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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... ideology with the systematic subjection of women under the conditions of the married women's property law . The economic , political , and legal dimensions of the domestic sphere were as a consequence laid bare, challenging the.
... ideology with the systematic subjection of women under the conditions of the married women's property law . The economic , political , and legal dimensions of the domestic sphere were as a consequence laid bare, challenging the.
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... ideology that underwote that myth of property. My major concern here, therefore, is to explore texts in which the propertied woman crosses over and occupies the conventional symbolic space of the woman-as-property. The Amazons, that is ...
... ideology that underwote that myth of property. My major concern here, therefore, is to explore texts in which the propertied woman crosses over and occupies the conventional symbolic space of the woman-as-property. The Amazons, that is ...
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... ideology that we may find the "politics" of a novel in its deepest, most interesting, most problematical expression ... ideological territories' (p.3). The paths they establish and the destinations they imagine for the woman of property ...
... ideology that we may find the "politics" of a novel in its deepest, most interesting, most problematical expression ... ideological territories' (p.3). The paths they establish and the destinations they imagine for the woman of property ...
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... ideologies of a woman's separate nature and separate sphere is only resolved, I argue in chapter 1, in Shirley's ... ideological crisis, a crisis of confidence over the status , the proper work , and the power of.
... ideologies of a woman's separate nature and separate sphere is only resolved, I argue in chapter 1, in Shirley's ... ideological crisis, a crisis of confidence over the status , the proper work , and the power of.
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... ideological deadlock expressed in the letters. Cranford is not a refuge from the woman question, in this context ... ideologies and available languages: the language of political economy, class relations, racial and cultural difference ...
... ideological deadlock expressed in the letters. Cranford is not a refuge from the woman question, in this context ... ideologies and available languages: the language of political economy, class relations, racial and cultural difference ...
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