Suchergebnisse

This book explores a significant lacuna in British history. Between the 1790s and the 1840s, the concept of psychological androgyny or the unsexed mind emerged as a notion of psychosexual equality, promoted by a small though influential network of heterodox radicals on the margins of Rational Dissent. Deeply concerned with the growing segregation of the sexes, supported seemingly by arbitrary and increasingly binary models of sexual difference, heterodox radicals insisted that while the body might be sexed, the mind was not. They argued that society and the prejudicial masculinist institutions of patriarchy should be reformed to accommodate and protect what one radical described as an 'infinitely varied humanity'. In placing the concept of psychological androgyny centre stage, this book offers a substantial revision to understandings of progressive debates on gender in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century in Britain

Intro -- Series Editor Preface -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Chapter 1: Psychological Androgyny: Uncovering a Radical Concept -- Chapter 2: Androgyny: Reception and Evolution of a Concept -- The Reputation of Platonism in England -- Heterosexual Uranianism: More Than Just Friends -- The Hermaphrodite: Dual-Sexed Figure of Chaos and Inequality -- The Conflation of Androgyny with Hermaphroditism -- The Science of Natural Androgynies? -- Androgyny, Erasmus Darwin and the Theory of Evolution -- Conclusion -- Chapter 3: German Interdisciplinary Learning and the English Concept of Androgyny -- The German Revival of Platonism -- The Reception of Kant and Critical Philosophy in England: The Implications for Androgyny -- Reform and German Universities -- The Attraction of a German Education -- German Learning and English Radical Journals -- Androgyny and Biblical Mythi: Transmission of a German Idea -- Androgyny and German Science -- Coleridge and German Influence -- Conclusion -- Chapter 4: Education: Cultivating the Androgynous Mind -- The Historiography of Education -- Rational Dissent and the Psychology of Mind -- The Public/Private Debate, Androgyny and Mediation -- 'Cross-gender' Books and the Power of Conversation -- The Bonds of a 'Domestic' Coeducation -- The Challenge to Gender Stereotypes -- Male/Female Emulation and the Warnings of Gender Inversion and Effeminacy -- Androgynous Pedagogy and Conservative Fears of Corruption -- Conclusion -- Chapter 5: Androgyny: The Marriage of Equals -- Marriage in England -- The Hermaphroditical 'Shackles' of Spousal Unity -- The Eradication of 'Obedience' from the Marriage Ceremony -- Locke, Milton and the 'Natural' State of Spousal Unity -- Marriage and the Androgyny of Heterosexual Uranianism -- A Shared Vision -- Platonic Love Misinterpreted -- Conclusion.