Miss Charity S Case

Charity Stuart and her younger sister Joyce have lost their beloved father under mysterious and ruinous circumstances. On their way to London to live with their great-aunt who wants to sponsor Joyce for the Season, they meet Oliver Blackburn in a small inn. They don’t guess that this enthralling man is a courier for the government, traveling back and forth across the Channel. That night, their trunk is stolen. All they have left is Charity’s small case, but they continue on to London. The next time Charity encounters Mr. Blackburn, she learns he is Lord Blackburn. He seems oddly interested in her life before her father’s death. His reputation is far from pristine, but she is drawn to him, fascinated by his bold kisses. The truth about her father’s death shadows their growing attraction, and they must solve the puzzle of it before death strikes again.

Offers a feminist theory of ignorance that sheds light on the misunderstood or overlooked epistemic practices of women in literature. An Ethic of Innocence examines representations of women in American and British fin-de-siècle and modern literature who seem “not to know” things. These naïve fools, Pollyannaish dupes, obedient traditionalists, or regressive anti-feminists have been dismissed by critics as conservative, backward, and out of sync with, even threatening to, modern feminist goals. Grounded in the late nineteenth century’s changing political and generic representations of women, this book provides a novel interpretative framework for reconsidering the epistemic claims of these women. Kristen L. Renzi analyzes characters from works by Henry James, Frank Norris, Ann Petry, Rebecca West, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, and others, to argue that these feminine figures who choose not to know actually represent and model crucial pragmatic strategies by which modern and contemporary subjects navigate, survive, and even oppose gender oppression. Kristen L. Renzi is Associate Professor of English at Xavier University.

Includes music.