“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”: Female Independence in the English Novel 1795 - 1820

• Thesis title in Czech: "Nejsem ptáče a nedám se chytit do žádné sítě": Ženská nezávislost v anglickém románu 1795 - 1820
• Thesis title in English: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me”: Female Independence in the English Novel 1795 - 1820
• Key words: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, britská literatura, literatura psaná ženami, feminismus, feminita
• English key words: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Hays, Frances Burney, Jane Austen, British literature, women's writing, feminism, femininity
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2013/2014
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 18.06.2014
• Date of assignment: 18.06.2014
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 25.06.2014
• Date and time of defence: 07.09.2015 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 10.08.2015
• Date of proceeded defence: 07.09.2015
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Miroslava Horová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Until recently, modern feminist literary criticism seemed to be preoccupied mainly with the interpretation of the growing female independence of such characters as Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet or Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Jane's commitment to dignity, unwillingness to submit to male emotional power and readiness to speak her mind, and Elizabeth’s inner strength, spontaneity and struggle to express her individuality in a society that demanded strict social conformity – these both broke the traditional views of feminine submissiveness and produced a new prototype of a literary heroine. However, the attention has for some time been concentrated also on other literary heroines and similar principles of the struggle to identify woman's self-hood, femininity and independence can be observed already in the works of female writers of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
At that time, traditional depiction of a woman appeared predominantly in terms of her established social roles as a daughter, wife and mother, but female novelists still succeeded in offering their unique insight into the issue. On the one hand, their portrayal of heroines parallels the conventional description of an emotional female mind capable of rational thinking and perception. Yet, their main emphasis is placed on woman's self-hood, integrity and her attempt at self-expression on the way towards achieving intellectual, emotional, social, or economic independence. Their characters therefore naturally possess a specific ability of self-reflection and are inclined towards a change of their prescribed roles. The period’s preoccupation with the novel of sensibility offers a direct insight into the inner psychology of the heroine.
This thesis will focus on various expressions of a heroine’s independence in the novels of four female writers (Mary Hays, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen), which were issued between 1795 and 1820. This time span covers a turbulent era of the French Revolution, French Enlightenment, English radicalism, the first and second Romantic generations and mainly a significant change of the political picture - an era which ends with the arrival of the conservative and morally rooted Victorian novel in 1832. In the 1790s, the novel writing still was not a privileged genre and the works served more as philosophical treatises than novels. The power of fiction was to raise consciousness of the time and preach its reform. It criticised the sentimental vision of woman’s purity and supported female attempts at freedom. Women writers strived to balance their sympathies for the radical opposition of English Jacobins with themes from sentimental literature. The Jacobin novelists carried the novel into a political sphere. They wished to exhibit the oppression peculiar to women that rise out of the partial laws and customs of society. Individual ideologies were often justified in the novels themselves. The works were polemical, devoted to public issues but derived from personal experience; female writers functioned as social and moral commentators. The novels are therefore full of contemporary observations and comment on the parallels between domestic and political life, or private and public morality.
The period that will be discussed in the thesis was therefore chosen to exemplify the beginning of feminist awakening present in the novels of the four women writers. Emphasis will be given on the period’s construction of femininity, the discourse of natural rights, independence, and the freedom of expression. Different attitudes towards attaining emotional, intellectual, social and economic independence will be discussed in Mary Hays’ The Memoirs of Emma Courtney, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman, Frances Burney’s The Wanderer, and Jane Austen’s Persuasion, respectively. Hays’ The Memoirs of Emma Courtney will be dealt with within the context of female sexual individuality, sexual passion and adultery. The analysis of Wollstonecraft’s Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman will focus on the power of female imagination as liberating of physical imprisonment in a mental institution, on the extramarital relationship between Maria and Darnford, and Jemima’s fate in the context of a patriarchal society. Burney’s The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties will display female strife for social and economic independence on an unknown territory. Austen’s Persuasion will then represent a bridge between subtle and more overt depictions of heroine’s independence; Anne Elliot will open the topics of spinsterhood, sense of belonging and character maturity.
The literature of the 1790s, as represented by the chosen novelists, varies in its approach towards the recorded events: Mary Hays and Mary Wollstonecraft are both strictly categorized by their radical belonging to the Jacobins. Their main concern is the polemical roman á la thése. Their radical approach towards society and the rights of women was met with harsh criticism on the part of the more conservative society. On the other hand, Frances Burney’s The Wanderer and Jane Austen’s Persuasion belong already to the post-1810 period and the novelists’ views differ from those of the Jacobin writers. They do not engage with the social protest directly, but comment on the social situation from a rather distant position (Burney using a historical novel and Austen using the novel of manners). Yet, while Burney writes in the style of Samuel Richardson and of other domestic novels, and while Austen formally conforms to the conservative tradition and both politically and ideologically advocates the status quo, they also include subversive features in their novels (Austen, for instances, employs a heroine with strong personality). The thesis will focus on the signs of arising female independence that are inherently common to all these novelists.
The thesis will also comment on the topic of a woman’s position both in society and a family, on the question of female reading and education and on such delicate issues as matrimonial relationships, love affairs and infidelity. The novels are chosen to explore different kinds of femininity and female independence, concerning women of different social status. This enables not only a complex examination of the forms and variations of femininity, but also a survey of the circumstances and subsequent consequences of achieving one’s independence.
The novels will be considered in connection to the late seventeenth and eighteenth century conduct books of George Savile, James Fordyce and John Gregory. This prescriptive literature will be read in the context of the contemporary opinion on the natural rights of women and men expressed by both male and female writers of both radical and conservative orientations (William Godwin, Thomas Paine, Richard Polwhele’s “The Unsex’d Females,” Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Hannah More).

References

Primary sources
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Hays, Mary. "Memoirs of Mary Wollstonecraft." Annual Necrology (1797–98). 1800.
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