Heroines and whores: Transgressive women in British feminist novels, 1790-1814.
Item
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Title
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Heroines and whores: Transgressive women in British feminist novels, 1790-1814.
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Identifier
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AAI9732960
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identifier
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9732960
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Creator
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Pari, Caroline.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Jacqueline DiSalvo
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Date
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1997
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, English | Women's Studies
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Abstract
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This dissertation is a study of five feminist novels written by women during a volatile period in English history when gender and class ideologies came under question: Julia (1790), by Helen Maria Williams; The Memoirs of Emma Courtney (1796), by Mary Hays; The Wrongs of Woman; or, Maria. A Fragment (1798), by Mary Wollstonecraft; Adeline Mowbray; or, The Mother and Daughter (1805), by Amelia Opie; and The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties (1814), by Frances Burney. Though these novels are usually placed within certain traditions of Romanticism and the eighteenth-century novel, I argue that their deviations from these traditions demonstrate why they merit a full study. Whereas prominent studies of women writers of the 1790s claim that women's novels of the eighteenth century must be understood within the didactic-moral tradition of conduct books, I believe these novels reflect a distinctly feminist response to the gender ideology of the late-eighteenth century. They comprise a unique subdivision of the novel that is formed during this time of revolutionary activity and revise our understanding of women's novels and liberal feminism.;The transgressive woman is the focus of my study. She is (1) the Wollstonecraftian woman self-creating her class status and independence without family or marriage; (2) the laboring woman of the working class defying the middle-class domestic ideal; (3) the prostitute. For the first time, these three "types" are united together in a literary study. Each type powerfully represents the marginalized nature of the female subject and demonstrates that the boundary between the "ideal" woman and the "fallen" woman was much more unstable than has been previously understood. From the unique subject positions of these fictional characters these feminist authors dramatically revise cultural meanings of womanhood and class relations. Briefly, my study examines the conditions that create the middle-class "unprotected" woman who defiantly demands independence from patriarchal structures including the family and marriage, who resists the construction of Woman by domestic ideology by fulfilling her sexual desire, and who attacks class hierarchy by forming households with domestic servants. These novels appear in literary history as sparks igniting the flame of feminism, flickering momentarily before being smothered, but from whose ashes Burney writes her novel.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
