The Gift of Dependence: Charity, Agency, and Character in the Long Eighteenth Century

"The Gift of Dependence" explores how literary texts reflected and influenced 18th-century Anglophone debates over philanthropy, fears of dependence on aid, and theories of personal sovereignty. This project examines novelists and autobiographers who identify a technique of characterization rooted in the consciousness of dependence on charity as an ongoing and positive state rather than something to be dispensed with in favor of total autonomy. My account of charity and literature problematizes the narrative that the 18th century supplied a subject defined by radical independence, freedom of choice, and self-determination.