Discipline

Discipline, the second novel by the Scottish writer Mary Brunton (1778-1818), was published in 1814. While less well known than its predecessor Self-Control (1811), it is nonetheless equally deserving of a central place in the canon of Romantic-era fiction. Discipline’s innovative psychological realism sets it apart from its contemporaries. Through the moral growth of its heroine Ellen Percy, it insists on women’s self-determination and their ability to become rational agents in a world that treats them as objects merely of desire or contempt.