Samuel Richardson's Fictions of GenderStanford University Press, 1995 - 202 pagina's In developing a new gender theory for analyzing Samuel Richardson's three major novels - Pamela, Clarissa, and Sir Charles Grandison - the author argues that these novels of sexual threat expose, sometimes unwillingly, the extraordinary labor required to construct and maintain the eighteenth-century ideology of gender, that apparently natural dream of perfect symmetry between the sexes. The instability of that model is revealed notably in Richardson's fascination with cross-gender identification and other instances of transgressive desires. The author demonstrates that these violations of the supposedly unbreachable barriers between masculinity and femininity produce what is most moving and imaginative in Richardson's fiction and create an equally powerful repression in the form of punishment of transgressive characters and desires. She also illustrates, through a reading of recurrent fantasies about the composition of bodies - especially women's bodies - the complex interaction between those fantasies and the construction of masculinity and femininity. The genesis of Richardson's own writing is located in a dynamic, reciprocal idea of gender that allows him to see femininity from the inside while retaining the privileges of the masculine viewpoint; the relation between this origin and the novels themselves forms the basis for the discussions of the novels. Each of the three chapters in the book seeks to investigate particular turn of gender construction and a particular mode of the reiterative story of sexual differences. The first chapter, on Pamela, calls on eighteenth-century discourse about opposing ideologies of gender and sexuality to elucidate Richardson's project. The next chapter, on Clarissa, shifts to a more intricate analysis of fantasies about sex and gender, in particular the double reading of masculinity and femininity in the form of of masculinity reading itself through the feminine. The final chapter, on The History of Sir Charles Grandison, examines Richardson's attempt to solidify masculinity in the person of the "good man." |
Inhoudsopgave
Pamela and the Duplicitous Body of Femininity | 15 |
2 | 39 |
Knowing the Sex in Clarissa | 50 |
3 | 78 |
The History of | 111 |
Afterword | 161 |
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accusations Anna appears ardson asserts attempt becomes Belford Bradshaigh castration century character Charlotte claims Clarissa Clementina clothes concealment create cross-gender define desire disguise disruptive Doody duplicitous Eagleton eighteenth eighteenth-century Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick explicitly fantasy female body feminine duplicity feminist figure gender and sexuality Hargrave's Harriet heart hermaphrodites hero heroine homosocial hypocrisy identification with women ideology imagines ininity Jeronymo Jewkes keyhole knowledge of women Kreissman Lady Bradshaigh Lady Davers letter Lovelace Lovelace's male marriage masculinity masculinity and femininity masquerade meaning metamorphosis mind mirror misogyny Miss Barnevelt moral Nancy Armstrong novel Pamela Censured paradoxically penetration phallic pleasure Press problem problematic rake rape reader relation represent representation resemblance reveal rissa Sally Samuel Richardson scene secret sense sexual difference Shamela Sinclair Sir Charles Grandison Sir Charles's Sir Hargrave Terry Castle Terry Eagleton threat tion Tiresias transformation transgression Univ virginity virtue virtuous voyeur whores woman wounds writing