Absent Letters and the Rejection of the Female Body in Charlotte Smith’s Desmond

Abstract

This paper examines how Charlotte Smith uses the epistolary form in Desmond (1792) to construct stable geopolitical borders in the novel. By excluding the French female protagonist from the act of letter-writing, Smith rejects the letter’s ability to transform the border between public and private. In this way, Smith secures the idealized position of English society, particularly the idealized position of the English heroine. Rather than using the letter as a means of transforming the domestic space, then, Smith uses the letter as a catalyst to replace and strengthen the patriarchal body. In fact, Smith transforms the epistolary tradition by giving Desmond, her eponymous male hero, access to a form of writing often associated with women. By allowing the primary male figure full access to a form of communication traditionally used by females, Smith ironically renders women who write in the novel voiceless and passive. Indeed, Smith attends to the political, particularly the French Revolution, not to inspire change within the private sphere, the space to which she relegates the female body by novel’s end, but merely to secure Desmond’s role in the domestic space. Because women do not use the notion of a revolution to retaliate against domestic oppression, the novel validates female silence. This silence destabilizes whatever subversion Smith implies by conflating political with private tyranny.