Domestic Space in Eighteenth-Century British Novels

Domestic Space in Eighteenth-Century British Novels focuses on six novels: Richardson's three novels, Pamela; The History of Clarissa Harlowe and The History of Sir Charles Grandison; Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless; Sheridan's Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph, and Burney's Evelina. At the heart of these novels is the Georgian house and garden of the polite elite; specifically, the heroine's experience of the domestic life of her living space. This book argues that to make the houses and gardens represented in these novels accessible to the modern reader, he or she needs to have information of the 'real' domestic. By recreating the structure, design, function and social significance of specific rooms and garden buildings, and the ways of life they facilitated, Domestic Space in Eighteenth-Century British Novels does more than just provides that information. This book brings the fictional domestic interior to life for the modern reader. The book also sheds new light on two relatively unexplored areas. Firstly, it indicates how early to late eighteenth-century conceptions of the domestic interior, including notions of gendered space, and the distinction between social, family and private domestic arenas, can give insight into fictional representations of the domestic interior. Secondly, the book reveals whether contemporary discourse on the relationship between women and domestic space influenced how interiors were represented in the novels of the period.