Mothering feminism/mothering feminists: ray strachey and the cause

Abstract

The framework of motherhood raises interesting and important questions for feminist biography and for the history of feminism. Representations of motherhood have played an important part in defining particular kinds of feminism. But while images of sisterhood and close female friendship are integral to many recent discussions of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century feminism, cross-generational relationships between feminists and their mothers are only just beginning to be explored. In this article the author seeks to deal with both of these issues in a specific case study of Ray Strachey, exploring her feminist commitment and activity in terms of her relationship with her own mother, and with the other maternal figures to whom she was close. It is also argued that her complex negotiations with maternal figures affected the way in which she established a feminist tradition, and indeed depicted the whole history of British feminism in her major book, The Cause