Courting Disaster

<p><b>What do #MeToo and Jane Austen have in common? More than you might think.</b><br><br>Ever since the novel was invented, women have used it as a platform for sharing ideas about sexual consent. Dr Zoë McGee reveals how Jane Austen, Frances Burney and their now-overlooked contemporaries used their stories to try to change society's mind about rape culture - and to reassure survivors they were not alone.<br><br><i>Courting Disaster</i> takes a timely deep-dive into a series of classic novels, comparing them with both historic court records and current events to show that our arguments about consent are not a new phenomenon. With the wit and wryness of a courtship novel, McGee reads between the lines to unveil a quiet feminist movement that still resonates today. Because every novel about marriage is also a novel about consent.<br><br> In an era that's clamouring for a return to the values of the past, <i>Courting Disaster </i>asks what that would really mean, and whether anyone actually liked it back then anyway...</p>