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 107
... rings ' like a weariful tongue in a corpse ' ( p.100 ) and only a ' blank hollowness ' answers Redworth's rap on the back door . The landscape , too , is both substance and ether - " The Downs were like floating islands , like fairy ...
... rings ' like a weariful tongue in a corpse ' ( p.100 ) and only a ' blank hollowness ' answers Redworth's rap on the back door . The landscape , too , is both substance and ether - " The Downs were like floating islands , like fairy ...
Page 113
... ring of her voice , the girl's impassioned rapidity in rushing through any percep- tible avenue of the labyrinth , or beating down obstacles to form one , and coming swiftly to some solution , constituted her the chief of the pair of ...
... ring of her voice , the girl's impassioned rapidity in rushing through any percep- tible avenue of the labyrinth , or beating down obstacles to form one , and coming swiftly to some solution , constituted her the chief of the pair 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