Mourning and material culture in Eliza Haywood's The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless

Eliza Haywood's novel 'The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless' published in 1751, is a novel about the development of a female mind and its triumph over a consumerist environment, and relies extensively upon death as an organizing principle. The novel demonstrates the extent to which monolithic structures of mourning like the tomb exclude women from expressions of grief and leave only melancholia as the only authentic mode of mourning available to them.