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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Page 76
... night - gown . In this way , Priest- man suggests , ' The Moonstone both exploits and circumvents the sexual hypocri- of a specific , Victorian , culture ' ( 1991 , p.28 ) . sy In his critique of earlier classic psychoanalytic readings ...
... night - gown . In this way , Priest- man suggests , ' The Moonstone both exploits and circumvents the sexual hypocri- of a specific , Victorian , culture ' ( 1991 , p.28 ) . sy In his critique of earlier classic psychoanalytic readings ...
Page 92
... night , whose hair ' closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow ' ( p.118 ) indicate the nar- rator's sexualized fascination with the unintelligibility of the landscape , but the novel is intent on exposing ...
... night , whose hair ' closed over her forehead like nightfall extinguishing the western glow ' ( p.118 ) indicate the nar- rator's sexualized fascination with the unintelligibility of the landscape , but the novel is intent on exposing ...
Page 122
... nights of the full moon . The images are strikingly similar to Hardy's description of Little Hintock House in The Woodlanders , ' blankly confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes ' ( Hardy ...
... nights of the full moon . The images are strikingly similar to Hardy's description of Little Hintock House in The Woodlanders , ' blankly confronting with its sightless shuttered windows the surrounding foliage and slopes ' ( Hardy ...
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action argues authority becomes belongs Brontë called Caroline chapter character claim collection common concern conventional Cranford critical Crossways culture desire Diana difference domestic effect England English equality expressed fact female feminine fiction figure finally Gaskell gender give hand Hardy Hardy's heroine household husband imagination important independent individual influence Jane kind ladies land landscape language live London Lucy marriage married Mary material means Meredith Miss Moonstone moral narrative narrator nature never notes novel passion plot political possession present protected provincial question readers reform relations relationship representation represents resistance rhetoric romance seems sensation sense separate sexual Shirley single social society space story suggests things tion turns University Victorian Villette voice wife woman women writing York