ABSTRACT
A popular novelist of the Romantic era, Jane West has received little modern critical attention. Focusing on how West's anti-romance sentiments derive from educational theories that cross political divides helps foreground the complicated ideological valences of such a stance, thus destabilizing the categories of Romantic-era fiction by providing a more expansive view of what we generally consider "Romantic" novels. To see how an anti-romance stance connects politically diverse authors, it is helpful to turn to educational tracts, especially since a substantial number of female novelists were also educational writers. West's Advantages of Education thus demonstrates strong affinities with Wollstonecraft's theories of female education. West structures her novel to provide counterpoints to her overall theme of female education, thus providing a more complex working of the neccesitarian plot, while at the same time avoiding a simple romantic, utopian plot. West's Gossip's Story, the novel praised by Wollstonecraft, promotes an approach to female education similar to that of Advantages.
