(Post)Feminist Genealogies in Kate Muir’s Suffragette City ad Lisa Evans’ Old Baggage

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.28496

Keywords:

Suffragette City, Old Baggage, suffragette, intergenerational dialogues, didacticism, feminism, (post)feminism

Abstract

This article explores Kate Muir’s Suffragette City and Lisa Evans’ Old Baggage didactic potential based on the interactions between women that belong to different (feminist) generations taking place in both novels. Suffragette City reproduces the conversations and encounters between the ghost of a Scottish suffragette fighting for her enfranchisement in the twentieth century, and her great-great-granddaughter living in New York at the beginning of the following century. Old Baggage also deploys the figure of the suffragette, but in this case, embodied by a Londoner in her fifties who has just been granted the right to vote, and a group of newly enfranchised girls. I argue that the intergenerational exchanges between an older suffragette and younger female characters metaphorically facilitate a dialogue between feminism and postfeminism illuminating the tensions and convergences between them. My reading of these novels is supported by what Stéphanie Genz calls the “genealogical approach” (2021) to postfeminism, which does not present both movements as dichotomous but acknowledges that different feminist moments should be understood as interrelated and not superseding each other in apparently distinctive “waves.” My ultimate aim is to present Suffragette City and Old Baggage as didactic texts which reflect on what I refer to as (post)feminist debates to vindicate the pertinence of feminism in a so-called postfeminist context.

Funding

MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and ERDF A way of making Europe (PID2021-122249NB-I00).

References

BANET-WEISER, Sarah, Rosalind Gill, and Catherine Rottenberg. 2019. “Postfeminism, Popular Feminism and Neoliberal Feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in Conversation.” Feminist Theory 0 (0): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119842555

BENSTOCK, Shari. 2006. “Afterword: The New Woman’s Fiction.” In Ferris and Young 2006, 253-256.

BROOKS, Ann. 1997. Postfeminisms. Feminism, Cultural Theory and Cultural Forms. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.22230/cjc.1998v23n3a1052

BUDGEON, Shelley. 2011. “The Contradictions of Successful Femininity: Third-Wave Feminism, Postfeminism and ‘New’ Femininities.” In Gill and Scharff 2011, 279-292. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230294523_19

CLOSE, Ajay. 2015. A Petrol Scented Spring. Dingwall: Sandstone Press Ltd.

COCKIN, Katherine. 2004. “Inventing the Suffragettes: Anachronism, Gnosticism and Corporeality in Contemporary Fiction.” Critical Survey 16 (3): 17-32. https://doi.org/10.3167/001115704782351618

COOPER, Katherine, and Emma Short. 2012. The Female Figure in Contemporary Historical Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137283382

CRAWFORD, Elizabeth. 1999. The Women’s Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. London: UCL P Kindle.

ELLIOTT, Gemma. 2018. “‘Women Who Dared to Ask for a Vote’: The Missing Memoirs of the Scottish Suffragettes.” Women’s Writing 25 (3): 314-328. https://doi.org/10.1080/09699082.2018.1473016

EVANS, Lisa. 2018a. Old Baggage. London: Doubleday.

EVANS, Lisa. 2018b. “The Interview: Lissa Evans on Old Baggage.” Interview by Martha Greengrass. Waterstones, December 31. https://www.waterstones.com/blog/the-interview-lissa-evans-on-old-baggage [Accessed October 17, 2024]

FALUDI, Susan. 1992. Backlash: The Undeclared War against Women. London: Chatto & Windus.

FEAY, Suzi. 2018. “Old Baggage by Lissa Evans Review – Suffrage and Showdowns.” The Guardian, June 14. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/14/old-baggage-by-lissa-evans-review#:~:text=Historical%20novels%20frequently%20shine%20a,have%20relished%20the%20battles%20ahead [Accessed October 17, 2024]

FERRIS, Suzanne, and Mallory Young. 2006. “Introduction.” In Ferris and Young 2006, 1-13.

FERRIS, Suzanne, and Mallory Young, eds. 2006. Chick lit: The New Woman’s Fiction. New York: Routledge.

GENZ, Stéphanie. 2021. “Busting the ‘Post’?: Postfeminist Genealogies in Millennial Culture.” In Paul and Van Veldhuizen 2021, 195-214.

