Richardson, Property, and the Virtuous Female

This thesis explores the literary, legal, economic, and cultural mechanisms at work in the eighteenth century formulation of feminine gender ideology as it pertains to the negotiation of settlements for married women's separate property. Within a feminist-historicist critical framework, fictional narratives of the eighteenth-century reveal a tension between economically-motivated self-interest and an ideology of sentiment, a tension that is related to the modern reluctance to discuss prenuptial agreements. The marriage contract itself as interpreted by eighteenth-century social theorists allows and encourages the creation of gendered spheres of activity and distinctly gendered behavioral models. The eighteenth century's distinctive configuration of these models is closely tied to the rise of Britain's commercial economy and its increasing reliance on paper currency and speculative forms of investment. The cultural ideology of gender roles is also engaged in a reciprocal relationship with the law so that changes in married women's separate property laws are seen to be implicated in and influenced by the production of fictional narratives such as Samuel Richardson's epistolary novels, Pamela and Clarissa. This thesis outlines women’s legal status in marriage and the laws regulating marriage, along with the legal remedies available to women who were in a position to protect their individual property rights upon marriage. Allusions to those laws in Pamela and Clarissa provide a framework for Richardson's formulation of the ideally virtuous female, a gender ideal that is implicated in a cultural association between economically-motivated self-interest and an absence of virtuous sensibility.