Chawton House Library: Women's Novels

<p><em>Theodora, A Novel</em> by Dorothea Du Bois, published in 1770, is an entertaining and frequently shocking tale of a young woman’s efforts to regain her position in high society after her aristocratic father’s abandonment of and denial of marriage to her mother. The two-volume work is a thinly-veiled fictionalisation of Du Bois’s eventful personal history and the novel represents just one prong of what was a very public campaign to assert what she believed was her rightful place among the nobility of Ireland and Britain. Central to the narrative of <em>Theodora</em> is the powerlessness of women in the face of a system, moral, social and legal, that was designed to enshrine and protect patriarchal interests. In this manner <em>Theodora </em>exposes the gross injustices of eighteenth century society. This scholarly edition of Du Bois’s novel introduces readers to a unique voice in women’s writing of the eighteenth century that has been undeservedly dismissed by literary history for far too long.</p>