Critical Alliances : Economics and Feminism in English Women’s Writing, 1880–1914

Critical Alliances argues that late-Victorian and modernist feminist authors saw in literary representations of female collaboration an opportunity to produce new gender and economic roles for women. It is not often that one thinks of female allegiances – such as kinship networks, cultural inheritance, or lesbian marriage – as influencing the marketplace; nor does one often think of economic models when theorizing feminist cooperation. S. Brooke Cameron suggest that, through their representations of female partnership, feminist authors such as Virginia Woolf, Olive Schreiner, George Egerton, Amy Levy, and Michael Field redefined the gendered marketplace and, with it, women’s professional opportunities. Interdisciplinary at its core and using a contextual approach, Critical Alliances selects cultural texts and theories relevant to each writer’s particular intervention in the marketplace. Chapters look at how different forms of feminist collaboration enabled women to stake their claim to one of the many, emergent professions at the turn of the century. "Critical Alliances argues that late-Victorian and modernist feminist authors saw in literary representations of female collaboration an opportunity to produce new gender and economic roles for women. It is not often that one thinks of female allegiances - such as kinship networks, cultural inheritance, or lesbian marriage - as influencing the marketplace; nor does one often think of economic models when theorizing feminist cooperation. S. Brooke Cameron suggests that, through their representations of female partnership, feminist authors such as Virginia Woolf, Olive Schreiner, George Egerton, Amy Levy, and Michael Field redefined the gendered marketplace and, with it, women's professional opportunities. Interdisciplinary at its core and using a contextual approach, Critical Alliances selects cultural texts and theories relevant to each writer's particular intervention in the marketplace. Chapters look at how different forms of feminist collaboration enabled women to stake their claim to one of the many, emergent professions at the turn of the century."-- Provided by publisher

Critical Alliances argues that late-Victorian andmodernist feminist authors saw in literary representations offemale collaboration an opportunity to produce new gender andeconomic roles for women. It is not often that one thinks of femaleallegiances - such as kinship networks, cultural inheritance, orlesbian marriage - as influencing the marketplace; nor does oneoften think of economic models when theorizing feministcooperation. S. Brooke Cameron suggest that, through theirrepresentations of female partnership, feminist authors such asVirginia Woolf, Olive Schreiner, George Egerton, Amy Levy, andMichael Field redefined the gendered marketplace and, with it,women's professional opportunities.

Interdisciplinary at its core and using a contextual approach,Critical Alliances selects cultural texts and theoriesrelevant to each writer's particular intervention in themarketplace. Chapters look at how different forms of feministcollaboration enabled women to stake their claim to one of themany, emergent professions at the turn of the century.

This study argues that feminist collaboration was vital to women's successful infiltration of the marketplace at the end of the nineteenth century and Edwardian period.