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Primitive marriage : victorian anthropology, the novel, and sexual modernity / Kathy Alexis Psomiades.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Psomiades, Kathy Alexis, 1963- author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- English literature--19th century--History and criticism.
- English literature.
- Literature--History and criticism.
- Literature.
- Sex in literature.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (223 pages)
- Edition:
- 1st ed.
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford, England : Oxford University Press, [2023]
- Summary:
- What happens when another genre of writing lays claim to the novel's traditional subject of marriage? This book shows how anthropology gave late-Victorian novelists and social scientists ways of rethinking heterosexual romance by referring to a new kind of history of marriage systems, sexual behavior, and reproductive practices.
- Contents:
- Cover
- Primitive Marriage: Victorian Anthropology, the Novel, and Sexual Modernity
- Copyright
- Acknowledgments
- Contents
- Introduction: Sexualizing Modernity
- Sexual Modernity
- Sexual Modernity Stories
- Reading Marriage in Victorian Novels
- Marriage and Social Theory: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
- Marriage and Social Theory: The Nineteenth Century
- Henry Maine and John McLennan
- 1. Sexualizing Economic Modernity: Property and Exchange in The Eustace Diamonds
- Reading Heterosexual Exchange in The Eustace Diamonds
- The Historical Emergence of Kinship Theory
- Why the Diamonds Are Not an Heirloom: Women and Property in Henry Maine's Ancient Law
- Why Lucinda Is Savage: Sex in Prehistory in John McLennan's Primitive Marriage
- Genres of Sexual Modernity: Realism, Sensation Fiction, Victorian Anthropology
- Conclusion
- 2. Sexualizing Political Modernity: Herbert Spencer, George Eliot, and the Sexual Contract
- The Sexual Contract
- Victorian Sexual Contract Theory
- Herbert Spencer's Principles of Sociology: Reconciling Individuation and Genesis
- We Only Consent to What We Love: Daniel Deronda and the Sexual Contract of Nation
- 3. Aestheticizing Sexual Modernity: Darwinian Aesthetics and Eugenics
- The Aestheticized Marriage Plot in The Portrait of a Lady
- Sexual Selection and Primitive Marriage
- Feminism and Reproduction in The Heavenly Twins
- 4. Sexualizing Intellectual Modernity: Mythic Marriage in She and Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- The Goddess Plot
- Anthropology of Myth: Edward Tylor, Friedrich Max Müller, Andrew Lang
- Killing the Goddess: H. Rider Haggard's She
- James Frazer's The Golden Bough: Myth and Ritual
- Killing the Goddess: Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- Conclusion: After Primitive Marriage
- References
- Index.
- Notes:
- Description based on print version record.
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Other Format:
- Print version: Psomiades, Kathy Alexis Primitive Marriage
- ISBN:
- 0-19-195446-2
- 0-19-267865-5
- 0-19-267864-7
- OCLC:
- 1373344783
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