Cultivating Victorians: Liberal Culture and the Aesthetic Book

If only I had known about this book five years ago when I took a class on Austen's novels...

This is a wonderful, insightful, well-researched study of female laughter and comedy in Burney's, Edgeworth's, and Austen's works. It puts into context what would have been the works of eighteenth-century "feminist" writers (were the term used then) and how they combated sexism and patriarchy in British society during that time period. It evokes the criticism of Wollstonecraft, Woolf, Cixous, Gilbert and Gubar, and other respected writers in showing how laughter and comedy was used because it was the only way in which these female writers could publish what they felt about their male-dominated society. It brings up the codes and methods used to subvert their actual messages, and also how they were actually misread by men who enjoyed them. It also compares the novels to the "conduct books" that were popular during this time period, and how Burney's, Edgeworth's, and Austen's work obviously juxtaposed those messages by making fun of and inverting them in their own novels.

The criticism cited consists of not just Feminist but also Marxist and Bahktinian theories to support the "true" but concealed feminist messages within the novels mentioned (which, I believe, included all of Austen's, including her Juvenalia stories, as well as Burney's and Edgeworth's), and holds it all up against the (good and bad) criticism these writers received during their own lifetimes.

Well-rounded and including footnotes, numerous resources, and a detailed index, Laughing Feminism is invaluable for both the formal scholar as well as the general reader of eighteenth-century writers and those interested in feminist interpretations of literature.