Utilitarianism states that actions are only right if they are useful of benefiting the majority and that, “if individuals could enhance their own usefulness and the conditions of their own personal morality, then they would be general improvement to society at large” (Lewis 2002) and so was popular amongst the Suffragettes. John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill (1970) were also utilitarian and rightly argued that women should be educated considering they were solely responsible for the education of the children. The Suffragettes had became a political movement by 1912 and “carried out direct action… setting fire to the contents of mailboxes” (2006) to get the government’s attention for their beliefs. Women finally got a conditioned right to vote in 1918 made possible by The People Act and 10 years later, received the same rights as men.
One theory that disagrees with feminism is Darwin’s “notions of the evolution of species and ‘survival of the fittest’” (Lewis 2002) as it believes that people are placed in a certain position in life according to factors i.e. race, class, wealth, sex, and it is this which “determined their merit”. Therefore, with regards to feminism, women would never have the same rights, status or respect as their counterparts nor the disabled, people of different ethnic origins and slaves. Other theorists believing that “an individual’s level of civilisation was… conditioned by his or her ‘cultural’ context” (Lewis 2002) was Matthew Arnold and Thomas Carlyle. They did not blame those individuals low in the hierarchy of social status but their ignorance still disagreed to a “universal suffrage” (Lewis 2002) as they felt the lower the status of the people, the more insignificant they were as a member of society, moreover they thought that it would develop into aspects of the French Revolution (Lewis 2002).
High modernists such as Kate Millett (1970) a feminist writer felt that there was a ‘decline’ of feminism between 1960 and 1970 (Lewis 2002). The only expectations were Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. High modernism refers to specific “ideas and texts from the Enlightenment trough to the present” (Lewis 2002).
In Virginia Woolf writing A Room of One’s Own (1929) she “examines whether women were capable of producing work of the quality of William Shakespeare, amongst other topics” (2007). In her book she insists that women can function alone and do not necessarily need men for them to be successful and encourages women to be independent and has a huge influence on modernism (Lewis 2002). She as a result “is regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century”. (2007).
Simone de Beauvoir a French Marxist feminist on the other hand has a more “radical edge” (Lewis 2002). She questioned British high society and “establishes the important relationship between identity and gender” (Lewis 2002). According to De Beauvoir (1949) a woman’s existence is based on that of a man and they have no identity without ‘him’. In De Beauvoir’s other writings she talks about her personal relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre a French existentialist philosopher and lifelong friend. They had an equal relationship which later became admired by other women and feminists and the way she openly expressed herself and liberally spoke about her sexual experiences which was not expected and seen as prohibited coming from a woman in those times.
De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex:
“Also allowed for translation into a political praxis to which it gave philosophical support. Since (then)… she has been actively involved in all the major political struggles against women's oppression, in France and elsewhere. She has been a huge influence on contemporary feminists but “now is dismissed by so many as not really a feminist or even a misogynist” (2002).
De Beauvoir blames “patriarchal capitalism” for women’s inequality within the workforce and the oppression they had to face with every aspect of their lives as she argues that women’s role is assumed by both men and women as inferior which is made possible by “discourse and history” (Lewis 2002). She feels that women should realise the inequalities that face them because only them are in control of what they are to tolerate (Lewis 2002).
ENDS
References
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Lewis, J. (2002) Cultural studies – the basics. London : Sage
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Mill, J. S. (1863) Utilitarianism London : Parker, Son and Bourn
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Wikipedia. (Homepage of the Free Encyclopaedia) (Online) Available from: (Accessed 3 January 2007).
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Wikipedia. (Homepage of the Free Encyclopaedia) (Online) Available from: (Accessed 5 January 2007).
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Wikipedia. (Homepage of the Free Encyclopaedia) (Online) Available from: (Accessed 3 January 2007).
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Wikipedia. (Homepage of the Free Encyclopaedia) (Online) Available from: (Accessed 4 January 2007).
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Simone de Beauvoir and the Women's Movement (Online) Available from: (Accessed 4 January 2007).
Bibliography
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Baldwin E., Longhurst B., McCracken S., Ogborn M., and Smith G. (2003) Introducing Cultural Studies. London : Prentice-Hall
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Barker, C. (2003) Cultural studies: Theory and practice. 2nd ed. London: Sage.