SOURCE: "The Dilemmas of Gender as Double-Voiced Narrative; or, Maria Edgeworth Mothers the Bildungsroman," in The Idea of the Novel in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Robert W. Uphaus, Colleagues Press, 1988, pp. 67-96.

In the following essay, Myers examines relationships between women in Edgeworth's Rosamond stories.

"The proper education of a female, whether for use or for happiness, is still to seek, still a problem beyond human solution." Fanny Burney, Camilla; or, A Picture of Youth (1796)

"Oh teach her, while your lessons last, To judge the present by the past! The mind to strengthen and anneal, While on the stithy glows the steel." Rosamond: A Sequel to Early Lessons (1821)

"Open-hearted and open-mouthed as I am, I can keep a secret WONDERFUL well." A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth

Critics can no longer assume that important narratives deal with war or whales and that, as Virginia Woolf critiqued their consensus...