Eliza Haywood

For those of you middle class women that are looking for entertainment and a break from everyday life, Eliza Haywood is the author for you. Haywood is the founder and primary writing force behind The Female Spectator, which is similar to The Spectator but composed exlusively for a female audience. The very themes that Haywood addresses in The Female Spectator--social contact, female community, and opportunity outside the domestic sphere--are some of the most important issues facing women today.[11]In a series of essays, Haywood presents "an ideal forum for direct and indirect discussions of the kind of issue [she] had investigated in her longer fiction: the problem of female opportunity and limitation. More specifically, Haywood concern[s] herself with how women might operate effectively within the social restrictions that [envelop] them." [12]

What does this means for you? Haywood realizes that, although you might like to, most of you will not run off and leave your husband, children, and responsibilities in search of adventure and female friendship. Therefore, through the writings of The Female Spectator, you are provided with information, entertainment, and didactic advice that you can consume in the privacy in your own home. [13] Furthermore, she creates a public dialogue in which women can write, read, and interact with each other. As you will see, some of the essays and letters written to the paper are written by women like you. Therefore, by reading The Female Specator, you can find ways to break free from your domestic life and connect with the growing community of educated women.

Would you like to read a sample excerpt from The Female Spectator?

 

 

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