A DEFIANT AND CRITICAL FEMALE VOICE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: MARY HAYS AND THE MEMOIRS OF EMMA COURTNEY
A DEFIANT AND CRITICAL FEMALE VOICE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: MARY HAYS AND THE MEMOIRS OF EMMA COURTNEY

Summary/Abstract: A Defiant and Critical Female Voice in the Eighteenth Century: Mary Hays and the Memoirs of Emma Courtney. Mary Hays was heavily engaged in examining the position of woman in the patriarchal society of the Age of Enlightenment. The eponymous heroine in Hays’ Memoirs of Emma Courtney becomes the embodiment of female defiance against patriarchal constraints by expressing explicitly her sexual desires and emotions. This article aims at investigating Hays’s critique of the social and sexual restrictions and oppressions exerted on women in the late eighteenth century.

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