Landreth, Sara (Author)
Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation
Volume: 61
Issue: 2
Pages: 207-225
My essay examines how Hannah More's writings draw frequent and often unexpected parallels between mechanical motion and female behavior. While other evangelical writers like John Newton warned that young women might be corrupted by popular mechanical displays like those in James Cox's museum of automata, More embraced certain similarities between manmade mechanisms, the divine clockwork universe, and the regimented and yet "vital" routines of a Christian woman. The piece focuses on how More's only novel, Coelebs in Search of a Wife (1809), formulates theories about self-control. More treats the novel as a "mechanical" genre. While she acknowledges that the wrong kind of novel might elicit dangerously automatic and unthinking behaviors, she suggests that the right kind of novel (e.g. Coelebs) can accomplish what a treatise on conduct cannot: namely, a narrative in which repetitions and routines can demonstrate--rather than merely describe--the workings of providence.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Chapter
Wise, M. Norton;
(2007)
The Gender of Automata in Victorian Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB000774729/)
Chapter
Inglis, Katherine;
(2011)
Maternity, Madness and Mechanization: The Ghastly Automaton in James Hogg's The Three Perils of Woman
(/isis/citation/CBB001201378/)
Article
Robin, Diana;
(2013)
Women on the Move: Trends in Anglophone Studies of Women in the Italian Renaissance
(/isis/citation/CBB001320631/)
Article
Christopher Harrington;
(2022)
“Cut it, woman”: Masculinity, Nectar, and the Orgasm in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley (1849)
(/isis/citation/CBB352493959/)
Article
Aïcha Salmon;
(2018)
Nuptial metamorphosis: masculine perspectives on the transformation of women during their wedding night in nineteenth-century France
(/isis/citation/CBB014539666/)
Book
Rosella Perugi;
(2019)
Altrove: Viaggiatrici italiane nell’Europa del Nord
(/isis/citation/CBB772175928/)
Article
Fren, Allison de;
(2009)
The Anatomical Gaze in Tomorrow's Eve
(/isis/citation/CBB001031072/)
Book
Gossin, Pamela;
(2007)
Thomas Hardy's Novel Universe: Astronomy, Cosmology, and Gender in the Post-Darwinian World
(/isis/citation/CBB000774272/)
Article
Orr, Mary;
(2015)
Women Peers in the Scientific Realm: Sarah Bowdich (Lee)'s Expert Collaborations with Georges Cuvier, 1825--33
(/isis/citation/CBB001422106/)
Book
Malane, Rachel Ann;
(2005)
Sex in Mind: The Gendered Brain in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Mental Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB000930449/)
Thesis
Gonaver, Wendy;
(2012)
The Peculiar Institution: Gender, Race and Religion in the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1842--1932
(/isis/citation/CBB001561028/)
Article
Elly McCausland;
(2021)
From the Plant of Life to the Throat of Death: Freakish Flora and Masculine Forms in Fin de Siècle Lost World Novels
(/isis/citation/CBB380386690/)
Book
Ashley Elizabeth Kerr;
(2020)
Sex, Skulls, and Citizens: Gender and Racial Science in Argentina
(/isis/citation/CBB191009079/)
Book
Andréolle, Donna Spalding;
Molinari, Véronique;
(2011)
Women and Science, 17th Century to Present: Pioneers, Activists and Protagonists
(/isis/citation/CBB001221430/)
Chapter
Bertonèche, Caroline;
(2011)
Women of Science Fiction: Romantic Mythologies and Female Emancipation from John Keats to Dan Simmons
(/isis/citation/CBB001221555/)
Book
Martin, Alison;
Pickford, Susan;
(2012)
Travel Narratives in Translation, 1750--1830: Nationalism, Ideology, Gender
(/isis/citation/CBB001202012/)
Book
Hayden, Judy A.;
(2011)
The New Science and Women's Literary Discourse: Prefiguring Frankenstein
(/isis/citation/CBB001033501/)
Thesis
Dobelbower, Nicholas Colcord;
(2001)
The Criminal Type: The Articulation of Criminality and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century France
(/isis/citation/CBB001562365/)
Thesis
Prystash, Justin;
(2009)
Time's Menagerie: Evolutions in Victorian Sex and Subjectivity
(/isis/citation/CBB001561090/)
Thesis
Malane, Rachel Ann;
(2004)
“Sex in Mind”: The Gendered Brain in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Mental Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB001562029/)
Be the first to comment!