Life after death : widows and the English novel, Defoe to Austen

Life after Death shows how representations of the widow in the eighteenth-century novel express attitudes toward emerging capitalism and women's participation in it. Authors responded to the century's instability by using widows, who had the right to act economically and self-interestedly, to teach women that virtue meant foregoing the opportunities that the changing economy offered. Novelists thus helped to create expectations for women that linger today, and established the novel as a cultural arbiter.