1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910456404603321

Autore

Ty Eleanor Rose <1958->

Titolo

Unsex'd revolutionaries : five women novelists of the 1790s / / Eleanor Ty

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 1993

©1993

ISBN

1-281-99725-0

9786611997250

1-4426-8296-5

Edizione

[2nd ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (208 p.)

Collana

Theory / Culture

Disciplina

823.6099287

Soggetti

English fiction - Women authors - History and criticism

Politics and literature - Great Britain - History - 18th century

Women and literature - Great Britain - History - 18th century

Revolutionary literature, English - History and criticism

English fiction - 18th century - History and criticism

Political fiction, English - History and criticism

Electronic books.

France History Revolution, 1789-1799 Foreign public opinion, British

France History Revolution, 1789-1799 Literature and the revolution

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Female Confinement Literalized -- 2. Breaking the 'Magic Circle' -- 3. The Mother and Daughter -- 4. Resisting the Phallic -- 5. Disruption and Containment -- 6. Resisting the Symbolic -- 7. Contradictory Narratives -- 8. Revolutionary Politics -- 9. Celebrating the Ex-Centric -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Women had been writing long before the French Revolution, but the reactionary character of the 1790s infused their work with a public importance and an urgency. The decade was one of intense argument and reflection on the role of women in society. Eleanor Ty studies the



ways in which five women writers of the 1790s politicized the domestic or sentimental novel in response to oppression and exclusion. Influenced by radical post-revolution thinkers, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Helen Maria Williams, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Charlotte Smith wrote fiction that questioned existing social, economic, legal and cultural practices as they related to women. In particular, they dealt with historically specific gender issues such as female education, the rights and ‘wrongs’ of woman, and the duties of a wife.Using historical and feminist psycho-linguistic studies as a base, Ty explores some of the complexities encountered in the writings of these five women. Through their challenge to Edmund Burke’s patriarchal ideas, they discovered strategies of writing based on the maternal or female aesthetic.For these ‘unsex’d revolutionaries,’ sentimental or domestic fiction was not just about courtship, love, and romance. Their writings interrogate the structures of society, and criticize and make relevant the connections between the personal and the political, the domestic and the public sphere.