The Trial of Woman: Feminism and the Occult Sciences in Victorian Literature and Society

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The Trial of Woman examines the impact of the nineteenth-century ‘Occult Revival’ on the Victorian Women’s Movement, both in the lives of individual women and in the literature surrounding ‘the Woman Question’. The book explores the Victorian Myth of Occult Womanhood and argues that the notion of female occult power was deeply influenced by the advent of Mesmerism, Spiritualism and Theosophy. This myth was itself a determining factor in women’s struggle for legal and political rights.