Folklore provides a metaphor for insecurity in British women's writing published between 1750 and 1880. When characters feel uneasy about separations between races, classes, or sexes, they speak of mermaids and «Cinderella» to make threatening women unreal and thus harmless. Because supernatural creatures change constantly, a name or story from folklore merely reinforces fears about empire, labor, and desire. To illustrate these fascinating rhetorical strategies, this book explores works by Sarah Fielding, Ann Radcliffe, Sydney Owenson, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Anne Thackeray, and Jean Ingelow, pushing our understanding of allusions to folktales, fairy tales, and myths beyond «happily ever after.» Folklore provides a metaphor for insecurity in British women's writing published between 1750 and 1880. When characters feel uneasy about separations between races, classes, or sexes, they speak of mermaids and «Cinderella» to make threatening women unreal and thus harmless. Because supernatural creatures change constantly, a name or story from folklore merely reinforces fears about empire, labor, and desire. To illustrate these fascinating rhetorical strategies, this book explores works by Sarah Fielding, Ann Radcliffe, Sydney Owenson, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Anne Thackeray, and Jean Ingelow, pushing our understanding of allusions to folktales, fairy tales, and myths beyond «happily ever after.» List of Figures ix Acknowledgments xi Chapter One. Folklore as a Critical Tool 1(22) What's in a Name? The Difficulty of Defining the Fairy Folk 3(7) British Anxieties and Others, 1750-1880 10(4) Method: Uniting Feminist Criticism, Folklore, and Cultural Concerns 14(5) Readings in British Women's Fiction 19(4) Chapter Two. "Things Totally Out of Nature": Fairies and Fairy Tales in Eighteenth-Century Fiction 23(22) "Innocent Diversions": Fairy Tales in Fielding's The Governess 27(7) Fairies and the Female Condition in The Mysteries of Udolpho 34(11) Chapter Three. "Syren Lure": Folklore as National Rhetoric in The Wild Irish Girl 45(18) Horatio's Irish Fairy 47(8) "My English Ossian" 55(8) Chapter Four. Governesses, Émigrés, and Fairies: Implications of Folklore in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë 63(34) Jane Eyre, Fairy Tale, Folktale: A Close Reading 66(11) Shirley: Folklore between Female Friends 77(7) Villette: Folklore Goes to the Continent 84(13) Chapter Five. George Eliot's English Water?Nixies and Sad?Eyed Princesses 97(22) Maggie and Folklore on the Floss 99(6) The Mermaid of Middlemarch 105(4) Daniel Deronda's Demonic (un)Englishwomen 109(10) Chapter Six. Domesticating the Fairy Realm: Anne Thackeray and Jean Ingelow 119(26) The Magic of English Living According to Thackeray 121(11) Captain Jack Forced from Fairyland 132(13) Afterword 145(4) Notes 149(14) Works Cited 163(10) Index 173