A "Great Red Harlot of Infidelity": How Frances Wright was Converted to Sexual Radicalism (and What Came Afterward)

Gail Bederman’s new work on Frances Wright situates her as an active and self-conscious contributor to a wider British tradition of sexual radicalism that began with William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and their circle in the 1790s and was subsequently developed by (among others)  Jeremy Bentham, Richard Carlile, and Wright herself.  The sexual scandal at Wright’s Nashoba, and her subsquent stigmatization as a “Red Harlot” can only be understood in terms of Wright’s (temporary, but public) commitment to this ongoing radical tradition.