『여성의 억울함』과 『이태리언』을 통해 살펴본 감상성(Sentimentality) 논의

Abstract

This paper explores the notion of sentimentality represented in two novels of the 1790s, The Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria and The Italian, as the primary source of feminine virtues, whereby women can understand and sympathize deeply with others' feelings and educate men morally in the domestic sphere. Sentimentality pursued in the sentimental novel and the Gothic novel takes an important part in the establishment of the rise of the novel form. Ian Watt who theorized formal realism has criticized the sentimental novel and the Gothic novel for their sentimentality and irrationality. However, sentimentality is the origin of the feminine virtue that may lead to mutual understanding and overcoming difficulties. I will argue how sentimentality discloses itself in literature, especially in the sentimental novel and in the Gothic novel, and how it is related to questions of truth and virtue, as elaborated by Michael McKeon in his persuasive re-definition of the novel form. According to McKeon, the novel attempts to negotiate the two modern spheres of establishing new criteria for truth and virtue. Sentimentality is the projection of the inner side of individuals reflected through the domestic sphere in that sentimentality is also the quality that can feel the dark side of human emotion, such as horror. Mary Wollstonecraft indicates that sentimentality is a cause that can drive the destruction of feminine life when it manifests itself excessively. While it functions as the power of understanding and sympathizing with another’s feelings, it functions simultaneously as the power for opening up the possibility of solving all problems of human society when it manifests itself appropriately. The character Schedoni from the aristocratic class in Italian is described as the very type of greed and evil. He indicates that virtue is no longer representative of the confined noble class, but had been transformed into individual virtue. The female heroine’s virtue is evinced in her sentimentality throughout the novel and in her re-formation of the domestic sphere. This paper places the sentimental novel and female Gothic novel -- which have been treated as inferior, transient sub-genres outside the tradition of the realist novel -- within a broader literary and historical context. Through investigating these topics in relation to McKeon’s recent theory on the devolution and domestication of authority within the individual, These two novels will be shown to demonstrate the rediscovery of truth in narrative and the re-location of virtue in the private sphere, as well as female participation in a public sphere that otherwise indirectly excluded female activity.