The Female Reader in the Late Eighteenth-Century Novel

In the second half of the eighteenth century the female reader was a frequent topic of cultural debate and moral concern. In pedagogical works and critical reviews she was almost invariably portrayed as passive and vulnerable. The novel was seen as a particular source of danger. Commentators of both genders, from both a conservative and radical perspective, agitated about the effects of novels on young women, frequently suggesting that they could lead to moral decline and sexual transgression. A connection was thought to exist between the reading of books and the reading of the world, such that a young woman's misguided reading of fiction (especially romances and novels) would adversely affect her understanding of other people and social situations. This tradition of foolish reading and its damaging effects can be traced to Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605, 1615), and is most clearly represented in the eighteenth-century novel by Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752).

Yet evidence from sources such as diaries and journals from this period has challenged the stereotypical image of the impressionable female reader, showing women reading intelligently and for self-improvement. Within the novel too, a diverse range of reading practices is revealed. Women novelists in particular repeatedly show their female characters reading judiciously and creatively. This book examines the variety of ways in which women 'read' both books and the social world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century novel. It shows that the heroine's literal reading does often help to shape her interpretation of the world, though the often-emphasized connection between the two is frequently shown to be complex and problematic. The reading of female characters is often such that they struggle to 'read' the social world, especially the opposite sex. Anne Elliot's question after her first meeting with Captain Wentworth in almost eight years is typical: 'Now, how were his sentiments to be read?'

This study is particularly concerned with 'the novel of manners', a sub-genre which is usually traced to the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and which, as critics have noted, foregrounds the practices of reading and interpretation. The novels of Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth are usually cited as examples of the sub-genre, while Jane Austen is often said to be 'the novelist of manners'. As well as these three key figures, this study also focuses on the work of less well-known female novelists from the period, including Elizabeth Inchbald, Mary Hays and Elizabeth Hamilton. It argues that a genre that was frequently seen by contemporary commentators as dangerous for the young female reader in fact shows women reading in a wide variety of active and empowering ways, suggesting that female novelists were aware of the power of readers to create their own meanings and shape the development of the genre.