Patricia Comitini's study compels serious rethinking of how literature by women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries should be read. Beginning with a description of how evolving conceptions of philanthropy were foundational to constructions of class and gender roles, Comitini argues that these changes enabled a particular kind of feminine benevolence that was linked to women's work as writers. The term 'vocational philanthropy' is suggestive of the ways that women used their status as professional writers ...
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Patricia Comitini's study compels serious rethinking of how literature by women in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries should be read. Beginning with a description of how evolving conceptions of philanthropy were foundational to constructions of class and gender roles, Comitini argues that these changes enabled a particular kind of feminine benevolence that was linked to women's work as writers. The term 'vocational philanthropy' is suggestive of the ways that women used their status as professional writers to instruct men and women in changing gender relations, and to educate the middling and laboring classes in their new roles during a socially and economically turbulent era. Hannah More, Mary Wollstonecraft, Maria Edgeworth and Dorothy Wordsworth, shared an interest in philanthropy " fostering the love of mankind " and an interest in the social nature of literacy. Their writing enabled people to read in a way that imagines societal improvement; that is, merging the private notions of morality, family, and love to the public needs for good citizens, industrious laborers, and class consolidation.
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Add this copy of Vocational Philanthropy and British Women's Writing, to cart. $202.64, new condition, Sold by Booksplease rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Southport, MERSEYSIDE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2005 by Routledge.