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In the wake of the French Revolution, Edmund Burke argued that civil order depended upon nurturing the sensibility of men-upon the masculine cultivation of traditionally feminine qualities such as sentiment, tenderness, veneration, awe, gratitude, and even prejudice. Writers as diverse as Sterne, Goldsmith, Burke, and Rousseau were politically motivated to represent authority figures as men of feeling, but denied women comparable authority by representing their feelings as inferior, pathological, or criminal. Focusing on Mary Wollstonecraft, Ann Radcliffe, Frances Burney, and Jane Austen, whose popular works culminate and assail this tradition, Claudia L. Johnson examines the legacy male sentimentality left for women of various political persuasions. Demonstrating the interrelationships among politics, gender, and feeling in the fiction of this period, Johnson provides detailed readings of Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, and Burney, and treats the qualities that were once thought to mar their work-grotesqueness, strain, and excess-as indices of ideological conflict and as strategies of representation during a period of profound political conflict. She maintains that the reactionary reassertion of male sentimentality as a political duty displaced customary gender roles, rendering women, in Wollstonecraft's words, "equivocal beings."

English fiction --- Politics and literature --- Women and literature --- Femininity in literature. --- Sentimentalism in literature. --- Authorship --- Sex role in literature. --- Femininity (Psychology) in literature --- Women authors --- History and criticism. --- History --- Sex differences. --- Wollstonecraft, Mary, --- Radcliffe, Ann, --- Burney, Fanny, --- Austen, Jane, --- Ao-ssu-ting, --- Ao-ssu-ting, Chien, --- Aosiding, --- Aosiding, Jian, --- Āsṭin̲, Jēn̲, --- Austenová, Jane, --- Osten, Dzheĭn, --- Ostin, Dzhein, --- Lady, --- Author of Sense and Sensibility, --- Остен, Джейн, --- Остен, Джейм, --- אוסטן, ג׳יין --- אוסטן, ג׳יין, --- أوستن، جين، --- Arblay, --- D'Arblay, --- Burneĭ, --- Bi︠u︡rneĭ, --- Burney, Frances, --- D'Arblay, Fanny, --- D'Arblay, Frances Burney, --- Arblay, Frances Burney d', --- Author of Evelina, --- Evelina, Author of, --- Author of Evelina and Cecilia, --- Evelina and Cecilia, Author of, --- Author of Camilla, --- Camilla, Author of, --- Wood, --- Burney, Frances Anne, --- Radcliffe, Ann Ward, --- Radcliffe, --- Radklif, Anna, --- Ratcliffe, --- Rattcliffe, Anne, --- Criticism and interpretation. --- Art d'écrire --- Empfindsamkeit. --- Engels. --- Engelsk litteratur --- Englisch. --- English fiction. --- Femmes et littérature --- Frauenliteratur. --- Féminité (psychologie) --- Féminité dans la littérature. --- Geschlechterrolle. --- Kvinnor och litteratur --- Letterkunde. --- Litteratur och politik --- Littérature sentimentale. --- Political fiction, English --- Political fiction, English. --- Politics and literature. --- Politiek. --- Politique et littérature --- Psychological fiction, English --- Psychological fiction, English. --- Roman anglais --- Roman. --- Rôle selon le sexe dans la littérature. --- Sentimentalisme dans la littérature. --- Sentimentalisme. --- Vrouwelijke auteurs. --- Women and literature. --- Écrits de femmes anglais --- Différences entre sexes. --- Sex differences --- Kvinnliga författare --- Historia. --- History and criticism --- Women authors. --- Histoire --- Dans la littérature. --- Femmes écrivains --- Histoire et critique. --- Histoire et critique --- Austen, Jane. --- Burney, Fanny. --- Radcliffe, Ann. --- Wollstonecraft, Mary. --- Critique et interprétation. --- analys och tolkning. --- 1700-1799. --- Great Britain. --- Gro�britannien. --- Great Britain --- 18th century --- Sentimentalism in literature --- Wollstonecraft, Mary --- Criticism and interpretation --- Radcliffe, Ann Ward --- Burney, Fanny --- Austen, Jane