Eighteenth-Century Women Writers and the Gentleman's Liberation Movement: Independence, War, Masculinity, and the Novel, 1778-1818. By MEGAN A. WOODWORTH. Farnham: Ashgate. 2011. 229 p. £55 (hb). ISBN 978-1-4094-2780-3.

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 578-579
Author(s):  
ALICIA KERFOOT
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Liberation Movement

scholarly journals Adeline Mowbray, or, the bitter acceptance of woman's fate

2010 ◽  
pp. 187
Author(s):  
Aída Díaz Bild
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Married Women ◽  
Important Task ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Patriarchal System ◽  
Companionate Marriage ◽  
The Ideal

Eighteenth-century women writers believed that the novel was the best vehicle to educate women and offer them a true picture of their lives and “wrongs”. Adelina Mowbray is the result of Opie’s desire to fulfil this important task. Opie does not try to offer her female readers alternatives to their present predicament or an idealized future, but makes them aware of the fact that the only ones who get victimized in a patriarchal system are always the powerless, that is to say, women. She gives us a dark image of the vulnerability of married women and points out not only how uncommon the ideal of companionate marriage was in real life, but also the difficulty of finding the appropriate partner for an egalitarian relationship. Lastly, she shows that there is now social forgiveness for those who transgress the established boundaries, which becomes obvious in the attitude of two of the most compassionate and generous characters of the novel, Rachel Pemberton and Emma Douglas, towards Adelina.

scholarly journals Pleas for Respectability: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Theorizing the Novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
Amelia Precup
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Novel ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Long Eighteenth Century

Abstract The emergence and development of the modern novel used to be viewed as a largely masculine affair. However, over the past few decades, researchers and scholars have started to re-evaluate and acknowledge the importance of women’s literary and theoretical work to the rise and evolution of the genre. This article adds to these revisionist efforts by contributing to the ongoing discussion on the theoretical legacy left by some of the most notable British women writers of the long eighteenth century. The article analyses several texts (prefaces, dedications, dialogues, essays, reviews) in which they expressed their perspectives on questions situated at the core of the eighteenth-century debates concerning the novel. The critical and theoretical perspectives advanced by these writers are approached as contributions to the novel’s status as a respectable literary genre and, implicitly, as self-legitimizing efforts.

scholarly journals Del héroe romántico al “feminized man” o de la realidad a la fantasía

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aída Díaz Bild
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Model ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Dominant Male ◽  
Sentimental Novel ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Conduct Books ◽  
Las Mujeres ◽  
Freedom Of Action

ResumenUna de las maneras en las que las mujeres escritoras del siglo XVIII subvierten el discurso de la novela sentimental es creando un tipo de amor alternativo y un héroe que es una excepción a la regla patriarcal, el denominado “feminized man”. Este amante ideal refl eja la ternura, sensibilidad, amabilidad y auto-control que normalmente se asocia con las mujeres y está dispuesto a recortar su poder y derechos para sancionar la independencia y autonomía de la heroína. Se huye así del estereotipo agresivo y dominante que encontramos en las novelas y manuales de conducta de la época y que supone una amenaza para las mujeres, ya que invade su espacio, coartando su libertad de acción y pensamiento. Detrás de la creación de este nuevo héroe está, por supuesto, el deseo de cambiar las relaciones de poder dentro de la pareja. Tanto el amante apasionado como el nuevo “feminized man” están presentes en Memoirs of Modern Philosphers, demostrando así que la novela no puede clasifi carse meramente como anti-jacobina o conservadora, sino que contiene elementos claramente subversivos.Palabras clave: “Feminized man”, amante apasionado, matrimonio, poder, fantasía.AbstractOne way in which eighteenth-century women writers subvert the discourse of the sentimental novel is by creating an alternative model of love and a hero who proves to be an exception to the patriarchal rule. This ideal lover shows the tenderness, sensibility, kindness and self-control that we usually associate with women and is willing to curtail his power and rights in order to sanction the heroine’s independence and autonomy. Thus the stereotype of the aggressive and dominant male which prevailed in the novels and conduct books of the age is avoided: he represents a threat to women, since he invades their space, encroaching on their freedom of action and thought. Behind the creation of this new hero is, of course, the desire to bring about a change in the power relations between the sexes. Both the passionate lover and the new “feminized man” are present in Memoirs of Modern Philosphers, thus showing that the novel cannot be merely classifi ed as anti-jacobin or conservative, but clearly contains subversive elements.Key words: “Feminized man”, passionate lover, marriage, power, fantasy.

