Visions and Revisions Women's Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Art
Date of Award
2005
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Bachelors
Department
Humanities
First Advisor
Wallace, Miriam
Keywords
Eighteenth Century, British Literature, British Art
Area of Concentration
British and American History
Abstract
This thesis examines representations of female identity constructed in early eighteenth-century British literature and art. Authors Haywood, Manley and Defoe all wrote stories of disgraced women who construct empowered identities by manipulating the sexual economics of their situations to gain power over the men who scorned them. Their fiction reflected the concerns and actions of contemporary women such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. During the 1730s, art and literature expressed increasingly middling-class values and emphasized female virtue. William Hogarth's conversation pieces showed the family as an affectionately bonded unit while his prints attacked aristocratic vices. Conduct books and arguments for women's education furthered the idea that women were naturally virtuous. Samuel Richardson's Pamela was first novel to embrace the domestic ideal. Pamela refuses to take part in the aristocratic system in which her sexuality has currency and insists on being valued for her personal merits. While the heroines of the first chapter exercised their power through revenge, the power that the domestic woman gains is that of reformation.
Recommended Citation
Newman, Anne Marie, "Visions and Revisions Women's Identity in Early Eighteenth-Century British Literature and Art" (2005). Theses & ETDs. 3559.
https://digitalcommons.ncf.edu/theses_etds/3559
Rights
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