"The French and British eighteenth centuries saw an evolution from authoritarian to individualistic family structures. Although most observers agree on this view of the changing social order, little has been written about literary representations of attendant changes in interpersonal relationships. Novels, plays and autobiography present experiments in egalitarian processes - collaboration, solidarity and friendship - that strengthen individuals and relieve them of previous forms of docility. These examples mirror and complete the imagined transition from autocracy to republicanism.

The categories of father, mother, child, sibling, and friend occupy successive chapters in this study and reveal the changing nature and value of those roles as played in texts written by a broad spectrum of eighteenth-century authors."--Jacket.