Narrating Marriage in Eighteenth-Century England and France
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Advice Literature
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colonial discourse analysis
conjugal
Conjugal Lewdness
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Domestic Advice Literature
domesticity studies
Du Divorce
eighteenth-century gender roles
eliza
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evolution of modern couple dynamics
greuze
Greuze's Painting
Greuze’s Painting
heteronormativity critique
jean
Jean Baptiste Greuze
Le Bon
Le Chien
lewdness
literary representations of abuse
marital advice literature
Marriage Narratives
Millenium Hall
miss
Miss Betsy Thoughtless
narrative
Nicolas Edme Restif De La
Nicolas Edme Restif De La Bretonne
Pamela II
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thoughtless
Vice Versa
Young Man
Product details
- ISBN 9781138262188
- Weight: 470g
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 11 Nov 2016
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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In the eighteenth century, when the definition of marriage was shifting from one based on an hierarchical model to one based on notions of love and mutuality, marital life came under a more intense cultural scrutiny. This led to paradoxical forms of representation of marriage as simultaneously ideal and unlivable. Chris Roulston analyzes how, as representations of married life increased, they challenged the traditional courtship model, offering narratives based on repetition rather than progression. Beginning with English and French marital advice literature, which appropriated novelistic conventions at the same time that it cautioned readers about the dangers of novel reading, she looks at representations of ideal marriages in Pamela II and The New Heloise. Moving on from these ideal domestic spaces, bourgeois marriage is then problematized by the discourse of empire in Sir George Ellison and Letters of Mistress Henley, by troublesome wives in works by Richardson and Samuel de Constant, and by abusive husbands in works by Haywood, Edgeworth, Genlis and Restif de la Bretonne. Finally, the alternative marriage narrative, in which the adultery motif is incorporated into the marriage itself, redefines the function of heteronormativity. In exploring the theoretical issues that arise during this transitional period for married life and the marriage plot, Roulston expands the debates around the evolution of the modern couple.
Chris Roulston is Associate Professor of Women's Studies and French Studies at the University of Western Ontario. She is also the author of Virtue, Gender and the Authentic Self in Eighteenth-Century Fiction.
