More than any other genre, the sentimental novel is subject to the prejudice of trivial rapture, which is supposed to be particularly prevalent among women. However, it is not an intrinsically female genre. Rather, women writers around 1800 must conform to the specifications of the male-dominated literary field in order to have their texts printed. One consequence of this restriction on creativity is that the boundaries of the sentimental novel are deliberately expanded and undermined. Greta Lansen examines the functionalization of sentimental codes using the examples of female authors writing in French and German around 1800.