Understanding American Modernity on the Basis of Republican Paradigm

这项研究试图从女性身份的角度重写美国近代史。在18世纪，性别差异的观念发生了根本性的改变，也就是说，性别不再被视为程度问题，而被认为是一种种类上的差异。然后，我试图在女性的求爱小说中观察这种性别差异的重新概念化如何影响女性的自我意识。其结果是，女性渴望没有媒介的自我，在家庭生活的意识形态压力下拒绝沉默。

This study tried to rewrite American modern history in terms of women's identity. In the eighteenth century, the idea of sexual difference between women and men was radically altered, that is to say, sex ceased to be regarded as a matter of degree and came to be recognized as a difference in kind. I then tried to observe in women's courtship novels how this reconceptualization of sexual difference affected women's sense of themselves. The result is a history of women's desire for unmediated selfhood that resists to be silenced under the ideological pressure of domesticity.