Fictions of the Feminine in the 18th Century Novel Roxana (1724), by Daniel Defoe, and The New Heloise (1761), by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

ABSTRACT A certain tradition of literary history locates the 18th century as the turning point for research into the specifically modern delimitation of the genre of the novel and the redefinition of the status of fiction. During this period, the novel was presented and affirmed as a new narrative form, but at the same time, it was justified by its practitioners, in a dispute with other genres, as the most effective way of fulfilling the pedagogical purposes of the long-standing “rhetorical institution”: to educate and delight. It is as part of this double movement that we intend to investigate two fictional narratives from this period, which have female chastity as their theme: an English one, Roxana (1724), by Daniel Defoe, in which virtue is sacrificed to need and vanity; and one by the Geneva-born Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who responds in his own way to the discussion about the novel , with the painting of the devout protagonist Julia in The New Heloise (1761). The article aims to show how the two different ways of portraying women (as paintings of vice or virtue, respectively) correspond to two opposing narrative strategies that share the same purpose: to morally improve the female audience.