Final exam on literature

literacy, women were at first similarly handicapped in comparison with men. Female literacy levels were lower then male ones in 18^th and 19^th century England and Wales, although by the 1840s more than half, and by 1900 almost all women in England and Wales could sign their names in marriage registers. In addition, by the 18^th and especially the 19^th century, women from not only the upper class but also of the middle classes tended to have significant free time, as well as the financial means to get access to literature through the relatively affordable options of circulating libraries or serial publications. This resulted in an extension of the readership of literature also among women, so that by the 1870s novelist Anthony Trollope could declare, “Novels are in the hands of us all; from the Prime Minister down to the last-appointed scullery maid. We have them in our library, our drawing-rooms, our bed-rooms, our kitchens – and in our nurseries.” This increasing readership, which included large amounts of women (such as Trollope’s “scullery maids”) with little or no classical education, an ostensibly limited experience and delicate sexual modesty, in turn had its influence on what kind of literature could seek wide popularity.

Gender distinctions in