Women, Love, and Commodity Culture in British Romanticism

Offering a new understanding of canonical Romanticism, Garofalo argues that Romantic writers critiqued the idea that erotic love enabled one to transcend political and economic realities. William Blake, Lord Byron, Sir Walter Scott, John Keats and Emily Brontë engaged with the period's concern with political economy and the nature of desire, challenging stereotypical representations of women consumers and conceiving of women's desire as a force for radical change.