Copyright
Alison StonePublished On
2026-07-16Language
- English
Print Length
18 pagesTHEMA
- QDTQ
- QD
- QDTJ
- JPA
- JH
BISAC
- PHI005000
- PHI019000
- PHI009000
- PHI022000
- POL028000
Keywords
- Victorian philosophy
- Ethics
- Metaphysics
- Religion
- History
- Feminism
9. The Law of Recoil and the Ages of Woman
This chapter introduces the historical aspect of imperfect antithesis: the law of recoil, in which we swing from one form of life to its near-opposite. The chapter then examines how this law plays out in women’s changing social position. After noting how Wedgwood’s feminist thought evolved, I discuss her view that modern women lack an ideal to regulate their lives. Released into political life, women are allegedly becoming dangerously radical as they recoil against their former domestic subjugation. However, for Wedgwood women’s politicisation offsets the even worse danger of class fragmentation, because women’s sex identity is always stronger than their economic one. She develops these ideas into the thesis that morality began in prehistoric times with mothers’ devoted and selfless care of offspring. Women were the first moral agents. They enjoyed natural authority over their offspring, leading to a prehistoric ‘gynecocracy’. The ancient Greeks recoiled against the original matriarchy and installed patriarchy. Although historically questionable, Wedgwood’s account can still inspire and help us to think and imagine life beyond patriarchy. Her treatment of women applies the law of recoil and manifests her growing turn towards history.
Contributors
Alison Stone
(author)Alison Stone is Professor of Philosophy at Lancaster University. Her most recent books are on nineteenth-century women philosophers. They are Frances Power Cobbe: Essential Writings of a Nineteenth-Century Feminist Philosopher (Oxford University Press, 2022), Frances Power Cobbe (Cambridge University Press, 2022), Women Philosophers in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Oxford University Press, 2023), and Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770-1900 (Oxford University Press, 2024). With Charlotte Alderwick, she co-edited Nineteenth-Century Women Philosophers in Britain and America (Routledge, 2024), and with Lydia Moland, she co-edited The Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford University Press, 2025).