ABSTRACT
The Eighteenth and nineteenth century Britons had a lot to say about the captivating powers of women. Enchanting, bewitching, fascinating women could drive men from the path of virtue to proper sociability. For good or for ill, women were responsible, it seemed, for the state of civilization itself. Accused by some of corrupting men and making them effeminate, women were praised by others for civilizing and softening men who would otherwise be too unsociable for modern, commercial society. Women, Love, and Commodity Culture in British Romanticism examines this interest in women's presumed powers of influence. Again and again, eighteenth-century writers connect the desire for women to the desire for economic production and consumption because, for them, both romance and economics require a similar approach to desire. chivalric love like participation in a commercial economy, depends on the capacity to deny immediate satisfaction.
