Offers a feminist theory of ignorance that sheds light on the misunderstood or overlooked epistemic practices of women in literature.An Ethic of Innocence examines representations of women in American and British findesicle and modern literature who seem not to know things. These nave fools Pollyannaish dupes obedient traditionalists or regressive antifeminists have been dismissed by critics as conservative backward and out of sync with even threatening to modern feminist goals. Grounded in the late nineteenth centurys changing political and generic representations of women this book provides a novel interpretative framework for reconsidering the epistemic claims of these women. Kristen L. Renzi analyzes characters from works by Henry James Frank Norris Ann Petry Rebecca West Edith Wharton Virginia Woolf and others to argue that these feminine figures who choose not to know actually represent and model crucial pragmatic strategies by which modern and contemporary subjects navigate survive and even oppose gender oppression.