female transgression in the eighteenth century
- Categories
- Book/Boek
- Creator
- Kittredge, Katharine > (ed.)
- Contributor
- Shaffer, Julie
- Publish Year
- 2003
- Shelfmark
- B5308 - B
- Thesaurus
- vrouwelijkheid, seksualiteit, vrouwbeelden, lesbische vrouwen, moederschap, revoluties, 18e eeuw, bundel
- Description
- Accounts of women's transgressive behavior in eighteenth-century literature and have much to tell about constructions of femininity during the period often identified as having formed our society's gender norms. This book explores the eighteenth century's shadows, inhabited by marginal women of many kinds.The reader meets Laetitia Pilkington, whose sexual indiscretions caused her to fall from social and literary grace to become an articulate memoirist of personal scandal, and Elizabeth Brownrigg, who tortured and starved her young servants, propelling herself to an infamy comparable to Susan Smith's or Myra Hindley's. More women wait in this book to teach us about society's reception of their debauchery and dangerousness. The authors draw upon a rich range of contemporary texts to illuminate the lives of these women. Astute analysis of literary, legal, evangelical, epistolary, and political documents provides an understanding of 1700s womanhood.