“In true old maid character”: El universo femenino en "Country Neighbours or the Secret" (1820) de Sarah Harriet Burney.

Within the realm of narratives by women, the British writer Frances Burney (1752-1840) has always enjoyed the respect of literary scholars as the founder of the “novel of manners”. Nevertheless, Sarah Harriet (1771-1844) —Frances’s sister and who was a popular authoress at the beginning of the nineteenth century, as well— has remained largely ignored by literary studies. This paper aims at rediscovering Sarah Harriet’s mature tale Country Neighbours; or The Secret (1820) from the perspective of gender studies. Structured on several texts by William Shakespeare and clearly indebted to the gothic tradition, this work is totally ignored in the Spanish context, but it is very interesting if we consider the role of women in this story with some doses of mystery and sensationalism. In Country Neighbours, Sarah Harriet not only vindicates feminine identity, but she also deals with topics such as multiculturalism or the function of art in society, and she reveals her own experience behind a narrative voice with which she articulates a powerful critique against patriarchal society.