This monograph argues that images of the widow in the early novel served to express, explore, and construct concepts of appropriate female activity in emerging capitalism during the eighteenth century in England. Drawing on novels published between 1719 and 1818, this study investigates how different classes of widows (affluent, working class, impoverished, and criminal) functioned to challenge and affirm emerging economic values. A concluding chapter on widows in Jane Austen's work shows how changing notions of appropriate female economic activity had settled by the establishment of both the capitalist economy and the novel in the early nineteenth century.