Female friendship in eighteenth-century English literature [ Feelings & Emotions ]
… novel, the young widow Dalinda cannot but trust her friend Philecta with the account of her affair with Dorimenus. Instead of faithfully keeping her secret, Philecta becomes jealous and plots to seduce her friend’s lover, which causes … sisters, who are in turn too shallow-minded and too infatuated by Mary’s brother Henry to perceive Mary’s nature, and instead compete for Henry’s attention. Emma Woodhouse’s kind-minded but patronising friendship with Harriet Smith in Emma … aptly contends: Samuel Richardson 's Clarissa (1747) and Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote (1752) are novels that tease representations of women's frustrated longing for one another but then silence that longing as a way of keeping …
Conflict | Friendship | Gender | Sex | Women
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