Social Systems In Literature

[NueVaaj]

What are some example of social systems in the 18th Century/ Restoration that effects literature? I'm having trouble finding what comparisons I can make on how British literature has changed over time.

[Tilly2]

That looks like a really interesting study. I'd like to see what you come up with.

By the way...it's affects, not effects.

[Tilly2]

Are these any help?

https://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Social+Systems+In+Literature&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

[NueVaaj]

Thank you. What confuses me is what "social systems" would be defined as. What does it include?

[jno]

well, in very late 18th century Jane Austen, the way an unmarried woman was a burden on her family and so mothers like Mrs Bennet would be frantic to marry their daughters off.

When she writes "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife" what she really means is that a woman is in want of a man with a good fortune. Women had no property rights in law.

[Canary42]

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) wrote under that male pseudonym because it was difficult for women to break into established authorship circles. Admittedly that was 19th Century, but 18th was probably worse.