The Escritoire: Content and Form in Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph

This thesis examines Francis Sheridan’s 1761 novel Memoirs of Miss Sidney Bidulph. Through close readings of two key episodes involving the escritoire as a physical object, I explore its symbolic and structural significance. I read this modest piece of furniture as both a figure for the novel’s vexed treatment of concealment, revelation, and misrecognition, and as a structuring device that encapsulates how gendered expectations and epistolary form constrain the agency not just of Sidney, but also of Faulkland. In the escritoire’s multivalence, Sheridan debunks the social code that represses and punishes the exemplary while rewarding the wretched and the opportunistic.