Davys, Mary | Jane Spencer (essay date 1986)
Jane Spencer (essay date 1986)
SOURCE: "Reformed Heroines: The Didactic Tradition: The Lover-Mentor: Mary Davys's The Reform'd Coquet (1724)," in The Rise of the Woman Novelist from Aphra Behn to Jane Austen, Basil Blackwell, 1986, pp. 145-7.
[In the following excerpt from a study of the development of women's novels in English, Spencer analyzes the portrayal of a reformed heroine in Davys' The Reform'd Coquet.]
The Lover-mentor: Mary Davys's The Reform'd Coquet (1724)
We might expect that a novel tradition based on the woman writer's role as moral guide to her sex would present stories of a heroine's reform through the advice of a more experienced woman; and in fact, wise women often appear as mentors in didactic novels. Frances Sheridan's Sidney Bidulph is guided by her mother, and later guides her own daughters.9 In Clara Reeve's School for Widows (1791), Mrs Strictland and Mrs Darnford exchange...
[The entire page is 1279 words long]
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