“A heroine of ancient times”: Maternity, History, and Empire in Jane West’s The Advantages of Education and The Mother

Abstract

ABSTRACT Jane West’s novel The Advantages of Education (1793) and her critically neglected epic poem The Mother (1809) signal the role of historical discourse in establishing cultural importance for white British women—mothers in particular—in the Romantic period. They also clarify the ideological importance of mothers to the ascendance of the second British Empire of the nineteenth century. In both texts, mothers are emissaries for the stadial historical theory that positioned Great Britain as a nation destined to dominate less “civilized” parts of the globe. Amelia Williams in The Advantages of Education and the multitude of mothers in West’s epic poem signify the order, self-regulation, and prosperity at the heart of the Empire’s emerging moral imperative. Both texts show how women writers in the Romantic period might revise existing genres in creative ways while simultaneously contributing to a nascent Western feminism that depends upon dehumanizing binaries.