Studies in 18th-Century Literature (340-0-20)

Topic

Marriage Plots Before Jane Austen

Instructors

Helen Thompson

Meeting Info

University Hall 312: Tues, Thurs 2:00PM - 3:20PM

Overview of class

This class will trace the surprising proliferation of plots that lead to marriage in prose fictional forms before the consolidation of the modern realist novel. (Spoiler alert: not all of these plots end in marriage!) Jane Austen's chaste representations of courtship were preceded by over 100 years of far less polite renditions of desire, economic need, frustration, rebellion, and amorous failure. Due to women's historical exclusion from independent paid labor, girls were expected to turn into women who became wives. This social expectation was interrogated, re-imagined, and subverted in new ways across the developing form(s) of prose fiction in Britain in the "long" eighteenth century (roughly 1660 - 1820). As we will see, the marriage plot ascribed to Austen was far from the norm in the pre-realist novel: we'll encounter extra-marital sexual autonomy, sapphic desire, incest, sex work, delusion, discipline, remarriage, and many other plot twists which show that the literary-historical road to the courtship plot was rocky, contested, and definitely not predictable.

Before Jane Austen means that we will not be reading Austen! Prepare yourself for novels you will like just as much, or even better.

Class Materials (Required)

Anonymous, The London Jilt. Broadview Editions. ISBN-10: 1551117371
Penelope Aubin, The Life of Madame de Beaumont and the Life of Charlotta Du Pont.
Broadview Editions. ISBN-13: 9781554813537
Daniel Defoe, Roxana. Broadview Editions. ISBN-10: 1551118076
Charlotte Lennox, The Female Quixote. Penguin Random House. ISBN-13: 9780140439878
Anonymous, The Woman of Colour. Broadview Editions. ISBN-10: 1551111764

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression
Literature and Arts Foundational Discipline
Literature & Fine Arts Distro Area