Some Feminist Betrayals of Women's History

Abstract

The readers of a periodical as distinguished as the Historical Journal had a right to expect that Patricia Hilden's recent review-article on women's history' would provide a well-informed and scholarly commentary on the difficult problems posed by this rapidly growing subject. Yet her 'brief scan of the recent history of women's history' (p. 5II) has disgraced the journal by signally failing to carry out the reviewer's first duty that of informing the reader about the overall aims and arguments of the books under discussion.2 Still more serious, her article propagates several misleading views, and even encourages unscholarly practice. We aim here to discuss only three aspects of this feminist trahison des clercs: Hilden's distorted historiographical perspective, her misleading assessment of the relationship between feminism and historical scholarship, and her confused treatment of anti-feminist ideas in past and present. In clearing away this confusion, however, our overriding purpose is the more positive one of clarifying the terms on which feminists and historians can fruitfully co-operate, and this will therefore be our concluding theme. First, the question of historiography. Reforming movements often manufacture an inspirational but inaccurate history which urges them on to further effort; Hilden goes further than this and manufactures an inaccurate historiography as well. She claims that 'no sooner was the movement for women's liberation reborn in the I 96os than feminist scholars began the exercise of historical retrieval' (p. 50I). She compounds this exaggeration of recent feminist historiographical achievement by her title, 'Women's history: the second wave'. This sees current writing on women's history as the second wave of a tide which began flowing only in the I96os (though we suddenly find on p. 5I0 that there were, in fact, important historians of women before then). In reality, the pre-feminist writing on women's history is extensive; Natalie Davis rightly reminds us, in the first sentence of her valuable historiographical survey, that ' the genre of women's history is no newcomer on the scene'. Davis directs attention I Historical journal, xxv, 2 (I982), 501-12. 2 There is no need here to expound the argument and scope of our books, but for those who seek fair-minded reviews of Harrison's Separate spheres: the opposition to women's suffrage in Britain (London, 1978), these can be found in, among others, Spare Rib, Jan. I979, p. 37; American Historical Review, Oct. 1979, p. I057; Times Higher Education Supplement, 6 Oct. 1978, p. 20; Times Literary Supplement, i Dec. 1978, p. 1401; English Historical Review, Oct. 1979, p. 944; Canadian Journal of History, XIV (1979), 499-500. For reviews of McMillan's Housewife or harlot: the place of women in French society, i87o-I940 (Brighton, i 98I), see American Historical Review, July I982, p. 794; Choice, Dec. I98I; Association for the study of modern and contemporary France newsletter, Feb. I982, pp. I0-I i; European Studies Review, Oct. 1982, pp. 491-3.