The Protestant Whore

by Conway, Alison (Margaret)

• ISBN13: 9781442641372
• ISBN10: 1442641371
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-03-20
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

After the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, Protestants worried that King Charles II might favour religious freedom for Roman Catholics, and many suspected that the king was unduly influenced by his Catholic mistresses. Nell Gwyn, actress and royal mistress, stood apart by virtue of her Protestant loyalty. In 1681, Gwyn, her carriage surrounded by an angry anti-Catholic mob, famously declared 'I am the Protestant Whore.' Her self-branding invites an investigation into the alignment between sex and politics during this period, and in this study, Alison Conway relates courtesan narrative to cultural and religious anxieties.In new readings of canonical works by Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, and Samuel Richardson, Conway argues that authors engaged the same questions about identity, nation, authority, literature, and politics as those pursued by Restoration polemicists. Her study reveals the recurring connection between sexual impropriety and religious heterodoxy in Restoration thought, and Nell Gwyn, writ large as the nation's Protestant Whore, is shown to be a significant figure of sexual, political, and religious controversy.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction	p. 3
The Invention of the Protestant Whore	p. 17
'No Neuters in Treason': Aphra Behn's Love-Letters between a Nobleman and His Sister	p. 50
The Secret History of Women's Political Desire, 1690-1714	p. 80
'A House Divided': Defoe's Roxana and the Protestant Body Politic	p. 110
A World of One's Own: Clarissa, Tom Jones, and Courtesan Authority	p. 142
Afterword	p. 177
Historical Glossary	p. 183
Notes	p. 187
Bibliography	p. 253
Index	p. 281
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