Empowering the feminine
Subtitle: the narratives of Mary Robinson, Jane West, and Amelia Opie, 1796-1812
By: Eleanor Ty.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Toronto
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: Robinson, Mary, -- 1758-1800 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; West, -- Mrs. -- 1758-1852 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Opie, Amelia Alderson, -- 1769-1853 -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Feminist fiction, English -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- 18th century -- History and criticism.; English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Women in literature.; Feminism in literature.
Description: Mary Robinson, fantastic beauty, popular actress, and once lover of the Prince of Wales, received the epithet 'the English Sappho' for her lyric verse. Amelia Opie, a member of the fashionable literary society and later a Quaker, included among her friends Sydney Smith, Byron, and Scott, and reputedly refused Godwin's marriage proposal out of admiration for Mary Wollstonecraft.

Jane West, who tended her household and dairy while writing prolifically to support her children, was in direct opposition to the radically feminist ideas preceding her. These authors, each from different ideological and social backgrounds, all grappled with a desire for empowerment. Writing in an atmosphere hardened towards reform in response to the French revolution's upheavals, these women focus their narratives on typically feminine attributes - docility, maternal feeling, heightened sensibility (that key word of the period).

That focus invests these attributes with new meaning, making supposed female weaknesses potentially active forces for social change.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.