『교태부리는 여자』와 『샬롯 템플』에 나타나는 여성 유대의 이론과 실제

Abstract

This paper examines the way in which the discourse on female bonding and sisterhood constitutes a crux in understanding Foster's The Coquette and Rowson's Charlotte Temple, both of which apparently take the form of seduction novels. The Republican ideology defined women's sphere as belonging to the home, consequently confining women only to the domestic realm. Accordingly, as women shared domesticity and maternity within the family, the discourse of female bonding prevailed as a subculture of women's life. In theory, given their authority over the domestic realm, women could wield great power in the home, and female bonding could constitute a subversive possibility for feminist consciousness among women. In practice, however, the Republican ideology and the idea of female bonding did not allow any real agency of female power. This contradiction between theory and practice is well demonstrated in The Coquette and Charlotte Temple.In The Coquette, the heroine's female friends fail to prevent Eliza's fall into seduction. They supervise Eliza's behavior, but to no avail. In Charlotte Temple, the only possible friend for the heroine also fails to help her in her most serious plight. The failure of the idea of female bonding seems to reinforce the didactic educative function of these seduction novels. However, the idea of female bonding and sisterhood embedded in these novels poses an alternative to male-oriented dominant discourse, emphasizing the need for an acute awareness of the limitations imposed on women by the dominant gender ideology of post-Revolutionary America. In Charlotte Temple, the incessant intervention of the maternal narrator who urges the supposedly female readers to sympathize with Charlotte's tragic story points out the need for a more subversive kind of female bonding.