18세기 교육소설에 나타난 우정을 통한 교육: 「에멀린」과 「헬렌」을 중심으로
Learning through Friendship in the Eighteenth-Century Novel: Emmeline and Helen
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This essay examines the role friendship plays in female education in the eighteenth-century British novel of education. Choosing Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline and Maria Edgeworth’s Helen as representative works, it first historicizes the implications of friendship in the eighteenth century and then explores how the two novels marginalize the courtship plot and are devoted to the heroine’s sympathetic and educational relationships with other women. Drawing attention, in Emmeline, on the portrayal of unstable, sentimental men, the essay shows how “the female council,” which the heroine forms with her friends, offers moral, sentimental, educational support and protection to women in distress. The communal friendship envisioned in the novel is extensive to include men as well as women outside. Focusing on the contrast in Helen of two modes of education, this essay discusses how the heroine’s friendship and benevolent authority is presented as more effectual than learning through fear in an oppressively hierarchical situation between mentor and pupil. While authority figures use more fear than love and reveal problems of rigidity and inflexibility, which, Edgeworth implies, are in part responsible for Cecilia’s weaknesses of mind and inaction, the enlightened heroine readily offers Cecilia her advice and support in the moral conflicts her friend has created. Ultimately, the two novels show that friendship is offered as an ideal for all kinds of relationships and as an alternative for education. Both novels suggest that women’s friendship with other women does not necessarily interrupt marriage or the heterosexual relationship and is safely established within the heterosexual marriage.
Abstract
This essay examines the role friendship plays in female education in the eighteenth-century British novel of education. Choosing Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline and Maria Edgeworth’s Helen as representative works, it first historicizes the implications of friendship in the eighteenth century and then explores how the two novels marginalize the courtship plot and are devoted to the heroine’s sympathetic and educational relationships with other women. Drawing attention, in Emmeline, on the portrayal of unstable, sentimental men, the essay shows how “the female council,” which the heroine forms with her friends, offers moral, sentimental, educational support and protection to women in distress. The communal friendship envisioned in the novel is extensive to include men as well as women outside. Focusing on the contrast in Helen of two modes of education, this essay discusses how the heroine’s friendship and benevolent authority is presented as more effectual than learning through fear in an oppressively hierarchical situation between mentor and pupil. While authority figures use more fear than love and reveal problems of rigidity and inflexibility, which, Edgeworth implies, are in part responsible for Cecilia’s weaknesses of mind and inaction, the enlightened heroine readily offers Cecilia her advice and support in the moral conflicts her friend has created. Ultimately, the two novels show that friendship is offered as an ideal for all kinds of relationships and as an alternative for education. Both novels suggest that women’s friendship with other women does not necessarily interrupt marriage or the heterosexual relationship and is safely established within the heterosexual marriage.
참고문헌 (19)
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