ENGL2062: DUCHESSES AND DRUDGES

Outline and aims of course

This course investigates questions such as these by examining how concepts of 'public' and 'private' structured eighteenth- and nineteenth-century political and social debate, and how they have been used in modern accounts of the same period. The sexual division of labour and leisure will be of central concern. We will critically examine the notion of a 'domestic sphere' and investigate types and uses of space, both material and figurative. Topics covered will include: political scandals, women preachers, actresses, servants and prostitutes, and criminals, campaigns against slavery and changing constructions of motherhood, the female body and sexuality. The course will be interdisciplinary, drawing on feminist history, literary criticism and cultural studies.

By the end of this course you should have gained some knowledge of the following areas:

1. the experience of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth century women in a number of different spheres ie. what it was like to be a servant, a duchess or princess, a murderer, a mother.
2. the complexity of concepts of 'private' and 'public' both in the historical contexts of the period we will be looking at and in modern writing about that period by historians and literary critics
3. the meanings of 'the ideology of separate spheres' and its usefulness as an analytical category
4. how a variety of historical texts, eg. treatises on nursing, trial reports, paintings and caricatures, novels and plays can together tell us a great deal about the past: that is, by the end of the course you should have some sense of what a cultural history of women might entail
   

Staff

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