Open AccessFemale Independence in Mary Robinson’s The Natural Daughter
Author(s) -
Katherine Watts
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
romanticism and victorianism on the net
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1916-1441
DOI - 10.7202/1026007ar
Subject(s) - daughter , independence (probability theory) , wife , argument (complex analysis) , public sphere , natural (archaeology) , financial independence , private sphere , sociology , economic independence , separate spheres , gender studies , political science , law , history , economics , development economics , medicine , mathematics , statistics , archaeology , finance , politics , ideology
More provocatively than her contemporaries, Mary Robinson argues in The Natural Daughter that women must establish their voices in the public sphere to enact change while separately attending to the influential roles of wife and mother. She argues for financial independence and personal satisfaction by entering the public sphere through intellectual productions, such as writing. By examining Robinson’s concern for converging public and private spheres, we see a unique argument for women’s intellectual worth to be free of their reputations