Professional domesticity in the Victorian novel : women, work, and home / Monica F. Cohen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cohen, Monica F., author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 14.

Cambridge studies in nineteenth-century literature and culture ; 14

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Domestic fiction, English--History and criticism.

Domestic fiction, English.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Women and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Women and literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Literature and society.

Domestic relations in literature.

Occupations in literature.

Sex role in literature.

Women in literature.

Home in literature.

Work in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 216 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Much attention has recently been given by scholars to the widening of the gender gap in the nineteenth century and the concept of separate spheres. Testing such constructions, and questioning the stereotypes associated with Victorian domesticity, Monica F. Cohen offers new readings of narratives by Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Eliot, Eden, Gaskell, Oliphant and Reade to show how domestic work, the most feminine of all activities, gained much of its social credibility by positioning itself in relation to the emergent professions. By exploring how novels cast the Victorian conception of female morality into the vocabulary of nineteenth-century professionalism, Cohen traces the ways in which women sought identity and privilege within a professionalised culture, and revises our understanding of Victorian domestic ideology.

Contents:

Persuading the navy home: Austen and professional domesticism

Homesick: the domestic interiors of Villette

Dickens I: Great expectations and vocational domesticity

Dickens II: Little Dorrit in a home: institutionalization and form

Professing renunciation: domesticity in Felix Holt

A prejudice for milk: professionalism, nationalism and domesticism in Daniel Deronda.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references (p. 207-213) and index.

ISBN:

0-511-58526-8

0-511-00808-2