
Courting Disaster: Reading Between the Lines of the Regency Novel
by
Zoë McGee
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781526188854
Publication Date: 11/04/2025
What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think.
Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. Dr Zoë McGee reveals how Jane Austen, Frances Burney and their nowoverlooked contemporaries used their stories to try to change society’s mind about rape culture – and to reassure survivors they were not alone.
Courting Disaster takes a timely deepdive into a series of classic novels, comparing them with both historic court records and current events to show that our arguments about consent are not a new phenomenon. With the wit and wryness of a courtship novel, McGee reads between the lines to unveil a quiet feminist movement that still resonates today. Because every novel about marriage is also a novel about consent.
In an era that’s clamouring for a return to the values of the past, Courting Disaster asks what that would really mean, and whether anyone actually liked it back then anyway…
Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. Dr Zoë McGee reveals how Jane Austen, Frances Burney and their nowoverlooked contemporaries used their stories to try to change society’s mind about rape culture – and to reassure survivors they were not alone.
Courting Disaster takes a timely deepdive into a series of classic novels, comparing them with both historic court records and current events to show that our arguments about consent are not a new phenomenon. With the wit and wryness of a courtship novel, McGee reads between the lines to unveil a quiet feminist movement that still resonates today. Because every novel about marriage is also a novel about consent.
In an era that’s clamouring for a return to the values of the past, Courting Disaster asks what that would really mean, and whether anyone actually liked it back then anyway…
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