Whose State? The Discourse of Nation-State in European Feminist Perspectives in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

In their important theoretical and historical interpretation of nationalism, both Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson avoid using metaphors of the masculinity in characterizing nationalism, and they try to include women in their historical analysis to some extent. ¹ But neither of them has explored gender as a dynamic in the origins of European nationalism nor examined the differences between men's and women's participation in the discourse of nationalism. I take up treatments of the question of the role women played in the formulation of nationalist discourse in Europe and the justification of the nation-state. In particular, I examine the impact of nationalism on European first-wave feminists in the context of the new opportunities and restrictions for women engenderedby the debate on nation-state in modern Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. I restrict my discussion mainly to the context of bourgeois feminism; thus, when I refer to nationalist feminists in this article, generally, I will not be including socialist women's movements.

Internationalizing Feminism and Nationalizing Feminism

Rather than suggest that there was tension in feminist thought and politics between nationalism and internationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, I suggest that they coexisted. On the one hand, arguments were made about the universality of feminist claims. For example, Leon Richer wrotethat, "A principle has no country; truth knows no frontiers. The question of women's rights is the same everywhere; everywhere it can be summarized in two words: Equality, Justice." ² The principles and ideologies that feminists fought for were seen as international, but the strategies feminists used, as well as their priorities, varied according to their particular political context. Cultural changes and new ideas could readily cross national borders; however, the change in political rights and legislation definitely had to be practiced in the realm of nation-states. There was a parallel tension between claims and practices in feminist organizations.In theory, women's international organizations welcomed women from all over the world. But in fact, the women activein these organizations were mostly aristocrats or the educated middle-class, Christian, and older women of European origin. ³

I find a great deal of contradiction between the notions of nationalism and internationalism in feminist discourse in this time period. Moreover, explicit discussion of the state and the process of political change is lacking. When feminists argue for women's emancipation, even the most radical feminists seldom imagine the same possibility for radical change as more mainstream critical ideologies (liberalism, socialism) routinely posit. With such rare exceptions as Olympe de Gouges, they rarely contend that women could overthrow the existing regime when the government fails to be concerned about women's rights. Instead, feminists only try to challenge male bias in the established male ideologies or policies. As a result, bourgeois feminists claim their rights inevitably in the framework of existingnation-states, even with the emergence of an international women's movement. Nationalism and the presumption of existing state structures, so to speak, generally constrained the feminist imagination.

Reproduction and Women's Duties

Evenasmen used the public-private division to justify their oppression of women and their rejection of women's rights, in the late nineteenth century, nationalism provided a fissure for women to break through and claim their rights as "mothers of the nation-state." Offen and Allen both demonstrate that in this time period, most factions of the movement for women's rights in Europe, whether bourgeois or socialist, are variations of"familial feminism," which "espoused a sexual division of labor in both society and the family, and a positive concept of women's special nature, or womanliness" ⁴ . While nationalist movements opened a new political opportunity for women to participate in collective life, nationalists also typically reaffirmed the traditional boundaries of culturally...