The New Angels in the House? Feminists as New Victorians

This essay takes as its point of departure the American writer Rene Denfeld’s book The New Victorians (1995). At the time of its publication it was hailed by Right-leaning critics as a common-sense corrective to the lunacy of feminism’s “extremist” fringe, regarded as creeping dangerously into the mainstream. Denham is not read widely in academic circles and, as a journalist and non-fiction writer, has since turned her attention to other subjects, but her book is representative of a cluster of trade publications which appeared in the mid to late 1990s and has a significance which continues to be felt in popular reactions to feminism. I have chosen to focus most specifically on Denfeld because she most clearly articulates a link between academic feminism and the Victorians, suggesting that contemporary political feminists seek to anchor women in a past of repression and self-denial; however, I shall also make brief reference to other popular feminist detractors, such as Katie Roiphe and Christina Hoff Sommers, with whom Denfeld shares ideological and thematic concerns.