Patricia Meyer Spacks

TL;DR: In our literary era of anti-heroes we may yearn for the days before Portnoy, when men were men, when Tom Jones grandly conceals the fact that he's broken an arm in rescuing his beloved Sophia, whom he treats with flawless respect until it becomes legal, thus moral, to take her to bed.

TL;DR: Men of the second or third rank as mentioned in this paper often expose their assumptions more openly than their more distinguished contemporaries, and their awareness of the meaning of the woman's role may shape their narratives or provide a substructure of which the author herself seems barely conscious.