Unsettling the Cultural Gender Divide : Reading, Writing and Storytelling in "The Female Quixote"

Drawing on a huge amount of early eighteenth-century fictional writings by women (ranging from fictional episodes in epistolary works, memoirs and periodicals to longer novellas and book-length novels), this essay aims to pinpoint some key steps in the discursive process that eventually led to the affirmation of female authorship and its inclusion in a wider, cross-gender intent to create a consistent, widely shared commitment to middle-class ideals of gentility, politeness and nationhood. Focusing on the ability of distinct relational and communicative acts such as listening and storytelling, reading and writing to shift the boundaries of accepted behaviour and generate further action, this essay centres on works that highlight the performance potential of these epistemological activities. The overt social and class dynamics connecting oral/aural systems of communication (conventionally viewed as feminine) and interactive behaviour relying on power relationships authorised by the written word (a male preserve) are also carefully investigated along gender lines. Special emphasis is placed on Lennox’s The Female Quixote, in which the validation of the role of women writers is construed alongside the "re-institution" of feminine modes of conversation and storytelling as a utopian source of imaginative and social empowerment.