Reading Assignment

Feminism and the women 's movement made significant gains in the late19th and early 20th centuries . That women won the right to suffrage was a huge leap itself it changed the social landscape and how society treats women . Before heralding the accomplishments of early feminism , however it is important to step back and examine the development and consequences of their campaigns and the consequent reforms that were instituted . An assessment of these accomplishments would reveal the politics behind these efforts , their achievements , as well as failures Indeed , equality and liberation is a

thorny path , but for women who realize the evils of subordination under the aegis of patriarchy and imperialism , they have no alternative but to buckle up and charge forth . In political life as well as in literature , the women 's movement made significant gains . Two studies on the women 's movement in Canada however , reveal that these gains are also flawed , and , because these efforts were heavily politicized , failed to achieve fully its intended goals . In The Limitations of the Pioneering Partnership : The Alberta Campaign for Homestead Dower , 1909-25 (1993 , Catherine Cavanaugh traces the trajectory of the campaign for equitable property ownership of women . Even though women easily gained the right to vote , the campaign for homestead dower was a difficult feat . The campaign enjoyed initial success , but when it reached the executive arena through the passage of the Alberta Dower Act , the campaign folded . Court disputes ensured based on differences in the interpretation of the law . To make matters worse , when women 's groups (represented by Irene Parlby ) sought the amendment of specific provisions of the law , the bill was instantly killed in the Alberta provincial legislative assembly

The representation of women is no less skewed in the realm of Canadian literature and culture . This assertion is explained in-depth in New Woman , New World : Maternal Feminism and the New Imperialism in the White Settler Colonies (1999 . Upfront , the image of the New Woman who represented rebellion against British imperialism in the late 19th century seemed like a promising and uplifting development . It threatened the status quo of course according to Ann Ardis , the New Woman was seen to herald a modern fall ' Ardis further describes the context that brought the rise of this figure

[S]he ' appeared with the massive wave of expansionism upon which the Second British Empire rode in the final decades of the 19th century . The New Woman began to appear in literature at exactly the same time that British immigrationist propaganda was busily re-presenting the freshly opened portions of the two biggest white settler colonoies , Canada and Australia , as the New World (cited in Devereux 1999 ,

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The coupling of the image of the New Woman with the New World produced strong anti-feminist sentiment . Women were viewed as the moral pitfall of the empire , the sole reason of its collapse and degeneration . The unfounded belief that when women `fell , they would take the nation with them (Nead , cited in Devereux 1999 ,

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