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 45
When he returns to Cranford he assumes control of the novel ' s story - telling and
the town ' s social diplomacy ... and told me stories that sounded so very much
like Baron Munchausen ' s , that I was sure he was making fun of me ' ( p . 208 ) .
When he returns to Cranford he assumes control of the novel ' s story - telling and
the town ' s social diplomacy ... and told me stories that sounded so very much
like Baron Munchausen ' s , that I was sure he was making fun of me ' ( p . 208 ) .
Page 49
The moment of recounting , of bringing into voice , transports the past into
utterance with an immediacy that is startling and sometimes violent . This is what
invests the ' old things ' of the novel ( the very materiality of its story - artefacts )
with the ...
The moment of recounting , of bringing into voice , transports the past into
utterance with an immediacy that is startling and sometimes violent . This is what
invests the ' old things ' of the novel ( the very materiality of its story - artefacts )
with the ...
Page 54
702 ) , claims that ' Lucy ' s story is enacted through a play of doublings , mirrors ,
and reversals which never entirely come to rest in the text ' ( p . 703 ) . Some
readings which appeal to the multiplicity of discourses present in Brontė ' s fiction
...
702 ) , claims that ' Lucy ' s story is enacted through a play of doublings , mirrors ,
and reversals which never entirely come to rest in the text ' ( p . 703 ) . Some
readings which appeal to the multiplicity of discourses present in Brontė ' s fiction
...
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action argues authority becomes belongs Brontė 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 idea 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