Women and Property in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

by April London

• ISBN13: 9780521650137
• ISBN10: 0521650135
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book investigates the critical importance of women to the eighteenth-century debate on property as conducted in the fiction of the period. April London argues that contemporary novels offered several, often conflicting, interpretations of the relation of women to property, ranging from straightforward assertions of equivalence between women and things to subtle explorations of the forms of possession open to those denied a full civic identity. Her wide-ranging study discusses the work of a variety of writers, from Samuel Richardson and Henry Mackenzie to Clara Reeve and Jane West.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(14)
PART I SAMUEL RICHARDSON AND GEORGIC	15	(50)
Introduction	15	(2)
1 Clarissa and the georgic mode	17	(11)
2 Making meaning as constructive labor	28	(11)
3 Wicked confederacies	39	(6)
4 "The work of bodies": reading, writing, and documents	45	(20)
PART II PASTORAL	65	(40)
Introduction	65	(2)
5 The Man of Feeling	67	(19)
6 Colonial narratives: Charles Wentworth and The Female American	86	(19)
PART III COMMUNITY AND CONFEDERACY	105	(34)
Introduction	105	(2)
7 Versions of community: William Dodd, Sarah Scott, Clara Reeve	107	(17)
8 Confederacies of women: Phebe Gibbes and John Trusler	124	(15)
PART IV THE POLITICS OF READING	139	(63)
Introduction	139	(2)
9 The discourse of manliness: Samuel Jackson Pratt and Robert Bage	141	(13)
10 The gendering of radical representation	154	(15)
11 History, romance, and the anti-Jacobins' "common sense"	169	(16)
12 Jane West and the politics of reading	185	(17)
Epilogue	202	(4)
Notes	206	(36)
Bibliography	242	(16)
Index	258