Date of Graduation

9-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in English (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

English

Advisor/Mentor

Dempsey, Sean

Committee Member

Dorothy Stephens

Second Committee Member

Mary Beth Long

Abstract

This dissertation explores the works of three female authors of female protagonists in the long 18th century: Frances Burney’s Camilla and Evelina; Anne Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho and The Italian; and Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice. By following the paths to security the female protagonists of these novels fashion, and identifying the elements of Stoicism and related Hellenism and the aspects of cybernetics, this dissertation delves into the choices female protagonists make along the way regarding their security and how such choices lead to agency and self-fashioning for these women. Emotional, economic, and social security are analyzed for the way characters prioritize their own security and the way various forms of security can be layered together into a secure environment from which to practice agency and craft one’s ideal self. Such self-fashioning becomes a way for readers to expand their imaginative boundaries and thus also creates an aesthetic education for readers by vicarious and virtual means so they can similarly learn to craft their more “ideal” selves. By crafting one’s ideal self, characters and readers learn to embrace and define their own pursuits of happiness, and readers can understand and realize the difference between the foundational threshold to happiness and the ultimate ideal happiness further on the happiness spectrum.

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