The Paradox of Female Villainy in Mary Robinson's Walsingham and Charlotte Smith's the Young Philosopher

Abstract

A strange phenomenon among women writers of the late eighteenth century, both conservative and liberal minded, was the predominance of female villains in their novels. While this can be seen as an after-effect of masculine patriarchal discourse, particularly for those women writers who possessed a more religious-based ideology, why was it prevalent among feminist writers of the time who should have been aware of misogynistic stereotypes? Two such writers who emulated this strange paradox were Mary Robinson and Charlotte Smith. Both these women had been vilified by the Anti-Jacobin British 18th press as notorious and corrupt ‘female philosophers’ who followed in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft. This chapter will conduct a historical feminist close comparative reading of Robinson's novel, Walsingham, and Smith's novel, The Young Philosopher, based on feminist scholarship on eighteenth-century female writers. It will examine how the female villains in the novels overpowered even the male antagonists and were often the cause behind the misfortunes, directly or indirectly, of the heroines/heroes. While these villains did serve as warnings against inappropriate behaviour, they illustrated the disaster for women when there is a lack of female community. Specifically, in the case of Robinson, her Sadean villains illustrated that no one is spared from the corruption of power and that the saintly female figure is nothing but an illusion of the male imagination. They were fallen Lucifers, rebels who relished in their freedom and power despite their damnation and punishment. The patriarchal system was temporarily demolished by them.

Citation

Dalldorf, T. and Tloti, S. (2022), "The Paradox of Female Villainy in Mary Robinson's Walsingham and Charlotte Smith's the Young Philosopher ", Rumson, L. and Bentham, A. (Ed.) Divergent Women (Emerald Interdisciplinary Connexions), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 67-88. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-80117-678-120221005