Description: Simultaneously challenging conventional male-dominated thought and revisionist modern feminism, this book argues that gendered identities can best be conceived relationally, and thus that a fuller understanding of gender roles in the 18th century (and by extension in our own) must include an analysis of men's place in the discourse of domesticity.
Review Quotes: "The reader who puts down this book will be much more attuned to the commplexities of the early periodical and to the interweaving of class and gender at this particular moment in history . . . .Maurer's insightful readings of early periodical literature are at least as valuable as the theoretical project she set out to fulfill. Her book is full of subtle insights into the intersections of gender and class in this literature and into the importance of the early periodical to eighteenth-century culture."--The Age of Johnson