Author(s): Laura Brown

Literature

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.