| Description |
1 online resource (viii, 247 pages) |
| Contents |
Women of Great Wit: Designing Women in Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia -- "Free Gift Was What He Wished": Negotiating Desire in Lady Mary Wroth's Urania -- Stratagems and Seeming Constraints, or How to Avoid Being a 'Grey-hound's Collar' -- A Scheme of Virtuous Politics: Governing the Self in 'Assaulted and Pursured Chastity' (1656), The History of the Nun (1689), Love Intrigues (1713), and Love in Excess (1720) -- Poor in Everything But Will: Richardson's Pamela -- Turret Love and Cottage Hate: Coming Down to Earth in Pamela 2, and The Female Quixote -- "It Was Happy She Took A Good Course": Saving Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice -- Agitating Risk and Romantic Chance: Going All the Way with Jane Eyre? |
| Summary |
How far should a woman go as the agent of her own desires? The received wisdom is that she should not go very far at all-certainly not as far as Lady Mary Wroth's Brittany widow, whose suitor scorned all who 'came not half way at the least to meete his love'. We are all familiar with the chastely passive feminine ideal and its counterpart, the demonized sexual aggressor, but the texts with which we deal here reveal a much more sophisticated awareness of the lengths to which a woman might legitimately go in pursuit of her own desires, and this study focuses on the representation of female desire not simply as a predatory instinct but as an inevitable complication of the interest in female subjectivity and agency in the early modern period. From Gynecia's 'working' mind and 'vehement spirits' in Sidney's Arcadia to Jane Eyre's 'fierce speaking' and 'volcanic vehemence', these fictional heroines demonstrate complex understandings of the risky business of female agency. Under changing social circumstances and cultural practices, they negotiate and renegotiate the terms upon which they can pursue destines of their own making |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 232-242) and index |
| Notes |
English |
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Print version record |
| Subject |
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Characters -- Women
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Sidney, Philip, 1554-1586. Arcadia.
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| SUBJECT |
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 fast |
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Arcadia (Sidney, Philip) fast |
| Subject |
English literature -- History and criticism.
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Women in literature.
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Women and literature -- Great Britain
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Desire in literature.
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Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900.
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Gender studies: women.
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Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh.
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Literature.
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Desire in literature
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English literature
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Women and literature
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Women in literature
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Great Britain
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| Author |
Osland, Dianne, 1950- editor.
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| ISBN |
9780230504370 |
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023050437X |
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1280426063 |
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9781280426063 |
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