Embodied Experience in British and French Literature, 1778–1814
Women and Belonging

In British and French literature, 1778–1814, women connected with the nonhuman to empower themselves and secure rights to embodiment.

Jillian Heydt-Stevenson (Author)

9781009463980, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 2 January 2025

314 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2 cm, 0.588 kg

'Setting out an energizing and moving account of the interweaving of humans with things, this book takes a richly comparative approach to exchanges between British and French fiction. Across her radiant readings, Heydt-Stevenson unearths new insights into gender and materiality, producing an important and vital story of how characters belong with the worlds around them.' Chloe Wigston Smith, Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies, University of York

Combining feminist, materialist, and comparatist approaches, this study examines how French and British women writers working at a transformative time for European literature connected vibrantly to objects as diverse as statues, monuments, diamonds, and hats. In such connections, they manifested their own (often forbidden) embodiment and asserted their élan vital. Interweaving texts by Edgeworth, Staël, Bernardin, Wordsworth, Smith, and Burney, Jillian Heydt-Stevenson posits the concept of belonging with, a generative, embodied experience of the nonhuman that foregrounds the interdependence among things, women, social systems, and justice. Exploring the benefits such embodied experiences offer, this book uncovers an ethical materialism in literature and illuminates how women characters who draw on things can secure rights that laws neither stipulate nor safeguard. In doing so, they-and their texts-transcend dualistic thinking to create positive ecological, personal, and political outcomes. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction: the 'delectable valleys' of things
1. Moving together: restoring imperfection in the Venus de' Medici and lady Delacour
2. A resuscitating thing theory: gender and embodied cosmopolitanism in Corinne ou l'Italie's monuments
3. Listening to the radiant voices of others: Diamonds and Jewels in Les bijoux indiscrets and Belinda
4. Recycling and re-embodying, twining and untwining: Paul et Virginie and its after-things
5. Recognizing the right to protection: the scandal and sanctuary of hats in Evelina, the Wanderer, and Desmond
6. Conclusion: living in a material World
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]