Module overview
The period 1770-1900 was a pivotal time in the history of women’s writing in Britain. Writers like Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë established their place in the literary canon, while their contemporaries struggled against conventions that suggested domestic duties and a literary career could not be reconciled. Women assumed a prominent role in debates that would shape the modern world, and lead to modern feminism. Exploring the formal innovations women made in different genres of writing--and the critical judgements they faced--offers a way into the relation between women’s writing and our enduring understandings of literary significance. Why have some of these writers become (as Brontë aspired to be) 'forever known' while others remain beyond the embrace of the literary establishment known as 'the canon'? Why did some writers openly admit (like Jane Austen) to writing 'for fame', while others hid behind a cloak of anonymity?
On this module you will study fiction, essays, poetry, reviews, travel writing and autobiographical writing by a range of women writers within and on the borders of the canon. Lectures, seminars, and secondary readings will introduce you to theories of canon formation and its evolution over time and will consider how women’s writing reshaped definitions of gender, sexuality, social hierarchy and race, marriage, family, education and nation.