Eighteenth-century diatribes against novels claimed that reading fiction produced rebellious daughters, fallen women and female nervous wrecks. In Reading Daughters' Fictions, Caroline Gonda draws on a wide range of novels and nonliterary materials of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in order to examine changing representations of the father-daughter bond. She argues that domestic novels of family life and courtship, far from corrupting female readers, helped to maintain familial and social order.
| List of Illustrations | ||
| Preface | ||
| Acknowledgements | ||
| Introduction | 1 | |
| 1 | Fictions of accident? Representations of incest in Manley, Barker and Haywood | 38 |
| 2 | Amorous girls and tyrannical parents: Richardson and the limits of paternal authority | 66 |
| Interlude. A Lady's Legacy: Sarah Scott and tests of filial duty | 105 | |
| 3 | Lessons of experience: Evelina and Camilla | 111 |
| 4 | Schedoniac contours: the Sins of the Fathers in Gothic fiction | 140 |
| 5 | Stepping out: from Elizabeth Inchbald to Mary Brunton | 174 |
| 6 | Her father's daughter? The life and fictions of Maria Edgeworth | 204 |
| Notes | 239 | |
| Bibliography | 259 | |
| Index | 283 |
Overview
Eighteenth-century diatribes against novels claimed that reading fiction produced rebellious daughters, fallen women and female nervous wrecks. In Reading Daughters' Fictions, Caroline Gonda draws on a wide range of novels and nonliterary materials of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century in order to examine changing representations of the father-daughter bond. She argues that domestic novels of family life and courtship, far from corrupting female readers, helped to ...