The Exalted Heroine and the Triumph of Order

This study is in two parts. The first contains background information relevant to the eighteenth-century English novel, and includes discussion of issues such as the relationship between literature and ideology, literary realism, the fiction reading/purchasing public, and authorial intention and technique. The second part focuses upon seven diverse, yet representative, novels of the period, paying particular attention to the presentation of class, women, and religion in the works examined. While no grand theory is proposed, the writer seeks to utilize an approach derived from sociological and Marxist thought, and to apply this as a practical mode of criticism. Although some familiarity with the novels considered is assumed in the individual analyses of each work, the first part of the study should be of interest to anyone curious about the fiction of the period and the more general questions raised therein. Contents: Part I: Literature and Ideology; The Novel and Society: 1740-1800; Part II: Samuel Richardson: Pamela (1740); Sarah Fielding: David Simple (1744); Henry Fielding: Amelia (1751); Oliver Goldsmith: The Vicar of Wakefield (1766); Richard Graves: The Spiritual Quixote (1773); Fanny Burney: Evelina (1778); Robert Bage: Hermsprong (1796); The Exalted Heroine and the Triumph of Order.