Romantic Friendship in Victorian LiteratureCarolyn Oulton recovers the strategies nineteenth-century authors used to justify the ideal of same-sex romantic friendship and the anxieties these strategies reveal. Informed by recent insights into the erotic potential of such relationships, but focused on romantic friendship as an independent and fully formulated ideal, Oulton departs from other critics who view romantic friendship as either nebulous and culturally naive or an invocation of homoerotic responsiveness. By considering both male and female friendships, Oulton uncovers surprising parallels between them in novels and poetry by authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Disraeli, Charlotte Brontë, and Braddon. Oulton also examines conduct manuals, periodicals, and religious treatises, tracing developments from mid-century to the fin de siècle, when romantic friendship first came under serious attack. Her book is a persuasive challenge to those who view mid-Victorian England, existing in a state of blissful pre-Freudian innocence, as unproblematically accommodating of passionate same-sex relationships. |
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Page 87
... ( Bleak House , 638 ) , although on further analysis this statement proves to be problematic . That this relationship is intended as a recognisably romantic friendship is clear from its defining features , many of which it shares with the ...
... ( Bleak House , 638 ) , although on further analysis this statement proves to be problematic . That this relationship is intended as a recognisably romantic friendship is clear from its defining features , many of which it shares with the ...
Page 89
... Bleak House . Esther's narrative - as a succession of more or less irritated critics have pointed out - is highly tendentious in places . Her evangelical upbringing is itself , in the context of the novel , enough to undermine her ...
... Bleak House . Esther's narrative - as a succession of more or less irritated critics have pointed out - is highly tendentious in places . Her evangelical upbringing is itself , in the context of the novel , enough to undermine her ...
Page 92
... Bleak House ] there was a hollow window - seat , in which , with a spring- lock , three dear Adas might have been lost at once . ( 78 ) Ultimately , the plot does carry out this fantasy , allowing Ada to be ' lost ' in Bleak House , as ...
... Bleak House ] there was a hollow window - seat , in which , with a spring- lock , three dear Adas might have been lost at once . ( 78 ) Ultimately , the plot does carry out this fantasy , allowing Ada to be ' lost ' in Bleak House , as ...
Contents
The Problem of Male Friendship | 33 |
The Ends of Female Friendship | 71 |
Romantic Friendship and the Satirists | 107 |
Copyright | |
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Allan allows Amelia anxiety appears Armadale Audley Aurora Leigh behaviour Bleak House Carmilla Caroline central character Charlotte Brontë claims context conventions Cynthia David Copperfield death despite Dickens Dickens's Dorian Gray emotion erotic Esther expression Faderman feeling female friendship female romantic friendship feminine fiction fin de siècle gender George girls heterosexual homosexual ideal illness influence innocence intense friendship intimacy Ladies of Llangollen Lady Audley's Secret later Laura lesbian London Lord Henry love plot Lydia male friendship male romantic friendship Marian marriage marriage plot marry masculine Memoriam mid-century Midwinter Midwinter's Molly Molly's moral narrative narrator nineteenth century Notably novel Oscar Wilde passion perceived Platonics potential protagonist reader Red Pottage relations relationship repeatedly response Robert rôle same-sex friendship satire sense sexual Shirley social status Steerforth story suggests Tennyson texts Thackeray tradition ultimately Vanity Fair Vicinus Victorian Victorian Literature Wilkie Collins woman women writers young youth