ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -A number of Victorian feminists, including Emily Davies, Frances Power Cobbe, Josephine Butler, Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and Millicent Garrett Fawcett, revived the Woman Question debate in their campaign for women’s rights, including the right to higher education, property, employment and suffrage.

Detailed explanation-2: -The woman question in Victorian England referred to the various debates about women’s place in society, with opposing voices emphasizing either the need for women to have greater economic, educational, and political opportunities or the idea that women properly belonged in the home as caretaker to her family.

Detailed explanation-3: -Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s poetry therefore shows her to be acutely alert to many of the key concerns of the Victorian Woman Question. Her works engage forcefully with issues of education, marriage, work, sexuality, motherhood, female solidarity and the need for gender equality.

Detailed explanation-4: -The New Woman was a response to these limiting roles of wife and mother. Starting in the late nineteenth century, more and more women remained unmarried until later in their lives, gained education, organized for women’s suffrage, and worked outside the home. Women also supported the war effort during World War I.