earticle

영어

Kang, Oksun. “Women’s Letter-Writing and Their Societal-Cultural Networks.” Studies in English Language & Literature. 37.3 (2011): 1-19. This paper seeks to study the operation of elite women’s societal networks, examining their letter-writing and cultural salons in the early nineteenth century. My focus will be given to women’s intellectual efforts to assert their power of reason against the exclusion of women from radical politics. This topic can be applied to women writers just after the French Revolution such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Helen Maria Williams, Sara Austin, Harriet Martineau, and Amelia Opie. Women’s letter writing should be reconsidered as a method by which women could penetrate the male force of life. Women’s salons should be also examined as dynamic tools to argue for female societal participation in Britain and France. Many elite women were active in the unofficial politics of the day, and used their informal social and kinship networks to support their political activities. Austin, Martineau and Opie do not stand in isolation, being often acquainted personally at Norwich, which was the center of Unitarian gatherings. It is clear that letter-writing and salon gatherings played an important subversive role, challenging women’s subjection. (Dongseo University)