ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book deals with vision and suffering ultimately engages two dialectics—empiricism vs. idealism, and materiality vs. transcendence. It argues that Charlotte Smith, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mary Shelley explore the nuanced middle ground between the empiricist's reliance on visual evidence and the idealist's commitment to internal vision, both compelling positions of inquiry and expression in the late eighteenth century. The book explains that both Smith and Wollstonecraft believed that viewing nature's order would help reorder their minds and thus alleviate their emotional suffering. It explores "fictional ethnography" to distinguish the visually based methodology of Wollstonecraft's and Smith's reformist literature from that of the Jacobin novel. The book discusses the connection between seeing and suffering, yet Mary Shelley is more explicitly concerned about the danger of individual vision than are Smith and Wollstonecraft.
