Public and private : gender, class, and the British novel (1764-1878)
This groundbreaking work examines the emergent and fluctuating relationship between the public and private social spheres of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By assessing novels such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Jane Austen's Emma through the lens of the social theories of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault, Patricia McKee presents a fresh and highly original contribution to literary studies. McKee analyzes portrayals of a society in which abstract idealism belonged to knowledgeable, productive men and the realm of ignorance was left to emotional consuming women and the uneducated. Throughout, McKee highlights the unexpected configurations of the emergence of the public and private spheres and the effect of knowledge distributions across class and gender lines
Print Book, English, ©1997
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ©1997
Criticism, interpretation, etc
ix, 243 pages ; 24 cm
9780816629343, 9780816629350, 081662934X, 0816629358
35574509
1. Models of Stability: Production and Consumption in Humphry Clinker and The Castle of Otranto
2. Productions of Knowledge: Emma and Frankenstein
3. The Emptied Subject of Public Knowledge: The Old Curiosity Shop
4. Public Knowledge, Common Knowledge, and Classifications of Will: Barchester Towers and Little Dorrit
5. Gender as Order in Public and Private: East Lynne
6. Naturalizing Class and Gender Distinctions: The Return of the Native