Alle donne di Inghilterra: le Rural Walks di Charlotte Smith

Abstract

To the Woman of England: Charlotte Smith’s Rural Walks – Charlotte Smith proposes her children’s literature as a genre shaped by reflections on gender. The work Rural Walks depicts the mother figure as an educational mentor who nurtures and directs the growth of her young girls and as a heroine of daily life. Smith wants to give her female readers a revolutionary version of motherhood, for women are the primary recipients of Mrs. Woodfield’s lessons. While focusing on the mental and moral development of young women, she also attends to her own social and moral responsibilities. Her educational program is comprehensive of unusual fields of knowledge and addresses social issues. In her children’s books Smith instructs her female readers how to apply the social lessons of her literature to their experiences in the real world and how to become politically active citizens. In Rural Walks the dialogues illustrate the overlapping theories on the formation of the self and the education of the woman.