Hannah More and the Invention of Narrative Authority

Abstract

This paper proposes that the development of omniscient narration in the nineteenth-century domestic novel was deeply indebted to strategies of surveillance and observation formulated by Hannah More. In an examination of More's Cheap Repository Tracts, her Strictures on Female Education, and her novel, Coelebs in Search of a Wife, I argue that More's conception of a peculiarly feminine style of observation to be used in charity work paved the way for feminine authority in the novel. While More's project is in no way explicitly feminist, her provisions for female narrative authority had significant consequences for later women writers.