Looking Glass Book

This book argues that the sentimental novel, usually seen as a "feminine" genre concentrating exclusively on emotional response, is in fact actively involved in contemporary economic and political debates. Introducing works of economic theory alongside sentimental fiction, Skinner shows how discourses of sentimentalism are closely related to the developing discourses of economics in the period. Both discourses unite in the representation of the working woman in sentimental fiction, a figure ignored but vital to understanding the emergence of characters (largely, although not exclusively, female) designed to effect an unprecedented union of sensibility, femininity and economic ability. Spanning the period encompassing the rise, heyday and decline of sentimentalism, the book considers how the trajectory of the movement affected the sentimental novel's treatment of economic issues and their relations to discourses of sensibility and femininity, and assesses the impact of the pressures of the post-Revolutionary 1790s on these areas.