Penelope Aubin and Narratives of Empire

In Count de Vinevil and Lucinda, Penelope Aubin maps queer experiences among women onto her consideration of nascent British imperialism in order to protest and expose the limits of expansionist conservative discourses. Treating Aubin's texts as an occasion for reimagining literature's role in producing alternative modes of imperial and libidinal desire, I claim that, like many Tory women writers of her time, Aubin's convoluted narrative structure purposefully matches the complications of sociopolitical reality. Aubin moves from a critique of patriarchal mercantilism in Vinevil to what I call a queer critique of triumphalist epistemologies and imperialism in Lucinda. Far from being small steps on the way to the modern novel, Aubin's experimental writings represent brave attempts to redefine eighteenth-century womanhood and shape more inclusive British worlds.