Reading Daughters' Fictions 1709-1834: Novels and Society from Manley to Edgeworth

ISBN-13: 9780521553957 / Angielski / Twarda / 1996 / 310 str.

Caroline Gonda

Opis

Eighteenth-century diatribes against novels claimed that reading fiction produced rebellious daughters, fallen women and female nervous wrecks. In Reading Daughters' Fictions, Caroline Gonda draws on a wide range of novels and nonliterary materials of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in order to examine changing representations of the father-daughter bond. She argues that domestic novels of family life and courtship, far from corrupting female readers, helped to maintain familial and social order.

Recenzje

"...the book offers a useful and lucidly written resource for critics interested in thoughtful ways to read the eighteenth century's fascination with its own evolving social structures." Julia Epstein, Modern Philology

Spis treści

Introduction; 1. Fictions of accident? Representations of incest in Manley, Barker and Haywood; 2. Amorous girls and tyrannical parents: Richardson and the limits of paternal authority; Interlude. A lady's legacy: Sarah Scott and tests of filial duty; 3. Lessons of experience: Evelina and Camilla; 4. Schedoniac contours: the sins of the father in Gothic fiction; 5. Stepping out: from Elizabeth Inchbald to Mary Brunton; 6. Her father's daughter: the life and fictions of Maria Edgeworth.