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The Matrimonial Trap: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers Redefine Marriage
Contributor(s): Thomason, Laura E. (Author)

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 ISBN: 1611487056     ISBN-13: 9781611487053
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
OUR PRICE: $57.74  

Binding Type: Paperback - See All Available Formats & Editions
Published: August 2015
Qty:

Click for more in this series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
- Literary Criticism | Women Authors
- Literary Criticism | Feminist
Dewey: 820.992
Series: Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture, 1650-1850
Physical Information: 1.1" H x 5.2" W x 8.9" L (0.70 lbs) 216 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - British Isles
- Sex & Gender - Feminine
Features: Bibliography
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Mary Delany's phrase "the matrimonial trap" illuminates the apprehension with which genteel women of the eighteenth century viewed marriage. These women were generally required to marry in order to secure their futures, yet hindered from freely choosing a husband. They faced marriage anxiously because they lacked the power either to avoid it or to define it for themselves. For some women, the written word became a means by which to exercise the power that they otherwise lacked. Through their writing, they made the inevitable acceptable while registering their dissatisfaction with their circumstances. Rhetoric, exercised both in public and in private, allowed these women to define their identities as individuals and as wives, to lay out and test the boundaries of more egalitarian spousal relationships, and to criticize the traditional marriage system as their culture had defined it.
 
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