Not So Immaculately Conceived

British and American women lost ground in gaining personal civil and legalrights in the last half of the nineteenth-century. This was a particularlysurprising turn of events considering that women had made great stridestowards gender equality in the early part of the century. What caused thissurprising turn around? Not So Immaculately Conceived: Imagining theProtestant Madonna 1850-1910 explores the ways that religious languagepopular culture literature and the media worked together to createconsumer-driven images of women in a world destabilized by industrializationsecularization and scientific discoveries. The central unifying issuefor the argument is the Immaculation Conception definition published in1854 by the Catholic Church. In the first half of the book Scaperoth examinesworks by Charles Dickens Wilkie Collins Charles Kingsley Algernon CharlesSwinburne Robert Browning John Ruskin and the Pre-Raphaelites. In thesecond half the focus shifts to the American writers Mark Twain HenryJames and Henry Adams. The book has particular relevance today with itsfocus on the powerful way that media and religious groups often determinegender roles.