"Women and the City in Novels of the Romantic Period" investigates how women writers used the novel to explore a dynamic relationship between femininity and urban space. To provide an historical context, the thesis begins by summarizing contemporary accounts of how rapid urbanisation affected the lives of middle-class women. These records suggest what is also reflected in fiction of the period: by careful negotiation of social codes, women were able to find considerable latitude in the city for experimenting with different kinds of femininity. Turning next to selected novels of the Scottish writer Mary Brunton and Jane Austen, the thesis examines the evolution of a distinctive version of "domestic woman" shaped by urban influences. In Brunton's work, this new figure serves as a mediator between traditional and modern economies; in Austen's novel, the heroine unsettles images of the gentry estate as stable, enclosed and enduring. Next, the thesis identifies in the prose works and fiction of Mary Robinson, the Countess of Blessington, Elizabeth Inchbald and Elizabeth Hamilton, the presence of a "semi-detached flaneuse," a trope encapsulating feminine urban experiences. Taking pleasure in being part of the London scene, the flaneuse also justifies her presence in the city through the reformative functions she undertakes. Finally, the thesis looks at three London novels by Maria Edgeworth which depict heroines training themselves to take part in the political life of the nation by engaging in public sphere critical discourses. Moving into the foreground the largely overlooked relationship of women and the city, this dissertation shows that women's fiction developed new constructions of femininity, uniting the nurturing values of the ideal domestic woman with the rationality and agency born of modern urban experience. The novel of sentiment thus emerges as more layered and complex than often charged, capable of confronting large themes and registering the transition of Britain from a homogeneous, settled, rural society to a diverse, mobile urban one.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/29863 |
| Date | January 2009 |
| Creators | Musgrove, Martha |
| Publisher | University of Ottawa (Canada) |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 247 p. |
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