SOURCE: "Women Writers and the Chains of Identification," in Studies in the Novel, Vol. 19, No. 3, Fall, 1987, pp. 245-62.

In the essay below, Backscheider examines ways in which women novelists responded to popular conceptions about their sex, some choosing to rebel against the demand for well-mannered, sentimental works, others choosing to meet common expectations in return for sales and approval.

The great female characters of the eighteenth century—Moll Flanders, Roxana, Clarissa Harlowe, Sophia Western, Amelia Booth—were created by men; those of the nineteenth century—Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Jane Eyre, Gwendolyn Harleth, Catherine Morland, Dorothea Brooke—by women. It is no coincidence, I believe, that, with the exception of Jane Austen, the women who created these great characters published under pseudonyms. Ironically, as more and more women became writers, the range allowed their work became more and more constrained. Above all, the tendency to identify women writers...