ABSTRACT
Feminism concerns the advocacy of women’s rights, often in terms of seeking equality with men. The term was first used in the modern sense in the 1890s and it is the period around the turn of the twentieth century that is commonly referred to as the ‘first wave’ of British feminism. From the fifteenth century, there was a Europe-wide debate known as the ‘querelle des femmes’. On one side, male writers produced bawdy and misogynistic satires, and on the other, defences of women and celebrations of their qualities were published, often by female writers. The debate on women in the 1790s was informed by hopes and fears about the French Revolution. Women were on both the conservative and the radical side of the debate. Hannah More and her loyalist colleagues emphasised women’s role in the private sphere as being central to the moral regeneration that the nation would require if it were to overcome the revolution.
