Abstract

The subject of my dissertation is the way that the novels of Sarah Fielding and Charlotte Lennox functioned as didactic texts for instructing girls and young women, texts informed in part by John Locke's and Mary Astell's theories of education. ;In particular, I focus on Locke's and Astell's theories as they relate to these novels in order to illustrate the manner in which Fielding and Lennox use reading---of both texts and people---as a tool for modeling theories of education, specifically as they relate to the development of individual reason and rationality. ;This transformation of philosophy into fiction was a remarkable idea not only because novels were considered to be problematic reading material but also because these particular novels insist that women---who at the time had little or no access to formal education---be educated not merely in the skills needed to secure a husband or run a household but also in the intellectual and rational capacities necessary for living a happy and productive life. ;At the same time that these novels insist on rigorous intellectual education for women, they also function as critiques of British culture. Although primarily didactic texts, the novels are also critical of those customs and beliefs of mid-eighteenth-century British life that judge women not according to their true potential but rather according to patriarchal and often false beliefs about human nature