Overview
Addresses needlework, musical accomplishment, reading, and the experiences of sensibility and sympathy in fiction to demonstrate how women’s activity had powerful effects on diverse areas of social life
Examines the novels of three of the best-known Romantic women writers
Shifts the focus from the productive and cultural outputs of women’s day-to-day tasks to their functions in the human experiences of joy, friendship, alienation, and desire, among others
Examines how the polite sphere alternately fosters and constricts different ways of creating the self through domestic activity
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book examines women’s domestic occupations in the Romantic-period novel at the most intimately human level. By examining the momentary thought and feeling processes that informed the playing of a harp, the stitching of a dress, or the reading of a gothic novel, the book shifts the focus from women’s socio-cultural contributions through domestic endeavor to how women’s day-to-day tasks shaped experiences of joy, friendship, resentment, and self. Through an understanding of domestic occupations as forms of human action, the study emphasises the inherent unpredictability of quotidian activities and draws attention to their capacity for exceeding cultural parameters. Specifically, the book examines needlework, musical accomplishment, novel reading, and sensibility in the work of Charlotte Smith, Jane Austen, and Frances Burney, giving new perspectives on established canonical works while also providing the most sustained analysis of Charlotte Smith’s little studied novel, Ethelinde, to date.
Reviews
“Morrissey’s discussion of the domestic occupations of women’s lives during this period remains an important addition to this body of literature. By connecting the varied forms of activity women engaged with, the author successfully argues for a complex and nuanced understanding of accomplishments, one that interrupts ‘hierarchical binaries between work and leisure, productive and non-productive, and public and domestic’ … .” (Freya Gowrley, Eighteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 33 (3), 2021)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Joseph Morrissey is lecturer in literature and academic writing at Coventry University, UK. He has previously published essays on Charlotte Smith and discourses of emotions.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Women’s Domestic Activity in the Romantic-Period Novel, 1770-1820
Book Subtitle: Dangerous Occupations
Authors: Joseph Morrissey
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70356-5
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-70355-8Published: 01 March 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-09950-3Published: 15 December 2018
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-70356-5Published: 20 February 2018
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 225
Topics: Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Screen Studies