Women and Property in the Eighteenth-Century English Novel

"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 advanced 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 self-possession open to those denied a full civic identity. Two contemporary models for the defining of selfhood through reference to property structure the book, one historical (classical republicanism and bourgeois individualism), and the other literary (pastoral and georgic). These paradigms offer a cultural context for the analysis of both canonical and less well-known writers, from Samuel Richardson and Henry Mackenzie to Clara Reeve and Jane West."--Jacket.

First sentence: From the beginning of the novel, Clarissa's relation to property is represented figuratively, in the sense of those qualities she possesses as an individual, and literally, in the state she has inherited from her grandfather.

Year

1999

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

7

Pages

272

ISBN

9780521032544

Data source: Wikidata