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
... reference to pamphlets , public meetings , women's associations , petitions , parliamentary debates , or public discussion of the laws . Rather , the routine execution of the married women's property law is felt as a powerful ...
... reference to pamphlets , public meetings , women's associations , petitions , parliamentary debates , or public discussion of the laws . Rather , the routine execution of the married women's property law is felt as a powerful ...
Page 23
... reference to the issue of female authorship . For Brontë's appeal to the truthfulness of her work is equally a defiance and a rejection of the double chauvinism , against femininity and provinciality , implicit in the charge of hoyden ...
... reference to the issue of female authorship . For Brontë's appeal to the truthfulness of her work is equally a defiance and a rejection of the double chauvinism , against femininity and provinciality , implicit in the charge of hoyden ...
Page 42
... reference , and the Eastern exhibition , the bric - à - brac of an extinct power , all echo in Cranford's narrative of women without men . In cataloguing and valu- ing the possessions of the Amazons , Gaskell pushes the formal limits of ...
... reference , and the Eastern exhibition , the bric - à - brac of an extinct power , all echo in Cranford's narrative of women without men . In cataloguing and valu- ing the possessions of the Amazons , Gaskell pushes the formal limits of ...
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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