<p>Focusing on the ways in which female novelists have, in their creative work, challenged or scrutinised contemporary assumptions about their own sex, this book looks at how mid-nineteenth-century women writers confront the conflict between the pressures of matrimonial ideologies and the often more attractive alternative of single or professional life. </p><p>Making extensive use of letters and non-fiction as well as fictional narratives, the book outlines the social and ideological framework within which the authors were writing; then considers the individual novelists, Craik, Charlotte Bronté, Sewell, Gaskell, and Eliot, examining the works of each and also pointing to the similarities between them, thus suggesting a shared female 'voice'.</p>
