A woman writing down her memoir
The memoires of Sidney Bidluph by Frances Sheridan
The classic novel of sensibility
Dr Johnson’s dictionary defined feminine as the sex that produces young, female, soft tender, delicate and effeminate which is emasculated and wanting in manliness. Effeminate in turn was regarded as having the qualities of a woman, soft to an unworthy degree, voluptuous, tender, luxurious and resembling the practice of a woman. In the eighteenth century feminine and effeminate became interchangeable and were characterised by tears, extreme passion and hysteria. A character was more likely to be passive rather than active, helpless, a victim of people and circumstances, silent or deprived of a voice, foreign usually from France or Italy, and foppish with extreme attention to dress and appearance.
