Women writing about money : women's fiction in England, 1790-1820
This book addresses a paradox in the social and fictional lives of women in Jane Austen's time: access to money and its control. The author examines the professional lives of women authors and links the fantasy worlds of women's fiction with the social and economic realities of readers and writers.
Print Book, English, 2004
1st pbk. ed View all formats and editions
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2004
Criticism, interpretation, etc
xviii, 291 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.
9780521616164, 0521616166
61285836
1. The general calamity: the want of money
The blessed competence
2. Gothic economics: the 1790s
Minerva gothic
Genteel gothic
Revisionist gothic
3. The gifts of heaven: consumer power, 1800-1820
The household budget
Gentrifying the economy
Heroicizing commerce
4. Shopping for signs: Jane Austen and the pseudo-gentry
5. Picturing the heroine: The Lady's Magazine, 1770-1820
The fashion plot
Illustrating the economy
Heroines on the margin
6. Fictions of employment: female accomplishments
Employment, odious (1): companion
Employment, odious (2): governess
Employment, possible: schoolmistress, sempstress, actress, prostitute
7. Writing for money: authors and heroines
Charlotte Smith: the genteel dilemma
Eliza Parsons: the Minerva struggle
Heroine authors: the case in fiction