Final exam on literature

economic and legal disadvantages. To start with, as Virginia Woolf was to write later, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. A comparison of the output of 18^th and 19^th century female novelists with those of their male contemporaries suggests that many women writers (like Elizabeth Gaskell) found it difficult to reconcile the demands of serious writing with their ‘normal’ household duties, to the detriment of the former. Although as yet unmarried, Frances Burney wrote her first novel Evelina (1778) in stolen hours, and delayed revealing the publication of her book to her father until critical and popular success were already certain. (This success then helped her to become a semi-professional writer who received considerable sums of money by subscription and for the copy rights of her three subsequent novels.) As an added difficulty, married women writers in the late 18^th and early 19^th century (like Ann Radcliffe, 1764-1823) could not enter into legal contracts or have control over their earnings, both of which were the exclusive right of the husband.

Considering the manifold limitations that women writers and readers experienced, it is little surprise to find that related themes would have found their way into the writing of and about women.