The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain Hardcover - 1992 - 1st Edition
by G. J. Barker-Benfield
From the rear cover
During the eighteenth century, "sensibility", which once denoted merely the receptivity of the senses, came to mean a particular kind of acute and well-developed consciousness invested with spiritual and moral values and largely identified with women. How this change occurred and what it meant for society is the subject of G.J. Barker-Benfield's argument in favor of a "culture" of sensibility, in addition to the more familiar "cult". Barker-Benfield's expansive account traces the development of sensibility as a defining concept in literature, religion, politics, economics, education, domestic life, and the social world. He demonstrates that the "cult of sensibility" was at the heart of the culture of middle-class women that emerged in eighteenth-century Britain. The essence of this culture, Barker-Benfield reveals, was its articulation of women's consciousness in a world being transformed by the rise of consumerism that preceded the industrial revolution. The new commercial capitalism, while fostering the development of sensibility in men, helped many women to assert their own wishes for more power in the home and for pleasure in "the world" beyond. Barker-Benfield documents the emergence of the culture of sensibility from struggles over self-definition within individuals and, above all, between men and women as increasingly self-conscious groups. He discusses many writers, from Rochester through Hannah More, but pays particular attention to Mary Wollstonecraft as the century's most articulate analyst of the feminized culture of sensibility. Barker-Benfield's book shows how the cultivation of sensibility, while laying foundations for humanitarian reforms generally had as its primaryconcern the improvement of men's treatment of women. In the eighteenth-century identification of women with "virtue in distress" the author finds the roots of feminism, to the extent that it has expressed women's common sense of their victimization by men. Drawing on literature, philosophical psychology, social and economic thought, and a richly developed cultural background, The Culture of Sensibility offers an innovative and compelling way to understand the transformation of British culture in the eighteenth century.
Details
- Title The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain
- Author G. J. Barker-Benfield
- Binding Hardcover
- Edition number 1st
- Edition 1
- Pages 554
- Volumes 1
- Language ENG
- Publisher University of Chicago Press, Chicago
- Date 1992-11
- Illustrated Yes
- Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index
- ISBN 9780226037134 / 0226037134
- Weight 2.03 lbs (0.92 kg)
- Dimensions 9.32 x 6.35 x 1.36 in (23.67 x 16.13 x 3.45 cm)
- Library of Congress subjects Emotions, Great Britain - Social conditions - 18th
- Library of Congress Catalog Number 91047945
- Dewey Decimal Code 305.309
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