GILL, Rosalind. 2016. “Post-postfeminism?: New Feminist Visibilities in Postfeminist Times.” Feminist Media Studies 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2016.1193293

GILL, Rosalind, and Christina Scharff. 2011. “Introduction.” In Gill and Scharff 2011, 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230294523_1

GILL, Rosalind, and Christina Scharff, eds. 2011. New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

GILLIS, Stacy, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford. 2004. “Introduction.” In Gillis, Howie and Munford 2004, 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523173_1

GILLIS, Stacy, Gillian Howie, and Rebecca Munford, eds. 2004. Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523173

GRAPH, Fiona. 2022. Things that Bounded. Bristol: Silverwood Books.

HALL, Elaine J., and Salupo Rodríguez, Marnie. 2003. “The Myth of Postfeminism.” Gender & Society 17 (6): 878-902. https://doi.org/10.1177/0891243203257639

HARZEWSKI, Stephanie. 2011. Chicklit and Postfeminism. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press.

HESSELGREEN, Sophia. 1999. “For a Ghost, Agnes Has Got a Lot of Attitude.” The Guardian, January, 17. https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1999/jan/17/featuresreview.review2 [Accessed October 17, 2024]

HOLMLUND, Chris. 2005. “Postfeminsim from A to G.” Cinema Journal 44 (2): 116-121. https://doi.org/10.1353/cj.2005.0008

LOTZ, Amanda D. 2001. “Postfeminist Television Criticism: Rehabilitating Critical Terms and Identifying Postfeminist Attributes.” Feminist Media Studies 1 (1): 105-121. https://doi.org/10.1080/14680770120042891

MABRY, A. Rochelle. 2006. “About a Girl: Female Subjectivity and Sexuality in Contemporary ‘Chick’.” In Ferris and Young 2006, 191-206.

MCROBBIE, Angela. 2004. “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture.” Feminist Media Studies 4 (3): 255-264. https://doi.org/10.1080/1468077042000309937

MITCHELL, Kate. 2010. History and Cultural Memory in Neo-Victorian Fiction: Victorian Afterimages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230283121

MUIR, Kate. 1999. Suffragette City. London: Pan Books.

MYCOCK, Andy. 2022. “Bringing ‘Hope’, a 32,000-piece Life-Sized Suffragette Made of LEGO Bricks, to Campus to Raise Awareness of the Need to Continue to Equalise Political Rights.” Womanthology, March 16. https://www.womanthology.co.uk/bringing-hope-a-32000-piece-life-sized-suffragette-made-of-lego-bricks-to-campus-to-raise-awareness-of-the-need-to-continue-to-equalise-political-rights/ [Accessed October 17, 2024]

NEGRA, Diane. 2009. What a Girl Wants? Fantasizing the Reclamation of Self in Postfeminism. Abingdon: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203869000

PAUL, Herman and Adriaan Van Veldhuizen. 2021. Post-Everything: An Intellectual History of Post-Concepts. Manchester: Manchester UP. https://doi.org/10.7765/9781526148179

PURVIS, June. 2000. “Emmeline Pankhurst (1858-1928) and Votes for Women.” In Purvis and Holton 2000, 109-134.

PURVIS, June and Sandra Stanley Holton. 2000. Votes for Women. London: Routledge.

RIBCHESTER, Lucy. 2015. The Hourglass Factory. London: Simon & Schuster.

RIVERS, Nicola. 2017. Postfeminism(s) and the Arrival of the Fourth Wave. Turning Tides. Palgrave Macmillan: University of Gloucestershire. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59812-3

ROUSSELOT, Elodie. 2014. Exoticising the Past in Contemporary Neo- Historical Fiction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137375209

TASKER, Yvonne, and Diane Negra. 2007. “Introduction: Feminist Politics and Postfeminist Culture.” In Tasker and Negra 2007, 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822390411-001

TASKER, Yvonne, and Diane Negra, eds. 2007. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Durham and London: Duke UP. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1210217

UCL Research. 2022. “UCL to host ‘Hope the Lego Suffragette’ from the House of Commons.” UCL Research, January 27. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/research/news/2022/jan/ucl-host-hope-lego-suffragette-house-commons [Accessed October 17, 2024]

WALLACE, Diana. 2005. Woman’s Historical Novel: British Women Writers, 1900-200. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

WELLS, Juliette. 2006. “Mothers of Chick Lit?: Women Writers, Readers, and Literary History.” In Ferris and Young 2006, 47-70.

Downloads

Statistics

Statistics RUA

Published

30-01-2025

How to Cite

Ripoll Fonollar, Mariana. 2025. “(Post)Feminist Genealogies in Kate Muir’s Suffragette City Ad Lisa Evans’ Old Baggage”. Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina De Estudios Ingleses, no. 42 (January):137-57. https://doi.org/10.14198/raei.28496.

Issue

Section

Miscellaneous