ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book enables the dismissal of the idea that use of the quotidian, caution regarding genius and attention to the economic are merely the apparently out-of-step or non-Romantic decisions of women writers. Instead, such manoeuvres can be seen as part of a general response to the period's widespread fears of relativism, social disintegration, and luxury. The discourse of taste had an ambivalent relation to these fears: the aesthetic had potential either to aggravate or ameliorate them. Bourdieu focussing on the cultural object, represents a rather static model of taste in which those lower down the social scale are likely to appreciate paintings of sunsets and animals, while those higher up are capable of appreciating avant-garde. Bourdieu argues that taste or cultural capital work to confirm the social order. In terms of Romantic period, however, writers are frequently more ambivalent about this possibility.
