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 92
... close , finally sees her trudge off the edge of the novel to the gallows . This literal arrest is scarcely closural , and the distant semaphore of the black flag indicates the broken neck with which this last phase is brought to a stop ...
... close , finally sees her trudge off the edge of the novel to the gallows . This literal arrest is scarcely closural , and the distant semaphore of the black flag indicates the broken neck with which this last phase is brought to a stop ...
Page 97
... close , intimate ' old association ' , but it is not clear precisely what is covered up , what forgotten , what overlooked when the eye descends into this overlooked place . The Woodlanders is Hardy's most conspicuously enclosed novel ...
... close , intimate ' old association ' , but it is not clear precisely what is covered up , what forgotten , what overlooked when the eye descends into this overlooked place . The Woodlanders is Hardy's most conspicuously enclosed novel ...
Page 102
... close inspection . In its place , the dense landscape dooms its inhabit- ants to endemic misunderstandings that breed unrealized desires , set unseen obstructions , and engender suspicion and mistrust . The understory is the place of ...
... close inspection . In its place , the dense landscape dooms its inhabit- ants to endemic misunderstandings that breed unrealized desires , set unseen obstructions , and engender suspicion and mistrust . The understory is the place of ...
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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