# Masquerade and Gender, Vol. 1

By **Catherine Craft-Fairchild**

- ISBN-13: 9780271025827
- Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 204
- Published: 15 Sep 1993
- Language: en
- Price: £38.99 (new)
- Categories: History, Literary Criticism, Sex role in literature, History and criticism, Women and literature, Women Authors, Disguise in literature, English fiction, Femininity in literature, Identity (Psychology) in literature, English fiction, history and criticism, English fiction, history and criticism, 18th century, English fiction, women authors, 18th Century

## About this book

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.

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