The Romance of Motherhood: Generation and the Literary Text

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline M. Labbe
Keyword(s):  
Mary Shelley ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Literary Text ◽  
Charlotte Smith ◽  
Mary Robinson ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Alternative Type ◽  
Absent Mother

Abstract This essay discusses the deployment of maternal imagery in the writings of Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Robinson, Mary Shelley, and Maria Elizabeth Robinson and situates it in terms of a Romantic-period idealization of the mother. It argues that for authors who were mothers, maternal imagery functioned both to validate and justify their writing, and to communicate a controlled image of themselves to their daughters and their readers. For daughters who both read and wrote, maternal imagery allowed the recreation of the (absent) mother in print. For both, the familial became a metaphor for the literary and a way of rewriting patriarchy, providing an alternative type of inheritance.

Feminism and the Position of Women

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Moore
Keyword(s):  
Social Reform ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Mary Robinson ◽  
Romantic Period ◽  
Mary Hays ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Writing ◽  
Legal Position ◽  
Intellectual Advancement

Feminism in its modern meanings attests to a movement for change in the social, economic and legal position of women. In the Romantic period, no such movement existed. There were, however, individual women whose voices, separately and together, suggest the existence of a commonality of feeling around the intellectual advancement of the female sex. This article examines writing by women on female education and sexual and social reform, focussing on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Mary Robinson, and Mary Lamb. It connects political writing and educational treatises to the novels and essays written by these women and it reflects on the shared concerns from which modern feminism emerged.

Women’s Fiction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimiyo Ogawa
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Women's Fiction ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Charlotte Smith ◽  
Mary Robinson ◽  
Early 19Th Century ◽  
Charlotte Dacre ◽  
Susan Ferrier ◽  
Women's Novels

This essay gives an overview of women’s fiction published between the late 18th and early 19th century, focusing on their interest in sensibility, education, and marriage. Women’s novels during this period were very much influenced by the literary genre called the novel of sensibility, which celebrates emotional concepts such as sentiment, delicacy, and sensibility. In promoting education for women, many female novelists not only vindicated women’s capacity to reason, but also recommended moral feeling for others. Although Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth, and Susan Ferrier believed that women should embrace reason, they knew that domestic affections were necessary. Affectionate ties or compassion are key to understanding the novels of Charlotte Smith and Mary Robinson. Possessing neither was detrimental to the happiness of heroines of this period, and this is typically observed in Elizabeth Inchbald’s A Simple Story (1791) – pursuing one’s desire without restraint would lead to self-destruction. Jane Austen and Mary Shelley were writing their novels when the radical movement connected to Mary Wollstonecraft’s assertion about the need for women’s education had subsided: excessive indulgence of emotions and sexual appetite were cautioned against in their novels. Although in the early 19th-century sexual transgressions were condemned, some novelists such as Charlotte Dacre explored the theme of women’s sexual freedom.

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