabeth Gaskell as a social historian is now more than balanced by awareness of her innovativeness and artistic development as a novelist.
While historians continue to debate the precise nature of her talent, they also reaffirm the singular attractiveness of her best works for her time.
The account of women's history in Britain was evident from the impact of the women's Social and political Union that was established on 10th October 1903 by Emneline Pankhurst and daughter Christabel. The aim was to attain votes for women on equal terms with men.
Women's history initially focused on women in early modern society and the industrial period, which followed on from the women's suffrage movement after 1920. Pioneering studies by Eileen Power, Alice Clark, and Ivy Pinchbeck, examining women's lives in the past, provided a basis for the development from the 1960s of a more radical feminist history. The growth of women's history was according to Gardiner (1995) 'complemented by the rise of cognate and sympathetic areas of historical enquiry, notably social and labour history, demography, family, history, and oral history'. Women’s history’s to day has significantly lengthened the horizons of other social historians, increasing the questions they ask about both men and women, encouraging a far more complex view of social processes.
During the 1970s women's history took shape this was an aspect that emerged from the women's liberation. The women's liberation movement which started in the 1960s, uniting the personal with the political in demands for equal pay, freedom from sexual discrimination, abortion law reform, improved state provision for children, and greater educational and work-place opportunities for women as well as an end to stereotypical representations of women and unequal relationships between men and women in legal, economic, domestic and sexual matters. National conferences were held between 1970 and 1978 and throughout the decade and beyond, women's groups campaigned for legal, social and cultural recognition of their rights. Since then an immense amount of historical reclamation has been achieved. Wallach Scott (1999)
Historians in the 1960s drew focus on women and dynamics of the family in terms of power, nurture and dependence as part of their social history studies. Tosh states that 'As a result of this and other work, the whole realm of the private-as distinct from the public world of conventional history is being brought within the scope of historical understanding'.
According to Tosh 'it is with regard to the family that the impact of women's history on social history in general has been greatest'.
A number of historian writers have begun to advance a framework for understanding the modern world, which deconstructs the traditional nation state in terms of inequality, gender and ethnic diversity. Gender history is fundamental to all historical analysis. The changes in feminist thinking were intent on researching and finding a usable past by documenting women in historical gain, achievement and experiences to accompany what was so Ridgeley left out of mainstream history. Women's historians in Britain is not only a radical purpose to uncover what was previously hidden from history but also to demonstrate historical experience of a predetermined kind in this case oppression and resistance to the exclusion of material that fits less neatly with the political programmer of the writer, As is stated by Tosh (2000).
‘Women’s history done more than any other recent radical innovation to modify the shape of the discipline’ states Tosh (128 2000).
Social or cultural historians suggests that political historians still look only at the queens among us and the women's culture is the concept of oppression often masked by the specificity of women's own understanding of their condition suggests Maynard & Purvis.
Women’s history was pushed to minister to mainstream history according to Tosh he states that ‘while a sense of personal oppression and revolt against marginality and invisibility shaped the questions women’s historians first addressed, those questions in turn pushed the methodological approaches and conceptual framework of traditional history to new frontiers. The understanding of the family economic change and the distribution of power revolutionized the way of historians thinking and apply research and theory to a more rich vision of past cultures as meaningful composites of women’s and men’s experiences.
There was very few books on women's history before the new wave of women's historians had begun to regain some lost territory, before historians had produced volumes of great women, descriptions of their childhood and their life and the tributes they made to a dominate male world. The progression towards women's history was born from the women's movement that moved to a less glorious and also ambivalent analyses of the past. Very soon many women historians and other feminist began to research more towards a fuller history within the female world of the past.
The women's movement offered questions and topics towards history. Goals and aims of the feminist version of reconstituting history were sort to comply to mainstream history; the feminist critique purposed the recognition of structure and agency on all sides of a power equation. The history of women's history has been tormented by contradictions of domination and resistance.
A number of writers have noted that, historically, women have not always been subordinate within most religions. Karen Armstrong, for example. Argues that in early history ‘women were considered central to the spiritual quest, (Armstrong, 1993)
Simon De Beauvior (who was one of the most important writers of her generation, became known as an influential feminist theorist and a key exponent of existentialism, a movement in philosophy that emphasizes individual freedom and choice) and Mary Beard (historian and feminist, born in Indianapolis, was prominent in the woman suffrage movement. She helped to organize women textile workers during part of this period; after 1915 she travelled extensively in Europe and the Far East. The role of women in history and their rights are the themes of many of her books, which include Woman's Work in Municipalities (1915) and Woman as Force in History (1946). Both these women stood respectively for each tendency for women's rights and writing and contributing to women's history.
Mainstream history is limited without both genders being equally represented in our history. Many studies and research have been conducted on the importance and sometimes-crucial roles of women within the family, society, love and bonding etc such is women's history as it supports theories, Hypothesis can be drawn from it and recommendations made to amend things. Women have equal value, as do men to be part of history. Mainstream History, in its broadest sense, is the totality of all past events, although a more realistic definition would limit it to the known past. Historiography is the written record of what is known of human lives and societies in the past and how historians have attempted to understand them. Of all the fields of serious study and literary effort, history may be the hardest to define precisely, because the attempt to uncover past events and formulate an intelligible account of them necessarily involves the use and influence of many auxiliary disciplines and literary forms. According to Jenkins (1991) the concern of all serious historians has been to collect and record facts about the human past and often to discover new facts. They have known that the information they have is incomplete, partly incorrect, or biased and requires careful attention. All have tried to discover in the facts patterns of meaning addressed to the enduring questions of human life. So by Jenkins definition women's history should already be part of history not hidden from it, or limited but shown in a wide range of activities, as do men.
According to Jenkins millions of women have lived in the past few of them appear in history, that is, in history texts. Women, to use a phrase, have been 'hidden from history', that is, systematically excluded from most historians' accounts. Accordingly feminists are now engaged in the task of 'writing women back into history'.
Women’s history challenges traditional history it aids history by challenging historical conventions insists on new approaches and demands new answers. The theory behind history has been pushed in new directions structuring principle fundaments to all historical analysis, which came from the growing awareness during the 1980s.
The change of feminist thinking as feminist historians were in tent on finding a useable past that had limitations it was set out to find the ‘herstory’ in opposition to mainstream history but according to Tosh made it unclear to actually see ways in which they could change traditional history and because of this it became unclear whether women’s history would become one among many of the strands in the women’s liberation movement, or transforming the dimensions of traditional history. Women’s history developed from this prospective during the 1980s and 1990s to what it is today Tosh states three main aspects that characterized the way for comprehensive historical theory firstly women are no longer seen as a undifferentiated social category, secondly the notion of a uniform and constant oppression by men (in the form of patriarchy) and thirdly women’s history has increasingly taken the history of men within its scope. Meaning that men are considered more in historical terms and is now a matter of investigation instead of just being taken for granted.
It is fairly clear what feminism opposes in history. They oppose the oppression of women by men and the resulting inequality of the sexes. Despite the differences between various feminist perspectives most feminists welcome the reforms of the equality legislation package and the birth of women’s history. Women appear to be more empowered than in the recent past in establishing a firm past. Women’s history is the other half of traditional history that enables generations to view and be taught a more richer and fresher history that may one day be looked upon as a divided section of a new combined whole history that was once as unjust as slavery and apartheid.
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