Eighteenth-Century Female Voices Education and the Novel |
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Author:
| Augustin-Bech, Sabine |
Series title: | Trierer Studien Zur Literatur Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-3-631-52914-0 |
Publication Date: | Feb 2005 |
Publisher: | Peter Lang GmbH, Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
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Book Format: | Paperback |
List Price: | USD $96.10 |
Book Description:
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This work focuses on the issue of women's education in a series of novels written by women in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the one hand, the surface plots are conservative, thus reaffirming the social order; on the other hand, numerous subversive narrative techniques undermine the surface stories, drawing attention to the consequences of the arbitrary limitations society imposed on middle-class women as well as to the sense of entrapment and the resulting anxieties...
More DescriptionThis work focuses on the issue of women's education in a series of novels written by women in the second half of the eighteenth century. On the one hand, the surface plots are conservative, thus reaffirming the social order; on the other hand, numerous subversive narrative techniques undermine the surface stories, drawing attention to the consequences of the arbitrary limitations society imposed on middle-class women as well as to the sense of entrapment and the resulting anxieties they experienced. In showing the increasing female readership ways to negotiate between the behavioural codes of a patriarchal society and their own need for personal freedom, these novels can be read as early feminist critiques of society.