Ends of Empire: Women and Ideology in Early Eighteenth-Century English Literature

by Laura S. Brown

Overview

In this bold and provocative book, Laura Brown explores the representation of women in English literature from the Restoration to the fall of Walpole—a time during which an expansionist economic system was consolidated, a fertile ideology advocating a benevolent and progressive imperialism took root, and the slave trade was institutionalized. In this period, she maintains, the image of the female not only played a leading role in literary culture but also profoundly affected mercantile capitalist ideology.

After critical scrutiny of the traditional and revisionist positions in previous approaches to eighteenth-century studies, Brown examines the "feminization of ideology" in relation to notions of racial difference in Benn's Oroonoko and in works by Defoe and Swift. Chapters on the "she-tragedy" and on the writings of Pope focus on images of female sexuality and their relationship to violence against women, to female dressing and identity, and to contemporary notions of aesthetics, as well as to capitalism, commodification, and imperialism.

Redefining issues central to the interpretation of eighteenth-century literature, Ends of Empire will be important reading for students and scholars in the fields of eighteenth-century studies, literary theory and literary history, women's studies, Marxist criticism, and cultural and intellectual history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801480959
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	03/11/1993
Series:	4/18/2008
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Laura Brown is John Wendell Anderson Professor of English at Cornell University. She is the author of several books, including Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination and Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century, both from Cornell.

Table of Contents

1. The Feminization of Ideology: An Introduction
2. The Romance of Empire: Oroonoko and the Trade in Slaves
3. Staging Sexuality: Violence and Pleasure in the Domestic She-Tragedy
4. Capitalizing on Women: Dress, Aesthetics, and Alexander Pope
5. Amazons and Africans: Daniel Defoe
6. Imperial Disclosures: Jonathan Swift

Editorial Reviews

A provocative and committed piece of criticism.

Modern Philology

This important book, wide ranging, carefully researched, closely argued, and immaculately presented, demands and deserves rigorous intellectual engagement.

The Yearbook of English Studies

A provocative and committed piece of criticism.

-- "Modern Philology"

This important book, wide ranging, carefully researched, closely argued, and immaculately presented, demands and deserves rigorous intellectual engagement.

-- "The Yearbook of English Studies"

From the Publisher