The Work of Women: Middle Class Domesticity in Eighteenth Century British Literature

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dc.citation.firstpage4
dc.citation.issueNumberSpring
dc.citation.journalTitleRice Historical Review
dc.citation.lastpage14
dc.citation.volumeNumber2
dc.contributor.authorMcDougal, Abi
dc.contributor.illustratorDwyer, Meagan
dc.date.accessioned2017-06-15T13:51:39Z
dc.date.available2017-06-15T13:51:39Z
dc.date.issued2017
dc.descriptionThis paper was written in Eighteenth Century British Fiction (ENGL 333), taught b yDr. Betty Joseph.
dc.description.abstractThis essay considers how British literature in the eighteenth century participated in creating a singularly domestic image of women. Addressing gender roles, Samuel Richardson’s Pamela, Mary Hays’s Emma Courtney, and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey form a literary progression with which to compare nonfiction historical sources. The critique suggests how the changing economic framework disenfranchised women as it enabled men to advance. It further identifies three aspects contributing to women’s confinement to the home: first, growing authority over domestic staff; second, responsibility over children’s education; and third, a supposed inability to engage with public, political thought. Furthermore, it recognizes how the domestic sphere simultaneously became a women’s source of authority while preventing her from engaging with the world at large. Within these topics, the essay considers how a growing feminist voice in British fiction toward the end of the eighteenth century allowed female authors to push against the devaluation of women.
dc.description.sponsorshipRice History Department
dc.format.extent11 pp
dc.identifier.citationMcDougal, Abi. Dwyer, Meagan (illustrator). "The Work of Women: Middle Class Domesticity in Eighteenth Century British Literature." <i>Rice Historical Review,</i> 2, no. Spring (2017) Rice University: 4-14. https://doi.org/10.25611/m-00057.
dc.identifier.digitalMcDougal-RHR-2017-Spring
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.25611/m-00057
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/94858
dc.language.isoeng
dc.publisherRice University
dc.relation.IsPartOfSeriesSpring 2017
dc.rightsThis article is licensed under a CC-BY license; copyright remains with the authors.
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/
dc.titleThe Work of Women: Middle Class Domesticity in Eighteenth Century British Literature
dc.typeJournal article
dc.type.dcmiText
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