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 2
... feminist scholars as Joan Landes , Nancy Fraser , and Leonore Davidoff , among many others , have pointed out , Ha- bermas limited participation in this eighteenth - century bourgeois civil soci- ety or public sphere - in this ...
... feminist scholars as Joan Landes , Nancy Fraser , and Leonore Davidoff , among many others , have pointed out , Ha- bermas limited participation in this eighteenth - century bourgeois civil soci- ety or public sphere - in this ...
الصفحة 6
... feminist historians and literary critics of both British and American culture have long assumed that women inhabited a distinctly differentiated domestic realm in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries . For the disciplines of both ...
... feminist historians and literary critics of both British and American culture have long assumed that women inhabited a distinctly differentiated domestic realm in the eigh- teenth and nineteenth centuries . For the disciplines of both ...
الصفحة 14
... feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton , a woman in a position to know , best summed up More's contribution to her age in 1848 : It has happened more than once that in a great crisis of national affairs , woman has been appealed to for her aid ...
... feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton , a woman in a position to know , best summed up More's contribution to her age in 1848 : It has happened more than once that in a great crisis of national affairs , woman has been appealed to for her aid ...
الصفحة 17
... feminist ones . Elizabeth Kowaleski - Wallace defined her as the quintessential “ daddy's girl , " a willing participant in a patriarchal order who used the Evangelical movement to position herself as " the social ' superior ' to her ...
... feminist ones . Elizabeth Kowaleski - Wallace defined her as the quintessential “ daddy's girl , " a willing participant in a patriarchal order who used the Evangelical movement to position herself as " the social ' superior ' to her ...
الصفحة 18
... feminist scholars . Beginning with Mitzi Myer's robust recupera- tion in 1982 of Hannah More as an effective advocate for the rational edu- cation of women on a par with Mary Wollstonecraft , feminists have begun to understand the ways ...
... feminist scholars . Beginning with Mitzi Myer's robust recupera- tion in 1982 of Hannah More as an effective advocate for the rational edu- cation of women on a par with Mary Wollstonecraft , feminists have begun to understand the ways ...
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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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