Mistress of the House: Women of Property in the Victorian NovelThis exploration of gender and property ownership in eight important novels argues that property is a decisive undercurrent in narrative structures and modes, as well as an important gender signature in society and culture. Tim Dolin suggests that the formal development of nineteenth-century domestic fiction can only be understood in the context of changes in the theory and laws of property: indeed femininity and its representation cannot be considered separately from property relations and their reform. He presents original readings of novels in which a woman owns, acquires or loses property, focusing on exchanges between patriarchal cultural authority, the 'woman question' and narrative form, and on the place of domestic fiction in a culture in which property relations and gender relations are subject to radical review. Each chapter revolves around a representative text, but refers substantially to other material, both other novels and contemporary social, legal, political and feminist commentary. |
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... cultural analysis, and associated fields, there will be a salient role for reprints of significant texts from, or about, the period. Our overarching policy is to address the spectrum of nineteenth- century studies without exception ...
... cultural analysis, and associated fields, there will be a salient role for reprints of significant texts from, or about, the period. Our overarching policy is to address the spectrum of nineteenth- century studies without exception ...
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... Cultural forms, including the novel, poetry, journalism, Academic painting, and domestic and public architecture, played an important part in mythologizing and sustaining this transcendence. In a market economy in which property became ...
... Cultural forms, including the novel, poetry, journalism, Academic painting, and domestic and public architecture, played an important part in mythologizing and sustaining this transcendence. In a market economy in which property became ...
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... cultures, architectural and geographic spatial arrangements have reinforced status differences between women and men ... culture of commodities and spatializing the sexual ideology that underwote that myth of property. My major concern ...
... cultures, architectural and geographic spatial arrangements have reinforced status differences between women and men ... culture of commodities and spatializing the sexual ideology that underwote that myth of property. My major concern ...
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... cultural difference, and imperialism.8 In particular, they made use of prevailing comparative models of Victorian ... cultures. The discourse of women's property reform was therefore also closely linked to ethnographic concerns and the ...
... cultural difference, and imperialism.8 In particular, they made use of prevailing comparative models of Victorian ... cultures. The discourse of women's property reform was therefore also closely linked to ethnographic concerns and the ...
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... cultural associations of femininity and nationality. Both novels explore how women are defined under or against the sign 'England' — a sign which, in view of the moral elevation of woman and home and the moral exile implied in the ...
... cultural associations of femininity and nationality. Both novels explore how women are defined under or against the sign 'England' — a sign which, in view of the moral elevation of woman and home and the moral exile implied in the ...
Contents
Shirley | |
Cranford and its belongings | |
Villette | |
The Moonstone | |
Hardys uncovered women | |
Diana of the Crossways | |
A brief summary of the laws | |
The Caroline Norton affair | |
Index | |
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Common terms and phrases
argues Barbara Bodichon becomes Betteredge Bretton Brontė Caroline Celt chapter character Charlotte Brontė Collins comedy comic conflict conventional coverture Cranford Cranfordians critical Crossways culture debates Diana divorce domestic earnings England English female feminine feminist figure Gaskell Gaskell's gender Gillian Beer Hardy Hardy's Helsinger Helstone heroine heroine's Hintock household husband ideology imagination independent Irish Jane Eyre Jude Jude the Obscure Jude's ladies landed landscape language live London Lucy Lucy's marriage married women's property Mary Meredith middle-class mistress Moonstone moral narrative narrator nature passion plot political possession property laws property reform provincial question Rachel readers realism Redworth relations relationship representation represents resistance rhetoric romance scene sensation novel sensationalism sexual Shirley Shirley's social social realism society space sphere story struggle suggests things Verinder Victorian fiction Victorian novel Villette voice Wessex widow wife wives woman of property women Woodlanders writing