Her bread To earn women, money, and society from Defoe to Austen /
Mona Scheuermann.
- Lexington : The University Press of Kentucky, (c)2015.
- 1 online resource (300 pages)
Includes bibliographies and index.
Cover; Half-title; Title; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgments; ONE: Introduction; TWO: ""I was become, from a Lady of Pleasure, a Woman of Business, and of great Business too, I assure you.""; THREE: ""I have sometimes wished that it had pleased God to have taken me in mylast fever, when I had everybody's love and good opinion.""; FOUR: ""with Regard to the young Lady ... my own Observation assured me that she would be an inestimable Treasure to a good Husband.""; FIVE: ""I live in an age when light begins to appear even in regions that have hitherto been thick darkness."" SIX: ""Still she mourned her child, lamented she was a daughter, and anticipated the aggravated ills of life that her sex rendered almost inevitable.""SEVEN: ""He had ... enough to marry a woman as portionless even as Miss Taylor.""; EIGHT Conclusion; Notes; Index.
Much criticism has posited an all-powerful patriarchy that effectively marginalized and disempowered women until well into the nineteenth century. In a startling revisionist study, Mona Scheuermann refutes these stereotypes, finding that the images presented by eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century novelists are of functioning, capable women whose involvement with the getting, keeping, and investing of money provides a ubiquitous theme in the novels of the period. Her Bread to Earn focuses on the images presented by the major novels of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, those work.
9780813159577
English fiction--History and criticism.--18th century Literature and society--History--England--18th century. Money in literature. Social problems in literature. Women and literature--History--England--18th century.