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 2
... follows , I argue that the organized femi- nist agitation to reform the statutory regulation of married women's property in Victorian England , most active as a movement between 1854 and 1882 , has an important bearing on the structural ...
... follows , I argue that the organized femi- nist agitation to reform the statutory regulation of married women's property in Victorian England , most active as a movement between 1854 and 1882 , has an important bearing on the structural ...
Page 16
... follows from the heroine's rejection of forms of identity engendered by property relations in marriage . In both these texts the flight from property and romance is explained within the context of cultural associations of femininity and ...
... follows from the heroine's rejection of forms of identity engendered by property relations in marriage . In both these texts the flight from property and romance is explained within the context of cultural associations of femininity and ...
Page 23
... follows is a plot plagued with anagnoreses , confessions pleading new beginnings , and reversals of fortune . Finally , the book winds up with an appended tale of the pre - dawn , ' when there was neither mill , nor cot , nor hall ' and ...
... follows is a plot plagued with anagnoreses , confessions pleading new beginnings , and reversals of fortune . Finally , the book winds up with an appended tale of the pre - dawn , ' when there was neither mill , nor cot , nor hall ' and ...
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argues Barbara Bodichon becomes Betteredge Bretton Brontë Caroline Celt chapter character Chartism Collins Collins's comedy comic conflict conventional coverture Cranford Cranfordians critical Crossways culture Diana divorce domestic earnings Elizabeth Gaskell England English female feminine feminist figure Gaskell Gaskell's gender George Meredith Gillian Beer Hardy Hardy's Helstone heroine heroine's Hintock household husband ideology imagination imperial independent Irish Jane Eyre Jude Jude the Obscure Jude's ladies land 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 reform provincial question Rachel readers realism Redworth relations relationship representation represents resistance rhetoric romance scene sensation novel sexual Shirley Shirley's social social realism society space sphere story struggle suggests things tion Verinder Victorian novel Villette voice Wessex widow wife wives woman of property women Woodlanders writing