Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748–1818

by Ruth Perry

Ruth Perry's major study describes the transformation of the English family, as represented in fiction, in the context of major social changes taking place in the eighteenth century. These include the development of a market economy and waged labor, enclosure and the redistribution of land, urbanization, the 'rise' of the middle class, and the development of print culture.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, History

480 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Marci · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ruth Perry seems to be an outstandingly careful literary scholar and historian. I liked everything I learned in this book, and I learned tons--but it was just a tad dry reading, so I couldn't give it more stars. However, my interest in the subject kept me reading all the details. It was particularly fascinating to me to see how much more important all women were to the economic health of the family and society before the Industrial Revolution, and how much less important they were to their families and to society if they remained single--really, single women became throwaways and have only recently begun to be free of that cultural status. Another fascinating thing was the subject of how kinship changed from the consanguineal relationships being of the most importance to the matrimonial relationships taking precedence, and how that cultural shift impacted women.

If you want only a good, detailed abstract, read the introduction and you'll know the broad outlines of everything she covers.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides a Foucauldian history for a ”significant shift in the basis of kinship… from an axis of kinship based on consanguineal ties or blood lineage to an axis based on conjugal and affinal ties of the married couple” (2) in the period 1748-1818. This shift is tied to Foucault’s original discussion of the shift from blood to sexuality, and to the economic shifts of England “from a status-based society to a class-based society and from a land-based agrarian economy to a cash-based market economy” (29). Perry reads her wide range of texts as “a series of problem-solving scenarios” working through the effects of this change in kinship (13), organized by family relationship, and concludes by encouraging more scholars to “read for the kin relations” (408).

[Corrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perry is great if you like a historicist approach to lit and an accessible yet still academic writing style. (Is she my not-so-secret academic crush? Maybe...)
She practices a certain distant reading here by tracking how kinship changes in the novel from Richardson to Austen, heavily relying on those two authors as anchors and examples. Her argument that society moves from valuing consanguineal ties to conjugal and affinal ones is convincing even if you don't agree with her research methods.