White, Male and Middle Class: Essays in the Exploration of Feminism and Literary History

Charting British feminist history over the past 20 years, this book examines its objects of study, its theoretical debates and its definitions of the politics of history. Reflecting on the particularities of British feminism and the ways in which this has shaped the concerns of feminist history, Hall explores the construction of gendered identities within the English middle-class from the 19th century. From the early enthusiasm of the 1970s for the hidden histories and lost experiences of women, feminist history has become increasingly concerned with men as well as women, with a rewriting of history from a woman's perspective and a gendered perspective. In the 1980s, race became a vital issue for feminism and the last section of the book explores the connections between gendered and racial identities - the different ways in which 19th-century men attempted to exercise power over all their dependants, whether black or female.