ABSTRACT
This paper is concerned partly with the form of the sentimental novel, partly with its relation to the society from which it springs, and partly with the responses that the sentimental novel seeks to elicit. The form of the sentimental novel, I shall suggest, is best understood as that of an anti-Bildungsroman. Instead of a progress toward maturity, the sentimental novel deals sympathetically with the character who cannot grow up and find an active place in society. Its ideal is stasis or regression, which makes for episodic, cyclical narratives that finally go nowhere or back where they began. My chief contention about the genesis of such novels is that, owing to different social assumptions about masculinity and femininity, the sentimental heroine can figure in conventional novelistic plots that end with wedding bells, since her role conforms to the popular sense of what a young lady should be; the sentimental hero poses an implicit challenge to accepted notions of masculinity, and cannot be assimilated into the world represented in the novels. As a consequence, sentimental novels tend to become satires on 'the world,' but satires in which the hero himself cannot usually take part because of his naivete, good nature, and
general childlikeness. As to the reader's response, I shall suggest that the sentimental novel affects us in ways often associated with the pastoral. Most of my discussion will focus on four texts: Defoe's Colonel Jack, Mackenzie's Man of Feeling, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, and Burney's Evelina.
