Abstract
This chapter explores two competing representations of Paris in an early- and a late-career novel by Sydney Owenson. It argues that, in The Novice of Saint Dominick, Paris functions as a conservative site of socialization, while in The OBriens and the OFlahertys, the French capital becomes a site of liberal reforms and social mobility.In the earlier novel, Owenson focuses on the dangers of a womans involvement in metropolitan economics in order to enforce her submission to a masculine authority through the use of debts and cosmopolitan understandings of the market. The later novel uses the Paris Opera house to highlight the development of urban literacy.