Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2002. / Advisor: Dr. Dennis Moore, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of English. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 29, 2003). Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation identifies the character type of the "improperly educated" woman, who is both rationally educated and passionately outspoken, and examines the delineation of this recurring figure, in relation to the female education continuum, within the evolving discourse on female learning during the period of 1790-1801. British women writers, who opposed the deficient education offered to females, contributed their voices to collectively challenging the notion that education deprived the female sex of their femininity. Consequently, women novelists exploited the "improperly educated" female character as a means to explore alternatives to the existing curriculum, specifically rational and classical knowledge and to consider the negative effects of restrictive gender identities on female education. I employ feminist literary history and criticism to evaluate the participation of Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Hays, and Maria Edgeworth in this continuing educational debate through their advocation for restructuring of the educational system and their effective use of versions of the "improperly educated" woman to portray women as intellectually capable. Challenging the conception of "feminine" as a natural state, Inchbald, Hays, and Edgeworth used fictional narratives to show the difficulties of strict adherence to proper femininity and to portray the irony of an education that does not enlighten but rather restricts and censors. Inchbald's A Simple Story, Hays' Memoirs of Emma Courtney, and Edgeworth's Belinda respectively demonstrate the important role played by this character type in regards to eighteenth and early nineteenth-century women writers' efforts to promote improvements in female instruction, encourage female autonomy, and demonstrate women's capabilities for self-improvement. Undeterred by traditional custom, women novelists renewed literary efforts to display similarities between women of diverse social classes and levels of learning, thus exposing the adverse consequences of the conventionally transitory and inferior education, which the majority of the female sex experienced. This character makes a significant impact in promoting improvement in the educational system and revising the definition of proper feminine behavior within British society.

While literary scholars have written extensively about sensibility in the past two decades, most of the studies have treated either the history of sensibility itself or how it interacted with a particular aspect of English culture and literature, such as sexuality or politics. My project instead examines how a single author, Maria Edgeworth, used sensibility in her writing over the course of her career. I analyze the use of sensibility in three of her novels: Belinda (1801), her first full-length novel; The Absentee (1812), her influential Irish national tale, written at the height of her popularity in the middle years of her career; and Helen (1834), her last novel. This analysis illustrates the changing attitude of both Edgeworth and English society to sensibility and its representations in literature. In Belinda, Edgeworth uses sensibility to demonstrate the virtue and superiority of the characters who possess it, and also to rehabilitate the concept itself. She differentiates between mere affectation and true sensibility by creating both positive and negative examples of sensibility in Belinda – characters clearly possess true sensibility, and those who only pretend to it. In The Absentee, Edgeworth adheres much more closely to the conventions of sentimental fiction than she had in her previous society novels. In my discussion of The Absentee, I demonstrate how Edgeworth uses the conventions of sentiment both to make Irish culture accessible to her English audience and to justify the Irish estate system which put Anglo-Irish landowners in a position of authority over native Irish tenants. My final section focuses on Edgeworth's last novel, Helen, which marks a return to the genre of the society novel with which she began her career. While Edgeworth still uses sensibility as a sign of virtue in Helen, she is also much more interested than previously in the interplay between education and inborn qualities of personality – the very qualities whose existence she was so skeptical of in her education manual, Practical Education, published two years before she began her career as a fiction writer.

This thesis addresses issues of class as represented through the narrative agency exercised by the servant-narrator in Castle Rackrent and Wuthering Heights. Thady Quirk and Ellen Dean are servant-narrators who strategically use feigned allegiance, astute perception, and selective disclosure to wield power over the lives of their masters. These “arts of subordination” allow the servant-narrator to tell his or her own life narrative, while appearing to share the masters’ memoirs. While both servant-narrators are motivated by economic means, Ellen Dean’s involvement throughout Wuthering Heights is further complicated by her desires of emotional connection. However, each servant-narrator achieves his or her goals by manipulating the events and relationships that constitute his or her masters’ lives.

This thesis demonstrates how two early nineteenth century British novels, William Earle’s Obi, or The History of Three-Fingered Jack (1800) and the anonymously-written The Woman of Colour; A Tale (1808), feature prominent women of colour that move beyond the silenced, enslaved, minor representations of black and mixed race women made popular in previously published texts throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The progression of Amri and Olivia’s positions through the use of literary strategies, such as Homi K. Bhabha’s mimicry, Paul Gilroy’s double consciousness, and gender-reversals reveal the inherent ambivalence of the women’s positions in each narrative and the importance of these representations against the hegemonic female position. Although I argue that neither author succeeds in overturning traditional limitations of representing women of colour in literature of the period, investigating these texts is crucial to understanding the autonomous, influential women of colour in later nineteenth century literary works.

No description available.

