Events
School of English Seminar Series 2012/3 - Wollstonecraft European Influences
| Description | Sublime Virtues and Sexual Love: Wollstonecraft, Montolieu, and Rousseau's Nouvelle Héloïse The epigraph to Mary Wollstonecraft's novel, Mary, a fiction (1788) is taken from Rousseau's Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761): 'The exercise of the most sublime virtues elevates and nourishes genius.' For Rousseau, 'sublime virtue' connotes the subordination of sexual love to the higher purpose of social utility and benevolence. Paradoxically, however, it is love that inspires the (masculine) Rousseauvian genius to visions of social and moral good. Yet although Rousseau's heroine, Julie, is 'made for love,' she can achieve virtue only in a passionless marriage. |
| Presenter | Dr Laura Kirkley (University of Cambridge) |
| Type | Seminar, Talk |
| Open to | All staff and students, Alumni, Committee members, Parents/guardians, Prospective students, Public |
| Date | Monday, 18 February 2013 |
| Time | 5:00 PM to 6:30 PM |
| Where | The Garden Seminar Room, Kennedy Hall, School of English |
| Contact | Dr Susan Manly |
| sm32@st-andrews.ac.uk | |
| More info | Like Wollstonecraft, the Francophone Swiss novelist Isabelle de Montolieu also had a vexed fascination with Rousseau. Her light-hearted sentimental novel, Caroline de Lichtfield (1783), re-imagines Héloïse and constitutes a muted argument for female pleasure within a virtuous marriage. The happy ending, however, is self-consciously constructed as a fairytale. Wollstonecraft’s Mary and her later novel Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman (1798) are critical commentaries on both Héloïse and Caroline de Lichtfield. She transposes Montolieu’s plot into a real-world context of misogyny and female powerlessness. In doing so, she boldly argues for women’s right to sexual fulfilment and the paradoxical role even of illusory love in the cultivation of ‘sublime virtue’ and social harmony. |
