Abstract
Most scholarship on nineteenth century British literature emphasizes a skeptical view of liberalism, but some scholars have been rethinking the liberal tradition, as when Amanda Anderson suggests that literary critics draw on Jürgen Habermas's social and political theory. This discussion follows that suggestion by looking to one of liberalism's most problematic settings--the British empire in India--and offering a reading in Flora Annie Steel's On the Face of the Waters (1897). The essay concludes that a properly historicized Habermasian theory can indeed suggest a new model of literary reading, applicable even to an imperialist text and context.
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