Abstract

The article attempts to analyse the modelling factors in constructing the female characters in the 19th century American, British and Romanian prose from the perspective of particular patterns that appear in most of the writing. I will approach this issue from three main perspectives: a socio-cultural and historical one, dealing with the transition from rural/agrarian to urban/industrial ways and values of life; an aesthetic one, dealing with the erosion of conventions and stereotypes and the mutations produced in the representations of womanhood by the transition from romanticism to realism and a comparative one, engaging a parallel between Romanian, British and American literature and culture, on issues such as: strategies of feminist discourse, women’s economic independence, women in transcultural representations of slavery, social conformity and individual fulfilment in society writings or female characters and the rural environment.