Frail vessels : woman's role in women's novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot
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Bibliographic Information
Frail vessels : woman's role in women's novels from Fanny Burney to George Eliot
（Bloomsbury academic collections, . English literary criticism ; 18th-19th centuries）
Bloomsbury, 2013
- : hardback
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Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Reprint. Originally published: London : Athlone Press, 1969
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The years between the publication of Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and of John Stuart Mill's essay On the Subjection of Women (1869) - a crucial phase in the emancipation movement - also saw the emergence of England's greatest women writers, whose response to the flux of new ideas as revealed in many outstanding works of fiction Dr Mews here examines. The central chapters of the book take the form of a perceptive and humane analysis of the way in which the greater women novelists conceived the role of women, on the one hand as young girls, wives and mothers, on the other as individuals standing alone in spinsterhood, as teachers or artists. The writers examined in detail are Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot.
Such a comprehensive study has not been attempted before. It throws light not only on the novel and the novelist in society but also on the transmutation of deeply felt experience into creative work.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Climate of Opinion
3. The Lesser Women Novelists
4. Women Awaiting Marriage (1)
5. Women Awaiting Marriage (2)
6. Women as Wives
7. Women as Mothers
8. Women Standing Alone
9. Conclusion
Notes
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"