Families of the Heart: Surrogate Relations in the Eighteenth-Century British Novel

by Ann Campbell

In this innovative analysis of canonical British novels, Campbell identifies a new literary device--the surrogate family--as a signal of cultural anxieties about young women's changing relationship to matrimony across the long eighteenth century. By assembling chosen families rather than families of origin, Campbell convincingly argues, female protagonists in these works compensate for weak family ties, explore the world and themselves,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1684484243
• ISBN13: 9781684484249
• Release Date: November 2022
• Publisher: Bucknell University Press
• Length: 176 Pages