Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford World's Classics) - Softcover

Hays, Mary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 019283729X ISBN 13: 9780192837295

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2001

Synopsis

Memoirs of Emma Courtney is one of the most articulate and detailed expressions of the yearnings and frustrations of a woman living in late eighteenth-century English society. It questions marital arrangements and courtship rituals by depicting a woman who actively pursues the man she loves. In this first fully annotated edition of a key sentimental novel, Hays reveals the lamentable gap between "what women are" and "what women ought to be" by exploring the links between sexaulity and desire, and economic and social freedom.

About this title

From the Publisher:

The Broadview Literary Texts series is an effort to represent the ever-changing canon of literature in English by bringing together texts long regarded as classics with valuable, though lesser-known literature.

From the Back Cover:

In November of 1795, after William Godwin requested a sketch of Mary Hays’ life, she arrived at the idea of Memoirs of Emma Courtney. Godwin followed up his request with a “hint” that a fictional exploration of the painful experience she had undergone in her relationship with William Frend might help her to come to terms with it. It was to be an “instructive rather than self indulgent” work. The resulting novel is one of the most interesting and important explorations of gender-related issues of the time. Emma is exposed to a series of situations―motherlessness, orphanhood, poverty, dependence, and more―which encourage her to reflect “on the inequalities of society, the source of every misery and vice, and on the peculiar disadvanteges of my sex.” The novel quickly became viewed as “a scandalous disrobing in public” but it has endured as much on the basis of its readability as on its pointed social commentary.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 019283729X
• ISBN 13: 9780192837295
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Ty Eleanor