Product Description

Complementing the current upsurge in feminist writing on the eighteenth century, and giving students the chance to make their own re-readings of texts, this anthology gathers together a range of material from conduct manuals to medical texts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #258739 in Books
• Published on: 1990-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Review
...uncommonly informative and intelligently conceived.' - Women's Review of Books

From the Back Cover
In recent years, much exciting work has been done by feminists working on the eighteenth century. This anthology will give students access to the kinds of documents by and about women which have been a major source for their analyses. The texts collected here demonstrate the construction in the period of a powerful, and still current, ideology of femininity and explore its effects on ideas of sexuality, women's education and women's writing - as well as illustrating the oppositional voices of early feminists. The texts included range widely: from 'conduct manuals' instructing women in proper behaviour, to pamphlets on prostitution; from medical texts defining female sexuality, to critical definitions of female writing; from anti-female satires, to French Revolution-inspired appeals for female equality.

Customer Reviews

Femininity and 18th Century Culture
"In a period of major political and economic change, definitions of `women' and `femininity' played a crucial part in a wider redefinition of social categoris and social roles, and the anthology's five sections represent significant areas within this debate about women's nature and status." (8) Jones' fascinating anthology sheds new light on my own research of 18th century play production and should be embraced by everyone even vaguely interested in 18th century literature. When describing Wollstonecraft's writing as "feminist radicalism" (9) she supports the cotroversial view that "Feminism" existed as a movement in the 18th century centuries before it gained its formal name. Jones intelligently shows how 18th century culture seriously valued femininity across both genders and remained clearly acceptable of it. She cites primary source evidence in support of her thesis - the first in this area - which has since been taken up by other scholars. It is very surprising that other fields - especially theatre history - have not embraced Jones's important thesis because the plays most frequently performed during the eighteenth cetury value feminine views, despite the fact that farces like Garrick's hit comedy "Miss in her Teens" create characters like Fribble (played by Garrick himself) for spectator ridicule. Mark Howell-Meri