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Revolution and Romanticism
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A facsimile reprint in the Revolution & Romanticism series chosen and introduced by Jonathan Wordsworth ISBN 1 85477 180 9 174 x 110 mm 434 pages |
MARY HAYS Emma Courtney 1796 Mary Hays came from a Dissenting family; she was a member of Godwin’s circle, and an important contributor to the feminist controversy of the period. Emma Courtney seeks to tie Godwin’s Political Justice and Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman into fiction. Using letters from Godwin and details of an unrequited passion (for William Frend) Hays creates a novel of role reversal in which the woman takes the initiative. The road of reason runs however into painful and unresolved difficulties, philosophical and emotional. Much mocked by her contemporaries, Hays nevertheless grappled with the perplexities of sexual relationships at a time when views about them were undergoing a serious change. £42 $65 While men pursue interest, honor, pleasure, as accords with their several dispositions, women ... remain insulated beings, and must be content tamely to look on, without taking any part in the great, though often absurd and tragical, drama of life. |
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