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dc.contributor.authorJessee, Jessica Leah
dc.date.accessioned2021-10-08T19:08:56Z
dc.date.available2021-10-08T19:08:56Z
dc.date.issued2007-05-31
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1808/32029
dc.descriptionThesis (M.A.)--University of Kansas, English, 2007.en_US
dc.description.abstractWhat does it mean, to “behave like people in novels”? More importantly, what does it mean for a novelist to put this comment in the mouth of one of her characters? Edith Wharton and Charlotte Smith, and their representations of readers and writers, illustrate the personal and social negotiations between romance, the sentimental novel, and realism. Conventionally placed as the reader of romance, rather than writer, the woman novelist explores how this anxiety plays out in the lives of her characters, particularly those characters most sensitive to literature. This study aims to show how the complex negotiations between romance and realism are played out through the figure of the romantic hero in Charlotte Smith's The Old Manor House and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I will suggest that Wharton owes more to romance and the sentimental novel than many critics have recognized, while Smith approaches realism more nearly than her critics have acknowledged. This study hopes to recover the complexity of their work in order to show their profound contributions to the novel form. Both authors perform rich social critique, showing the “real world” of the novel's social norm to be as constructed and as un-real as the hero's fantasies.en_US
dc.publisherUniversity of Kansasen_US
dc.rightsThis item is protected by copyright and unless otherwise specified the copyright of this thesis/dissertation is held by the author.en_US
dc.subjectLanguage, literature and linguisticsen_US
dc.subjectRealismen_US
dc.subjectRomanceen_US
dc.subjectSmith, Charlotteen_US
dc.subjectWharton, Edithen_US
dc.title"We can’t behave like people in novels, though, can we?": Reading and writing the romantic hero in "The Old Manor House" and "The Age of Innocence"en_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.thesis.degreeDisciplineEnglish
dc.thesis.degreeLevelM.A.
dc.rights.accessrightsopenAccessen_US


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