'Writing Free' from Social Constraints: A Relational Reading of Early-19th Century Sentimental Fiction

• In Event: 19th-Century Women Writers in Context I: Gan, Pavlova, Zhukova, and Tur in European, Theoretical, and Romantic Contexts

Abstract

Despite inhabiting very different countries, each with their own cultural and political background, Russian, French, and English women somehow shared their first approach to writing, thus often letting their personal authorial experience flow into their literary persona and overlap with it. I will discuss: "Sud sveta" by Elena Gan, "Une fausse position" by Caroline Marbouty and "The Victims of Society" by Marguerite Gardiner (Countess of Blessington). By reading relationally (Hoogenboom 2013) three half-forgotten cases of sentimental social novels (Cohen 1999) – Sud’ sveta by Elena Gan (1840), The Victims of the Society by Marguerite Gardiner (Countess of Blessington) (1837) and Une fausse position by Caroline Marbouty (1844) – this paper aims to analyze the different ways in which the authors intertwined their lives with the ones of their heroines in order to use writing as a way to break free from the social constraints they were subjected to and to raise people’s awareness on the woman question.

Author

• Raffaella Pastore, U of International Studies of Rome (Italy)