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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... heroine's triumphant accession to a newly apotheosized middle- class domestic realm, and her ritual preparation for ... heroine in her struggle for autonomy, and these forces likewise act as key institutional determinants for the ...
... heroine's triumphant accession to a newly apotheosized middle- class domestic realm, and her ritual preparation for ... heroine in her struggle for autonomy, and these forces likewise act as key institutional determinants for the ...
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... heroine's extreme economic innocence. Economically passive, the conventional romance heroine displaces her energy into the approved and unthreatening activity of preserving her virginity. This strategy, basic to the romance formula ...
... heroine's extreme economic innocence. Economically passive, the conventional romance heroine displaces her energy into the approved and unthreatening activity of preserving her virginity. This strategy, basic to the romance formula ...
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... heroine who must be seen to seek nothing if she is to win everything (p.127), the novel of the woman of property must either find a way to express its heroine's relinquishment of property as personal fulfilment, or find a way for her to ...
... heroine who must be seen to seek nothing if she is to win everything (p.127), the novel of the woman of property must either find a way to express its heroine's relinquishment of property as personal fulfilment, or find a way for her to ...
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... heroine's longing for 'a power of vision which might overpass [the] limit' set upon it by her position as the lowly governess of Thornfield. From the battlements of that house, Jane longs to 'reach the busy world, towns, regions full of ...
... heroine's longing for 'a power of vision which might overpass [the] limit' set upon it by her position as the lowly governess of Thornfield. From the battlements of that house, Jane longs to 'reach the busy world, towns, regions full of ...
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... heroines. Throughout this study, in conclusion, relationships between property rights and gender are marked out and fixed ... heroine's rejection of forms of identity engendered by property relations in marriage. In both these texts the ...
... heroines. Throughout this study, in conclusion, relationships between property rights and gender are marked out and fixed ... heroine's rejection of forms of identity engendered by property relations in marriage. In both these texts 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 Brontë Caroline Celt chapter character Charlotte Brontë 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