The Feminization Debate In Eighteenth-century Britain

In the eighteenth century, critics of capitalism denounced the growth of luxury and effeminacy while others celebrated the increase of refinement and the improved status of women. This pioneering study demonstrates the way the association of commerce and femininity permeated cultural production. It looks at the first use of a female author as an icon of modernity in the Athenian Mercury in the 1690s, reappraises misogynist representations in the work of Mandeville, Defoe and Pope in the light of the stock market crash of 1720, and considers in detail the turbulent careers of the poets Elizabeth Singer Rowe and Elizabeth Carter.

The novels of Samuel Richardson represent the culmination of the English debate, while contemporary essays by David Hume move towards a fully-fledged enlightenment theory of feminization. Clery's book is essential reading not only for students of eighteenth-century literature, but for those interested in the emergence of commercial ideology and the evolution of theories of gender.

Review: 'The Feminization Debate in Eighteenth-Century England is an elegantly written, trenchant and persuasive analysis of how the category of the feminine was used in order to chart economic growth and to assess its impact on the social fabric of England. Particularly in the Introduction, Clery provides a useful overview of historical and literary scholarship of the period and throughout she illuminates the study of feminism in general and its English history in particular by showing how discourses of the feminine were largely (though not exclusively) about masculinity, virtue, and authority in an emerging commercial economy.

This consistently original and provocative study fulfils its promise to restore a sense of wonder to the early history of capitalism and in the process impressively inaugurates the 'Palgrave Studies in The Enlightenment, Romanticism and the Cultures of Print' series.' - Professor Claudia L. Johnson, Princeton University, USA '...[an] admirable study...' Eighteenth Century Fiction