A discourse of their own? The critique of luxury in selected prose of eighteenth-century women writers.
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Date
Authors
Wenqi, Liang.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Dalhousie University
Abstract
Description
Luxuria, one of the seven deadly sins, is usually personified as female in the tradition of Western literature. Although the literary expression of luxury and conspicuous consumption has been discussed by critics, no critical attention has been given to women's own treatment of it in the works of female prose writers. The aim of this thesis is twofold: first, to view the works of Sarah Scott, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Wollstonecraft and Hannah More in the context of the luxury debate and second, to recognize specific features of female education in these same works having to do with Luxuria. In this thesis the works of these female writers are examined in the light of Marxian theories by Bloch, Lukacs, Althusser, Macherey and Jameson. Although no common arguments for luxury have been sustained in these female writers' works, they do provide us with a distinctively female perspective on human luxury; they also serve as pivotal points in the changing ways in which women viewed themselves, from figures of conspicuous consumption to moral educators.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1993.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Dalhousie University (Canada), 1993.
Keywords
Literature, English.