The app for independent voices
Believe it or not, women’s writing flourished and entered the mainstream in the eighteenth century.
This was a time when print culture was booming, and women’s magazines (like ‘The Female Spectator’), political pamphlets (eg. Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘Rights of Woman’) and popular novels could reach a much wider audience than ever before!
In fact, women were thought to be the main consumer of novels in this period. Social critics and male authors voiced genuine moral concerns about the effect of reading on women’s wellbeing. It was thought that they could fill their head with silly ideas of fantasy, romance, and sentiment. The reverse, demonstrably, is true.
Here are some novels and essays which I recommend to students when they want to study women in the 18thC (who AREN’T Jane Austen):
Charlotte Lennox (1730–1804) – ‘The Female Quixote’ is a romance satire about Georgian gender dynamics.
Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825) – poetry, essays, collected writings… a member of the early, feminist, intelligentsia.
Fanny Burney (1752–1840) – ‘Evelina’ greatly influenced Austen. It’s a novel about debudantes in London/Bath and it’s fun and sentimental.
Charlotte Smith (1749–1806) – ‘Emmeline’ is a novel about women’s entrapment, dastardly suitors, morality and virtue. It is also set in a Gothic castle.
Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821) – ‘A Simple Story’ is a dense two-part novel about women’s intergenerational trauma.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) – ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Woman’… foundational text of feminist philosophy! Endorses women’s education, etc. etc. Radical!
Enjoy!
