Historical_Background__The_18th_Century

Historical Background: The 18th Century Historical Background: The 18th Century Women’s autobiography, as we have seen, became much more diverse and more self-consciously artful in the eighteenth century, and in some ways more mature, than it had been in the seventeenth century. Its social base broadened considerably. Many of the elements discussed in Chapter III remain important as factors in the growth of autobiography; but as autobiography itself becomes more complex, so too do the various social and literary developments by which it is affected. To pinpoint all of them would require a book, if indeed it could be done at all. Following my practice in Chapter III, I shall attempt only to isolate some of the more striking of the factors which shaped and influenced the growth of women’s autobiography over the course of the eighteenth century. 1. The Religious Climate Religion plays a less conspicuous part in the history of eighteenth century women’s autobiography than it does in that of the seventeenth century. Secular autobiography no longer required justification--with the result that the century saw the production of a widely varied group of works whose authors made little or no reference to their religious beliefs. In the seventeenth century, even the authors whom we have considered life, novel, century, female, eighteenth, women, autobiography, important, women’s, upon, though, themselves, self-consciousness, romance, period, narrative, must, mary, even, about, road, often, novels, memoirs, lives, kind, influence, bellamy, tender, sentimentality, robinson, right, richardson’s, richardson, readers, rather