A Romantic Bildung: The Development of Coming-of-Age Novels in the Romantic Period (1782-1817) explore la naissance et le développement du roman de formation en Europe à l’époque romantique. Celle-ci est le témoin de nombreuses discussions sur les Droits de l’homme et de la montée du nationalisme en Europe. Au même moment, la littérature se transforme pour laisser plus de place à la subjectivité du personnage. Tout cela donne naissance à un nouveau genre littéraire : le Bildungsroman, ou roman de formation et d’éducation. Contrairement à la définition actuelle du genre, le Bildungsroman est transnational, c’est-à-dire qu’il ne provient pas exclusivement d’Allemagne, mais de partout en Europe. A Romantic Bildung se penche donc sur le sujet en analysant de façon thématique la trame narrative de Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788), Mansfield Park (1814), Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), Emma (1815), ainsi que d’Ormond, a Tale (1817) et sur leur appartenance au roman de l’époque romantique. En comparant les étapes d’éducation, d’indépendance, et de retour à la société des protagonistes, ces romans font ressortir les similitudes qui caractérisent le Bildungsroman. / A Romantic Bildung: The Development of Coming-of-Age Novels in the Romantic Period (1782-1817) explores the birth and development of the Bildungsroman during the Romantic period. The latter is characterized by the numerous discourses on the Rights of men as well as the rise of nationalism. At the same time, Romantic writers transform literature by increasing the protagonist’s subjectivity and in turns, create a new genre of narrative: the Bildungsroman, in which the protagonist’s development and growth is the main focus. Contrary to current definition of the genre, the Bildungsroman—or coming-of-age novel—is a transnational product: it is obviously found in Germany, but also in France, England, Ireland, and Scotland, to name a few, during the Romantic period. Through a thematic analysis of Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress (1782), Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle (1788), Mansfield Park (1814), Waverley; or, 'Tis Sixty Years Since (1814), Emma (1815), and Ormond, A Tale (1815), A Romantic Bildung traces the narrative structure of the genre and it locates its essence in the Romantic novel. By comparing the narrative’s steps of education, independence, and return to society, the characteristics of the genre are revealed.

My thesis explores why beauty became so much more important in nineteenth-century Britain, especially for marriageable young women in the upper and middle class. My argument addresses the consequences of that change in the status of beauty for plain or ugly women, how this social shift is reflected in the novel, and how authors respond to the issue of plainer women and issues of their marriageability. I look at how these authorial attitudes shifted over the century, observing that the issue of plain women and their marriageability was dramatized by nineteenth-century authors, whose efforts to heighten the audience's awareness of the plight of plainer women can be traced by contrasting novels written early in the century with novels written mid-century. I argue that beauty gained more significance for young women in nineteenth-century England because the marriage ideal shifted, a shift which especially influenced the upper and middle class. The eighteenth century brought into marriage concepts such as Rousseau's "wife-farm principle" the idea that a man chooses a significantly younger child-bride, mentoring and molding her into the woman he needs. But by the end of the century the ideal of marriage moved to the companionate ideal, which opted for an equal partnership. That ideal was based on the conception that marriage was based on personal happiness hence should be founded on compatibility and love. The companionate ideal became more influential as individuality reigned among the Romantics. The new ideal of companionate marriage limited parents' influence on their children's choice of spouse to the extent that the choice lay now largely with young men. Yet that choice was constrained because young men and women were restricted by social conventions, their social interaction limited. Thus, according to my reading of nineteenth-century authors, the companionate ideal was a charade, as young men were not able to get to know women well enough to determine whether or not they were compatible. So instead of getting to know a young woman's character and her personality, they distinguished potential brides mainly on the basis of appearance.

There are many factors that contributed to the proliferation of visual codes, metaphors and references to the gendered gaze in women's fiction of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. This thesis argues that the visual details in women's novels published between 1778 and 1815 are more significant than scholars have previously acknowledged. My analysis of the oeuvres of Jane Austen, Ann Radcliffe, Maria Edgeworth and Fanny Burney shows that visuality — the nexus between the verbal and visual communication — provided them with a language within language capable of circumventing the cultural strictures on female expression in a way that allowed for concealed resistance. It conveyed the actual ways in which women ‘should' see and appear in a society in which the reputation was image-based. My analysis journeys through physiognomic, psychological, theatrical and codified forms of visuality to highlight the multiplicity of its functions. I engage with scholarly critiques drawn from literature, art, optics, psychology, philosophy and anthropology to assert visuality's multidisciplinary influences and diplomatic potential. I show that in fiction and in actuality, women had to negotiate four scopic forces that determined their ‘looks' and manners of looking: the impartial spectator, the male gaze, the public eye and the disenfranchised female gaze. In a society dominated by ‘frustrated utterance,' penetrating gazes and the perpetual threat of misinterpretation, women novelists used references to the visible and the invisible to comment on emotions, socio-economic conditions and patriarchal abuses. This thesis thus offers new insights into verbal economy by reassessing expression and perception from an unconventional point-of-view.