Distributed Cognition and Women Writers’ Representation of Theatre in Eighteenth-Century England: ‘Thoroughly to unfold the labyrinths of the human mind’

2019 ◽  
pp. 170-186
Author(s):  
Ros Ballaster
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Distributed Cognition ◽  
Extended Mind ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Sarah Fielding ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cognitive Experience ◽  
The Mind

Readers in the mid-eighteenth century were increasingly invited to translate their knowledge about the social extension of mind learned in the experience of theatre to ‘new’ prose forms of the periodical and the novel. Women writers in these forms found opportunity to present women as cognitive agents rather than affective vehicles. Four works by women serve to illustrate this case: Eliza Haywood’s The Dramatic Historiographer (1735), Sarah Fielding and Jane Collier’s The Cry: a new dramatic fable (1754), Charlotte Lennox’s Shakespeare Illustrated (1753-4), and Frances Brooke’s The Old Maid (1755-6). These printed prose works invoke memories of performance – the co-presence of the real bodies of audience and actors. But they often do so to claim the superior cognitive experience of the reader’s engagement through print with a fictional persona in the ‘mind’. The prose work is imagined as a repository of socially extended mind for its audience, an opportunity not only to recreate the experience of communal consumption of the artwork which theatre affords, but also to provide a more sophisticated form of narrative scaffolding. Distance and reflection are enabled by the absence of the performer’s body and the judicious authority of a framing narrator.

The Brood Hen of Faction: Mrs. Macaulay and Radical Politics, 1765-1775

1979 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg
Keyword(s):  
Women Writers ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Radical Politics ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Middle Years ◽  
The Public ◽  
Important Exception

The middle years of the eighteenth century in England were on the whole a period when few women made any impact on the public scene. Writing gradually became a respectable way for a woman to earn a living, but women writers generally confined their efforts to the novel, belle lettres, or instructional works. The most important exception was Catherine Sawbridge Macaulay. She began to publish first as an historian and then turned to topical political pamphleteering.Descended on both sides from Whiggish City businessmen, Catherine Sawbridge of Olantigh, Kent, married in 1760 George Macaulay. He was a Scots born physician who had wide connections in London, both among Scots and medical men, and among political radicals and non-conformists. Perhaps the most important intimate of the Macaulay circle was Thomas Hollis, a well-to-do republican barrister, bibliophile, and collector of objects of vertu. Other radical friends included several dissenting ministers, among them Caleb Fleming, Theophilus Lindsey, Richard Baron, and Richard Price, and several writers on historical and political subjects, including William Harris, Adam Ferguson, and James Burgh. Catherine's brother, John Sawbridge, was active in City politics, where he had connections both by inheritance and marriage. Thus the Macaulay household offered a meeting place for both theorists and active politicians.

Restoration Theatre and the Novel

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Transition ◽  
Strong Affinity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Restoration Theatre ◽  
Restoration Comedy ◽  
London Stage

This chapter explores the broad cultural transition from drama to novel during the Restoration period, which triggered one of the most productive periods in the history of the London stage. However, when it comes to the eighteenth century proper, the novel is more likely to be identified as the century's most significant and appealing popular genre. The chapter considers why the novel has largely superseded drama as the literary form to which ambitious and imaginative literary types without a strong affinity for verse writing would by default have turned their attention and energies by the middle of the eighteenth century. Something important may have been lost in the broad cultural transition from drama to novel. This chapter, however, contends that many things were preserved: that the novel was able to absorb many of the functions and techniques not just of Restoration comedy but of the theatre more generally.

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