The Escritoire: Content and Form in Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis examines Francis Sheridan’s 1761 novel Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. Through close readings of two key episodes involving the escritoire as a physical object, I explore its symbolic and structural significance. I read this modest piece of furniture as both a figure for the novel’s vexed treatment of concealment, revelation, and misrecognition, and as a structuring device that encapsulates how gendered expectations and epistolary form constrain the agency not just of Sidney, but also of Faulkland. In the escritoire’s multivalence, Sheridan debunks the social code that represses and punishes the exemplary while rewarding the wretched and the opportunistic.
Source: Libra
DOI: 10.18130/g7as-gb33
Author: Yufeng Zhu
Institution: University of Virginia
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6944550793
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