Novelists, Female

Early Female Novelists, Pre-1840

Before the 19th century, female novelists did not have a sense of a female tradition, and often they were trail-blazers—unique in their style and approach to the novel. One such writer is Aphra Behn, whose novels are some of the earliest ever written. Returning destitute after working as a spy for Charles II, Behn turned to writing to make a living, producing poetry, drama, and a number of novels. Behn's novels explored the popular forms of the day, including the epistolary novel in Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister (1684–87) and narratives about foreign places and peoples in Oroonoko; or the Royal Slave (1688).

As more women began to write, early female novelists often presented themselves through the stereotype of helpless femininity—a tactic that worked to protect them from the scrutiny of male reviewers. Novels by women in this period usually presented wry social commentary on the experiences of women and the education of young women. For example, the British writer Fanny Burney depicts “the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World” in her novel Evelina (1778), whereas the Anglo-Irish Maria Edgeworth portrays the social progress of her heroine Belinda (1801), describing her many suitors and her quest for a good marriage.

[Page 1026]The other genre dominated by women in this period was the Gothic Romance. Female novelists combined foreignness, the supernatural, and romance to define this genre—a typical example being Anne Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). The Gothic Romance was also put to political use by feminist writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, so that the genre's sinister preoccupations were combined with a critique of patriarchy. Wollstonecraft's Maria: or, The Wrongs of Woman (1792) presents a loveless marriage in which the wife-heroine is eventually condemned to an insane asylum by her own husband.

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