Arguing for a rereading of women’s novels previously thought contentless but now demonstrably participating in contemporary debates, I investigate the socio-cultural implications of the guardian and ward relationship in texts published in England between 1789 and 1793. In The Romance of the Forest (1791), A Simple Story (1791), and The Old Manor House (1793), Anne Radcliffe, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Charlotte Smith use the legal relationship of guardianship to represent highly sensitive topics, such as abuses of asymmetrical power relationships and practices of patriarchal authority. I argue their writing examines the conflict between the private individual and public forms of power in ways similar to Richard Price’s A Discourse on the Love of Our Country (1789), Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man (1792), and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). While these authors openly discuss tyranny, Radcliffe, Inchbald, and Smith indirectly use images of guardianship to examine these same issues of the uses and abuses of power.
Chapter One explores the historical context of the legal relationship of guardianship. Because of its ambiguous social status – incorporating the relationships of the private family while at the same time being mediated by public courts – guardianship allows writers to address issues concerning public institutions of power as well as those concerning private family relationships. Chapters Two through Four each explores a novel and the ways in which each author uses representations of guardianship to champion issues of self-government. Each author espouses a movement from externalized, public power to internalized, private authority. Their discussions of guardianship press the government to perform its duties as both curator and tutor, to act as a just guardian. Chapter Five concludes the discussion, commenting on the inability of law to legislate absolute authority for any segment of society. By delegitimatizing guardianship, Radcliffe, Inchbald, and Smith each contest authority, forcing articulation on issues previously unchallenged.