Enlightened Virginity in Eighteenth-century Literature

The literary virgin is eighteenth-century England's most enduring and unlikely celebrity. Despite her ignominious association with Catholicism and her incorrigibility with respect to the methods of the new science, the virgin emerges, by the middle of the eighteenth century, as the triumphant heroine of sentimental fiction as well as a muse for both satire and pornography. This book explores how and why the virgin turns out to be such a highly contested character at the center of many enlightenment debates. By focusing on the figure and fate of the virgin, the book offers new arguments about the relationship of novelist epistemologies to other modes of knowing, about the significance of virginity to patriarchy, and about the feminization of the novel.

Corrinne Harol is an Assistant Professor in the University of Alberta Department of English and Film Studies.

Introduction: Virginity and Patrilinear Legitimacy * Blessed Virgins: Anti-Catholic Propaganda and Convent Fantasies * The Hymen and Its Discontents: Medical Discourses on Virginity * Hymen Humor: Ballads and the Matter of Virginity * Virgin Idols and Verbal Devices: Pope’s Belinda and the Virgin Mary * Faking It: Virtue, Satire, and Pamela’s Virginity * Novel Virgins: Libertine and Literary Pleasures in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure * Conclusion: Clarissa’s Exceptional Infertility Introduction: Virginity and Patrilinear Legitimacy * Blessed Virgins: Anti-Catholic Propaganda and Convent Fantasies * The Hymen and Its Discontents: Medical Discourses on Virginity * Hymen Humor: Ballads and the Matter of Virginity * Virgin Idols and Verbal Devices: Pope’s Belinda and the Virgin Mary * Faking It: Virtue, Satire, and Pamela’s Virginity * Novel Virgins: Libertine and Literary Pleasures in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure * Conclusion: Clarissa’s Exceptional Infertility