This dissertation examines how eighteenth-century ethics were reimagined by Enlightenment-era and Romantic women writes to better afford the grounds for political revolution and responsive reform. Whereas Adam Smith’s theatrical model of sympathy casts individuals in the passive role of spectators who feel deeply but are not necessarily moved to act,...
This dissertation argues that silence played a fundamental role in the Victorian novel and in Victorian novel writing, operating as a productive force in service of sympathetic exchange and creative labor. It examines Charles Lamb's and Thomas Carlyle’s foundational roles in detaching silence from its traditional Romantic associations with solitude,...
