Proposing men
Subtitle: dialectics of gender and class in the eighteenth-century English periodical
By: Shawn Lisa Maurer.
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Stanford, Calif
Language: eng
Number of pages: 306
Subjects: English essays -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English prose literature -- 18th century -- History and criticism; English prose literature -- Male authors -- History and criticism; Literature and society -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century; English periodicals -- History -- 18th century; Gender identity in literature; Social classes in literature; Masculinity in literature; Sex role in literature; Men in literature
Description: Simultaneously challenging conventional-male-dominated thought and revisionist modern feminism, this book argues that gendered identities can best be conceived relationally, and thus that a fuller understanding of gender roles in the eighteenth century (and by extension in our own) must include an analysis of men's place in the discourse of domesticity.

Examining the phenomenal rise of the social periodical at the end of the seventeenth century, the author theorizes the genre's crucial contribution to the construction of a class-specific gender identity that succeeds as ideology not, as usually assumed, by separating the feminine private sphere from the masculine public one, but by delineating the private as an important locus of masculine control.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [285]-298) and index.