Abstract:
Examining the influences of Locke's philosophy of mind and education on the novelists in the period, together with examining common assumptions about their 'realism' and looking carefully at how much of the romance tradition they actually employ, the thesis seeks to show that sentimentalism--or the doctrine of feeling virtue in all its spectra--was a far more widely used device than is commonly supposed, and that the changing role of woman in society was a signficant part of this process.
