Gender, literature, and gendering literature in the Restoration

Abstract

At least until very recent times no literary era has been as conscious of what we call “gender” as the period we call “the Restoration.” It is impossible to deal with literature of this period (not excluding Milton) without encountering observations upon masculinity and femininity, statements about the male and the female and the androgyne. These elements or attributes, if often represented in terms of opposition and conflict, are also represented as essential.Yet if these attributes are essences, they lack Aristotelian fixity. They are not fixed but mutable, iridescent and flickering like Pope's airy sylphs in The Rape of the Lock. Why was the Restoration so peculiarly gender-conscious? There may be no absolute answer, but some important factors should be considered. The Civil War was an event of the utmost importance to the English, an instance of very open and certainly not imaginary conflict raging over questions of power and authority (including the authority of interpretation).

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