Reviewed by:

• Women’s Domestic Activity in the Romantic-Period Novel, 1770–1820: Dangerous Occupations by Joseph Morrissey
• Freya Gowrley (bio)

Women’s Domestic Activity provides a fresh look at the practices women engaged with in and around domestic space in the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Joseph Morrissey’s book sits within an interdisciplinary network of texts (spanning material culture studies, history, art history, and literary studies) examining such “accomplishments” during this period. Activities from making music, drawing, and reading to craft practices such as needlework were socially expedient tasks enacted (sometimes performatively and most often within the home) in order to variously express femininity, gentility, and the self. Morrissey adopts a broad definition of the term “domestic,” but one that is entirely appropriate for the period under discussion. Here, the domestic is envisioned as a dually psychological and physical space, extending beyond the boundaries of the home to the social spaces in which women’s individual and collective identities could be performed.

Morrissey’s approach to these pursuits differs from other generalized accounts of such practices—notably Noël Riley’s The Accomplished Lady: A History of Genteel Pursuits, c. 1660–1860 (2017)—by examining their appearance within the genre of the novel. As texts characterized by a reliance on both the descriptive form and subjective narrative voice as literary devices, novels describing these pursuits offer important sources for understanding women’s domestic practices. Arguing that these activities were “intimately related to the creation and expression of self ... interventions into the web of human relations” (14), Morrissey considers these activities both as material and psychological acts, as forms of embodied labour, which created subjectivity and interpersonal connection as they unfolded “moment by moment” (9), an aspect that the temporality of the novel was particularly apt to capture.

Adopting a case-study format, the book examines novels by some of the most famous women writers of the period: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814) and Northanger Abbey (1817), Charlotte Smith’s The Old Manor House (1793) and Ethelinde (1789), and Frances Burney’s The Wanderer (1814). The chapters deploy these novels as a platform to think through how each author engages with a specific form of domestic activity, with chapters 2, 3, and 4 exploring the role of needlework, music, and reading, respectively, while chapter 5 considers domestic manifestations of sensibility and sympathy. After an introductory chapter outlining Morrissey’s focus on novels and defining both the domestic and the kinds [End Page 466] of activities the book will discuss, chapter 2 focuses on the role played by needlework practices in Mansfield Park and The Old Manor House as a driver of characterization and social commentary, as relayed through the narrative details and description typical of the eighteenth-century novel. In these texts, needlework functions as “the basis for a moral and meaningful experience of the social world” (37), while otherwise reinforcing conservative views of femininity. Chapter 3 examines musical accomplishment in Burney’s The Wanderer, particularly as it relates to notions of skill, work, and class. By focusing on its protagonist Juliet’s attempts to earn a living through music, Morrissey is able to interrogate the gendered issues at play in amateur and professional musical production and performance, as well as its role in constructing women’s interpersonal relationships. In this chapter, the dichotomy of representation and reality that pervades the book is most clearly dealt with, specifically in relation to contemporary conduct literature versus individualized practices. Chapter 4 deals with Austen’s Northanger Abbey, positioning the text as a revealing study through which to unpick “contemporary debates about the reading of fiction” in terms of both its “political potential” and its “capacity to promote subjective well-being” (130). In order to do so, Morrissey engages with ideas from recent sociological experiments into reading practices, which have identified specific types of readers, allowing him to rethink how Austen presents reading as a fantasy that related to women’s psychological experiences and interior lives. The final chapter builds on...

审核人：

• 1770–1820年浪漫时期小说中的妇女家庭活动：约瑟夫·莫里西（Joseph Morrissey）的危险职业
• 弗雷亚·格沃利（Freya Gowrley）（生物）

妇女的家庭活动重新审视了女性在18世纪末和19世纪初在家庭空间中及其周围从事的活动。约瑟夫·莫里西（Joseph Morrissey）的书位于跨学科的文本网络中（涵盖物质文化研究，历史，艺术史和文学研究），研究了这一时期的“成就”。从制作音乐，绘画和阅读到针线活之类的手工艺之类的活动，都是为了体现女性气质，温柔而温柔的自我而制定的一项社会权宜之计（有时表现力十足，最常见的是在家中）。莫里西（Morrissey）对“国内”一词采用了宽泛的定义，但这完全适用于所讨论的时期。在这里，家庭被设想为心理和身体的双重空间，

莫里斯（Morrissey）对这些追求的态度与这种做法的其他一般性描述有所不同，尤其是诺埃尔·赖利（NoëlRiley）的《成才的女士：Genteel追求的历史》，c。1660–1860（2017）-通过检查它们在小说流派中的出现。由于文本既依赖描述形式又依赖主观叙事声音作为文学手段，描述这些追求的小说为理解女性的家庭习俗提供了重要依据。莫里西认为这些活动“与人的关系网的自我创造和表达密切相关”（14），莫里西认为这些活动既是物质行为又是心理行为，是体现劳动的形式，从而产生了主观性。以及他们之间的“瞬间关怀”（9）展现了人与人之间的联系，这是小说的时间性特别易于捕捉的一个方面。

该书采用个案研究的形式，考察了该时期一些最著名的女作家的小说：简·奥斯丁的曼斯菲尔德公园（1814）和诺桑杰修道院（1817），夏洛特·史密斯的《旧庄园住宅》（1793）和埃瑟琳德（1789） ）和弗朗西丝·伯尼（Frances Burney）的《流浪者》（The Wanderer，1814年）。这些章节将这些小说作为一个平台来思考每个作者如何参与特定形式的家庭活动，第2、3和4章分别探讨了针线活，音乐和阅读的作用，而第5章则考虑了家庭表现。的感性和同情心。在介绍性章节之后概述了莫里西对小说的关注并定义了家庭小说和种类小说本书将讨论的活动[第466页]，第2章着重探讨曼斯菲尔德公园和旧庄园住宅中针线活的作风，作为表征和社会评论的驱动力，并通过叙事细节和典型的叙述进行了中继。十八世纪的小说。在这些案文中，针线活充当“社会世界道德和有意义的经历的基础”（37），同时在其他方面加强了对女性气质的保守观点。第三章考察了伯尼《流浪者》中的音乐素养，尤其是与技能，工作和阶级等概念相关的信息。通过专注于主角朱丽叶（Juliet）通过音乐谋生的尝试，莫里西（Morrissey）能够审视业余和专业音乐作品和表演中的性别问题，以及在建立女性人际关系中的作用。在本章中，最清楚地处理了本书中代表和现实的二分法，特别是关于当代行为文学与个性化实践的关系。第4章讨论奥斯丁的诺桑河修道院，将文本定位为一项具有启发性的研究，通过该研究可以从“政治潜能”和“促进主观幸福感的能力”两个方面取消“关于小说阅读的当代辩论”（130）。为了做到这一点，莫里西将最近社会学实验中的思想融入阅读实践中，从而发现了特定类型的读者，使他能够重新思考奥斯丁如何将阅读呈现为一种幻想，与女性的心理经历和室内生活有关。最后一章建立在...