Mothers of the Nation: Women's Political Writing in England, 1780–1830Indiana University Press, 22/05/2000 - 188 من الصفحات A survey of British women’s writings of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and the revolutionary New Woman they promoted. British women writers were enormously influential in the creation of public opinion and political ideology during the years from 1780 to 1830. Anne Mellor demonstrates the many ways in which they attempted to shape British public policy and cultural behavior in the areas of religious and governmental reform, education, philanthropy, and patterns of consumption. She argues that the theoretical paradigm of the “doctrine of the separate spheres” may no longer be valid. According to this view, British society was divided into distinctly differentiated and gendered spheres of public versus private activities in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Surveying all the genres of literature?drama, poetry, fiction, non-fiction prose, and literary criticism?Mellor shows how women writers promoted a new concept of the ideal woman as rationally educated, sexually self-disciplined, and above all, virtuous. This New Woman, these writers said, was better suited to govern the nation than were its current fiscally irresponsible, lecherous, and corruptible male rulers. Beginning with Hannah More, Mellor argues that women writers too often dismissed as conservative or retrogressive instead promoted a revolution in cultural mores or manners. She discusses writers as diverse as Elizabeth Inchbald, Hannah Cowley, and Joanna Baillie; as Charlotte Smith, Anna Barbauld, and Lucy Aikin; as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Reeve, and Anna Seward; and concludes with extended analyses of Charlotte Smith’s Desmond and Jane Austen’s Persuasion. She thus documents women writers’ full participation in that very discursive public sphere which Habermas so famously restricted to men of property. Moreover, the new career of philanthropy defined by Hannah More provided a practical means by which women of all classes could actively construct a new British civil society, and thus become the mothers not only of individual households but of the nation as a whole. “Intellectual and social historians (and not just feminists) have long believed that the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Britain saw an increasing separation of the male (public) and female (domestic) realms, with the result that the public sphere theorized by Jurgen Habermas and others to have emerged in the Enlightenment almost entirely excluded women. With energy, wit, and admirable command of her sources, Mellor . . . author of distinguished books on Romanticism . . . demonstrates that just the opposite was true: in the years around 1800, women became the primary producers and consumers of writing in Britain and vitally participated in the discursive public sphere—many arguing in their different ways for what Hannah More (the most popular author of the period) called a moral revolution in the national manners and principles. . . . [A] splendid survey of women novelists, poets, critics, playwrights, and social theorists . . . this bracing and important work of revision deserves a place in serious academic libraries serving both undergraduates and advanced scholars.” —D. L. Patey, Choice |
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الصفحة
... Britain - Politics and government — 1760-1820 . 9. Great Britain — Politics and government— 1820-1830 . 10. Women authors , English — Political and social views . I. Title . II . Women of letters ( Bloomington , Ind . ) PR468.P57 .M45 ...
... Britain - Politics and government — 1760-1820 . 9. Great Britain — Politics and government— 1820-1830 . 10. Women authors , English — Political and social views . I. Title . II . Women of letters ( Bloomington , Ind . ) PR468.P57 .M45 ...
الصفحة 1
... exchange of ideas can be developed . Habermas further argued that this public sphere emerged for the first time in Britain and France in the eighteenth century as an emancipatory reasoned discourse enabled by. Introduction.
... exchange of ideas can be developed . Habermas further argued that this public sphere emerged for the first time in Britain and France in the eighteenth century as an emancipatory reasoned discourse enabled by. Introduction.
الصفحة 7
... Britain by the late eighteenth century , then the assumption that there existed a clear distinction in historical practice between a realm of public , exclusively male activities and a realm of private , exclusively female activities in ...
... Britain by the late eighteenth century , then the assumption that there existed a clear distinction in historical practice between a realm of public , exclusively male activities and a realm of private , exclusively female activities in ...
الصفحة 9
... Britain's economy depended on an ever - expanding consumption by all classes of what would have hitherto been regarded as wasteful " luxury goods " : tex- tiles , home furnishings , teas , spices , and opium imported from the East ...
... Britain's economy depended on an ever - expanding consumption by all classes of what would have hitherto been regarded as wasteful " luxury goods " : tex- tiles , home furnishings , teas , spices , and opium imported from the East ...
الصفحة 12
... Britain , that made the financial excesses and sexual promiscuity of George IV increasingly less acceptable to his subjects and ensured that no future monarch of England during the nineteenth or twentieth century would be permitted to ...
... Britain , that made the financial excesses and sexual promiscuity of George IV increasingly less acceptable to his subjects and ensured that no future monarch of England during the nineteenth or twentieth century would be permitted to ...
المحتوى
1 | |
13 | |
2 Theater as the School of Virtue | 39 |
3 Womens Political Poetry | 69 |
4 Literary Criticism Cultural Authority and the Rise of the Novel | 85 |
5 The Politics of Fiction | 103 |
Postscript | 142 |
Notes | 147 |
Works Cited | 151 |
Index | 165 |
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عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة
Aikin Amelia Opie ancien régime Anna Barbauld Anne Elliot Anne's argued argument aristocratic Baillie's Basil beauty benevolent Britain Britannia British nation Burke Burke's called Cambridge character Charlotte Smith Cheap Repository Tracts Christian claim Coelebs comedy concept condemned Cowley's culture daughter defined Desmond discourse discursive public sphere domestic Doricourt drama edited eighteenth century Elizabeth Inchbald endorsed England English Evangelical father feeling female poet feminist fiction France French Revolution gender genre Geraldine Habermas Hannah Cowley Hannah More's historical human husband ideology insists Jane Austen Joanna Baillie Kellynch Hall Lady Letitia liberty literary critics London Lucy Aikin male marriage marry Mary Wollstonecraft middle-class moral mother nature novel novelists passion patriarchal Persuasion play poem poetry political preface reform role Romantic Romantic era sensibility sexual slave trade slavery social society theater tion University Press Verney Victoria virtue Wentworth wife William woman women critics women writers writing