Masquerade and Gender

Masquerade and Gender Volume 1 examines the complex relationship between disguise and femininity in eighteenth-century English fiction. Catherine Craft-Fairchild analyzes the works of women authors such as Aphra Behn and Frances Burney to explore how masquerade functions as both a tool of patriarchal oppression and a means of empowering defiance. This scholarly work of history and criticism challenges previous theories by arguing that gender in the woman's novel is a constructed performance rather than a biological essential.

Drawing on feminist theory and psychology, this study of identity in literature investigates how female characters navigate social and sexual freedom. The text provides a detailed analysis of canonical and noncanonical English fiction, focusing on the sex role in literature and the cultural conceptions of femininity. Masquerade and Gender Volume 1 offers a critical dialogue on how the domestic novel helped construct the identity of the domestic woman.