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English Language and Literature
Barbauld; Dissent; Enlightenment mother-teacher; republican motherhood; commerce
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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Looking Beyond The Enlightenment Mother-Teacher: Anna Letitia Barbauld And The Eighteenth-Century Maternal Ideal, Kathryn J. Ready
Looking Beyond The Enlightenment Mother-Teacher: Anna Letitia Barbauld And The Eighteenth-Century Maternal Ideal, Kathryn J. Ready
ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830
Based on her popular prose writing for children, liberal Dissenter Anna Letitia Barbauld has been cited as a prominent example of the Enlightenment mother-teacher associated with the influence of John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, close reading of her poetry reveals a complex maternal ideal in operation that was in part that of the Enlightenment mother-teacher, in part a modified form of republican motherhood, a strategic composite drawn, on the one hand, from classical republican discourse, which promoted the woman’s role in fostering patriotism and liberty, and, on the other, from contemporary defences of commerce, which highlighted women’s civilizing and …