Like Nobody Else: Women and Independence in the Novels of Charlotte Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft

KRAMER, Kaley (2023). Like Nobody Else: Women and Independence in the Novels of Charlotte Smith and Mary Wollstonecraft. In: CARROLL, Rachel and TOLAN, Fiona, (eds.) The Routledge Companion to Literature and Feminism. Routledge Literature Companions . London, Routledge, 29-41.

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Link to published version:: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003429951

Abstract

This chapter argues that the early novels of Mary Wollstonecraft and Charlotte Smith, published in 1788 and 1789, explore discourses of gender and individuality in circulation before the French Revolution. These writers, whose work is usually positioned alongside the more explicitly radical 1790s, demonstrate a deep engagement with the social, cultural and political realities of women’s lives before the final decade of the century. Smith’s Emmeline (1788) and her under-studied second novel, Ethelinde (1789) contain increasingly confident assertions of autonomy from her eponymous protagonists; Wollstonecraft’s Mary, A Fiction (1788) offers an explicitly self-aware experiment with a ‘new kind of heroine’. Avoiding the pitfalls of infamy or exceptionality that attended women’s struggles for individuality throughout the eighteenth century, both authors’ protagonists negotiate their independence within, rather than apart from, community.

Item Type: Book Section
Uncontrolled Keywords: Humanities Research Centre
Identification Number: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003429951
Page Range: 29-41
SWORD Depositor: Symplectic Elements
Depositing User: Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited: 13 Jan 2022 12:36
Last Modified: 11 Dec 2023 16:00
URI: https://shura.shu.ac.uk/id/eprint/29601

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