The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jane Austen"A brilliant, original, and powerful book. . . . This is the most skillful integration of feminism and Marxist literary criticism that I know of." So writes critic Stephen Greenblatt about The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer, Mary Poovey's study of the struggle of three prominent writers to accommodate the artist's genius to the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century ideal of the modest, self-effacing "proper lady." Interpreting novels, letters, journals, and political tracts in the context of cultural strictures, Poovey makes an important contribution to English social and literary history and to feminist theory. "The proper lady was a handy concept for a developing bourgeois patriarchy, since it deprived women of worldly power, relegating them to a sanctified domestic sphere that, in complex ways, nourished and sustained the harsh 'real' world of men. With care and subtle intelligence, Poovey examines this 'guardian and nemesis of the female self' through the ways it is implicated in the style and strategies of three very different writers."—Rachel M. Brownstein, The Nation "The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer is a model of . . . creative discovery, providing a well-researched, illuminating history of women writers at the turn of the nineteenth century. [Poovey] creates sociologically and psychologically persuasive accounts of the writers: Wollstonecraft, who could never fully transcend the ideology of propriety she attacked; Shelley, who gradually assumed a mask of feminine propriety in her social and literary styles; and Austen, who was neither as critical of propriety as Wollstonecraft nor as accepting as Shelley ultimately became."—Deborah Kaplan, Novel |
Contents
Loves Skirmishes and the Triumph | 82 |
Ideological Contradictions and | 172 |
The True English Style | 208 |
Conclusion | 241 |
269 | |
Other editions - View all
The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer: Ideology as Style in the Works of Mary ... Mary Poovey No preview available - 1984 |
Common terms and phrases
aesthetic aggressive ambivalence Anne Anne's appetite artistic Austen's novels authority behavior bourgeois century character Claire Clairmont contradictions critical cultural Darcy daughter death desire despite domestic dramatic edited effect eighteenth eighteenth-century Elinor Eliza Elizabeth Elliot emotional energy example fact Falkner Fanny Fanny's father fear feeling female sexuality Fiction Frankenstein Godwin gratification happiness heart heroine human husband ideal ideology imagination Imlay individual Jane Austen Lady Susan Letters literary London male Mansfield Park Maria marriage Mary Shelley Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley monster moral moralists mother narrative narrator nature Northanger Abbey paradox passion Patricia Meyer Spacks Percy Shelley Percy's Persuasion political Pride and Prejudice principles Proper Lady psychological reader relationship response Rights of Woman role romantic love seems self-assertion self-denial Sense and Sensibility sentimental Shelley's simply social society story strategies suggests tion University Press values virtue Wentworth William Godwin Wollstone women writers writing York young
References to this book
The Mother / Daughter Plot: Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Feminism Marianne Hirsch Limited preview - 1989 |
Radical Media: Rebellious Communication and Social Movements John D. H. Downing,John Downing No preview available - 2001 |