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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... wives who fought for legal access to their own property and earnings. Until the married women's property laws were changed — first in 1870, but not with any real success until 18824 — women under common law (that is to say, ninety per ...
... wives who fought for legal access to their own property and earnings. Until the married women's property laws were changed — first in 1870, but not with any real success until 18824 — women under common law (that is to say, ninety per ...
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... wives, by the complicated and expensive expedient of trusts, avoid the penalties of coverture. As Mill pointed out in The Subjection of Women, however, equity law actually gave women no rights at all, since marriage settlements only ...
... wives, by the complicated and expensive expedient of trusts, avoid the penalties of coverture. As Mill pointed out in The Subjection of Women, however, equity law actually gave women no rights at all, since marriage settlements only ...
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... wives and mothers, and so powerfully were those assumptions upheld in Victorian social institutions and in representations of womanliness in conduct books, literature, and the visual arts, that the customary inferiority of women seemed ...
... wives and mothers, and so powerfully were those assumptions upheld in Victorian social institutions and in representations of womanliness in conduct books, literature, and the visual arts, that the customary inferiority of women seemed ...
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... wives who will spend all their earnings)' (Gaskell, 1967, p.379). From her letters Gaskell comes across as a woman experiencing what Judith Newton calls a 'more general ideological crisis, a crisis of confidence over the status , the ...
... wives who will spend all their earnings)' (Gaskell, 1967, p.379). From her letters Gaskell comes across as a woman experiencing what Judith Newton calls a 'more general ideological crisis, a crisis of confidence over the status , the ...
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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