Censored Sentiments: Letters and Censorship in Epistolary Novels and Conduct MaterialThis book offers a new perspective on women as letter writers and on the eighteenth-century increase in, and subsequent decline of, epistolary fiction. In order to better understand the role epistolary fiction played in English, French, Italian, and to a lesser extent, American society, it is necessary to read such fiction in the context of conduct books with their theories of what women should be and their reflections on literature. Such a reading takes into account not only letter writers and their addressees, but also the censors who read, intercepted, suppressed, criticized, corrected, forged, altered, falsified, misdirected, censored, and rewrote female letters in an effort to achieve a perfect specimen of female epistolary writing. |
Contents
| 21 | |
Letters as a Means of Liberation for Female Correspondents | 52 |
ClarissaWoman Writer and Reader in an Epistolary Web | 75 |
Female Epistolary Strategies in Evelina Lady Susan and Lettere di una novizia The Tactics of Caution Convention and Cliche | 103 |
Deconstructing the Definition of Female Letters as Sentimental Nonliterary and Private | 138 |
Conclusion | 175 |
Notes | 178 |
Bibliography | 198 |
Index | 206 |
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Common terms and phrases
addressee Amatory Fiction Anna Aphra Behn Behn Belford Bianca Burney Burney's censor Charlotte Temple clandestine Clarissa clichés conduct books conduct material conventions critics Dacia Maraini daughter domestic eighteenth century epistolary fiction epistolary novels Evelina Familiar Letters Fanny female correspondence female epistolary female letter feminine Foucault girl Guido Piovene Harlowe Haywood heart heroine husband Il Cortigiano Jane Austen Jane Austen's Lady Susan law of genre Les Liaisons dangereuses letter writer Lettere a Marina Lettres portugaises literary London love affair love letter Lovelace Lovelace's lover male manipulation Maraini marriage means mind moral mother narrative nature Oriana Oriana Fallaci parents passion Piovene's readers reading reflects rhetoric Richardson's emphasis Rita Rita's role Ruth Hall Ruth's Samuel Richardson seducer sentimental sexual Sign of Angellica social sphere spontaneity story strategies tion trans University Press Usbek Villars voice woman women writers words York young ladies
Popular passages
Page 106 - I yet presume not to attempt pursuing the same ground which they have tracked, whence, though they may have cleared the weeds, they have also culled the flowers ; and though they have rendered the path plain, they have left it barren.
Page 92 - I had more than once told her, above all the species of writing: it was writing from the heart (without the fetters prescribed by method or study), as the very word correspondence, implied. Not the heart only; the soul was in it.
Page 54 - ... recherche; elles sont heureuses dans le choix des termes, qu'elles placent si juste que, tout connus qu'ils sont, ils ont le charme de la nouveauté et semblent être faits seulement pour l'usage où elles les mettent.
Page 181 - The poor creatures do not desire to be men in order to become more perfect, but in order to gain freedom and to escape that rule over them which man has arrogated to himself ^ by his own authority.
Page 181 - ... that ought to inform all her actions, a quick vivacity of spirit whereby she will show herself a stranger to all boorishness; but with such a kind manner as to cause her to be thought no less chaste, prudent, and gentle than she is agreeable, witty, and discreet: thus, she must observe a certain mean (difficult to achieve and, as it were, composed of contraries ) and must strictly observe certain limits and not exceed them.
Page 64 - Behn was a middle-class woman with all the plebeian virtues of humour, vitality and courage; a woman forced by the death of her husband and some unfortunate adventures of her own to make her living by her wits. She had to work on equal terms with men. She made, by working very hard, enough to live on. The importance of that fact outweighs anything that she actually wrote, even the splendid 'A Thousand Martyrs I have made...
Page 46 - CLASS comprises a large number of the population that have hitherto been held to have no occupation ; but it requires no argument to prove that the wife, the mother, the mistress of an English family — fills offices and discharges duties of no ordinary importance...
Page 41 - The more rational and elevated the topics are on which you write, the less will you care for your letters being seen, or for paragraphs being read out of them...
Page 54 - Elles trouvent sous leur plume des tours et des expressions qui souvent en nous ne sont l'effet que d'un long travail et d'une pénible recherche : elles sont heureuses dans le choix des termes, qu'elles placent si juste...