ABSTRACT
The increased interest shown by feminism in recent times in the themes and precepts of nineteenth century Romanticism is hardly surprising. This first cultural revolution of modernity expressed the crisis of an old world and the emergence of the new. This chapter discusses a seeming paradox which appears at the crossroads of the two different constructions of feminism's interest in Romanticism. It establishes that the hopes that contemporary feminism might discover in Romanticism evidence for an unbiased reflection on the difference between the sexes have been disappointed. The chapter shows that a naturalising conception of feminine difference is a manifestation of assumptions embedded deep within the core of a Romantic world view. It also establishes that the very same dimension of a Romantic world view responsible for a naturalistic construction of feminine difference is precisely that aspect of Romanticism which has been appropriated by a Romantic feminism to supply the core of its own self-understanding.
