Women writing the nation, 1803-1815

Abstract

This thesis explores how British women were representing the nation and their national identities during the Napoleonic wars, and draws upon the argument that British national identity was forged in the conflicts of the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century, and upon Benedict Anderson, Homi Bhabha, and Stuart Hall’s theories of the imagined nation. By suggesting that authors sought to construct a coherent account of their imagined nation, this thesis argues that their attempts were frustrated by the inherent plurality of identity. Furthermore, a contradiction is identified wherein the authors studied unconsciously manipulate this multiplicity in order to portray female patriotic roles, which evade prescriptive models of femininity based upon a separate gendered spheres paradigm. By moving away from a focus upon canonical authors, and drawing extensively upon lesser-known women writers, a broader picture of the ways in which women were imagining the nation emerges. This thesis also serves as an act of recover, drawing attention to narratives that have remained unread for two hundred years, thereby enriching the critical understanding of the period.

Drawing upon the historical romance novels of Jane Porter, the poetry of Anne Grant, Margaret Holford, and Eliza S. Francis, and the memoirs and correspondence of Milesina Trench, Frances Burney d’Arblay, Charlotte Anne Eaton, and Jane Penrose, this thesis explores the implications of this argument in chapters which focus upon the relationship between a Scottish, English, and British sense of identity and the impact of travel upon the individual’s nationality. The thesis ends, like the Napoleonic wars, with the Battle of Waterloo, exploring the impact that this cathartic moment in the British national psyche had upon the individual female Briton.

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