ABSTRACT
The words that recur in the literature of an age offer clues to contemporary fascinations and anxieties. In the eighteenth century, "account" is such a word, taking various forms and conveying multiple meanings. Account, accounting, accountable: the words are found everywhere from tutelary texts to novels, particularly - it turns out - in literature about and directed toward women. In eighteenth-century usage, "account" denoted supposedly true histories as well as fictitious chronicles, encompassed simple financial sums as well as complex double-entry bookkeeping, described Protestant debt-credit relationships to God as well as social ties exacting in their reciprocal economic responsibility. "Account" speaks, too, of memory - what is chosen to be remembered, and how people remember. What then, are the cultural and ideological preoccupations behind these literary references, and why are they so often associated with women?
