ABSTRACT
Hays’s manuscript and her responsive commentary posited a dynamic in a woman’s writing between content and form in which the writer was self-consciously and simultaneously subject and object artifact as well as artificer. Exciting discoveries in the new science of the mind proved useful for Hays in her psychological inquiries. Godwin shared with Hays several basic beliefs, especially the supremacy of the right to private judgment that constituted the lynchpin of Dissent. Godwin proposed that Hays modify her text to accord more with literary precedent for her reader’s instruction and entertainment. The experiments with form, ideas, and genres in Memoirs of Emma Courtney reflect Hays’s own “hazardous experiment,” her attempts to write about something new and her search for a vocabulary in which to do so. Like her creator, the heroine of Hays’s first novel feels deeply and possesses a philosophical cast of mind.
