All entries for Monday 17 October 2011

Defiant Women: The Growth of Feminism in Fanny Burney's Novels

Writing about web page http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/450083.pdf?acceptTC=true

Author(s): Rose Marie Cutting

Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 17, No. 3

Restoration and Eighteenth Century (Summer, 1977), pp. 519-530

"A study of all four of her heroines reveals that Fanny Burney began with a neoclassical reverence for social norms but ended with a philosophy of self-reliance." Rose Marie Cutting suggests that Burney's novels are rather more radical than they first appear. While seeming to promote eighteenth century "norms", her heroines are also often independent, intelligent, rational and even rebellious.

Why might Burney have retained some conservative overtones? How could she use them to her advantage?

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