This book places the concept of shame within a historical context. It examines how this emotion was used by popular writers (especially female writers) in the widespread backlash against feminism at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, in Britain, Ireland and Australia. Shame was considered to be an overwhelmingly appropriate weapon in the campaign against the aspirations and actions of the unwomanly woman. Trouble arose, however, when it appeared that these unwomanly women were either resistant to or incapable of experiencing this highly gendered emotion....