scholarly journals Joanne Wilkes, Women Reviewing Women in Nineteenth-Century Britain The Critical Reception of Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot

2011 ◽  
pp. 197-201
Author(s):  
Claire Bazin
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Critical Reception

CONTEMPORARY BIOGRAPHIES OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELISTS

2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 535-549
Author(s):  
Frederick R. Karl
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Peter Ackroyd ◽  
Oxford University Press

IT IS TIME to assess where contemporary biographies of Victorian novelists are heading. With two more books about George Eliot, still others on Jane Austen, and another on Anthony Trollope, we see redundancy everywhere. As for other major figures, the Brontës have finally quieted down with Juliet Barker’s monumental biography; Dickens has settled in with Peter Ackroyd and Fred Kaplan, and whoever is waiting in the wings for another stab at his life is probably wise to await the completion of the magnificent Oxford University Press edition of the letters, now passing Volume 11.

Realism and the Institution of the Nineteenth-Century Novel

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-68
Author(s):  
Mary L. Mullen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Jane Austen ◽  
Elizabeth Gaskell ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Critical Reception ◽  
Margaret Oliphant ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
Origin Story ◽  
Walter Scott

This chapter argues that establishing an origin for what we now call ‘British realism’ or ‘the Irish novel’ is both an institutional and an anachronistic endeavour: the stories that we tell about novels are actually stories about the cultural institutions that study novels. Considering the formal and political divisions of Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent alongside its changing critical reception, the chapter demonstrates how ‘British realism’ is an anachronistic formation and offers a new origin story where ‘British realism’ and ‘the Irish novel’ are not separate traditions or forms, but rather dynamically intertwined. Castle Rackrent, long thought to be an exemplary Irish novel precisely because it is not realist, develops realist contradictions that are taken up by later nineteenth-century Irish, Scottish and English novelists like Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant and Anthony Trollope.

Afterword

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-212
Author(s):  
Jane Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Mary Wollstonecraft ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Mary Elizabeth Braddon ◽  
Margaret Fuller ◽  
Roll Call ◽  
Susan Fenimore Cooper

It is worth repeating the roll call: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Caroline Norton, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Celia Thaxter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Francis Wright, and Lydia Maria Child. The essays in Gendered Ecologies: New Materialist Interpretations of Women Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century...

QUAKER DRESS, SEXUALITY, AND THE DOMESTICATION OF REFORM IN THE VICTORIAN NOVEL

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 211-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Keen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
George Eliot ◽  
Charlotte Bronte ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Victorian Novel ◽  
Jane Eyre ◽  
Religious Groups ◽  
Victorian Fiction ◽  
Core Function ◽  
Nineteenth Century Novels

WHY ARE JANE EYRE AND DOROTHEA BROOKE clad by their creators in “Quakerish” garb? The oppositional plainness and simplicity of Quakerish heroines have often been read as signs of classlessness and sexlessness.1 Plain and simple clothing seems, to both Victorian and contemporary eyes, part of the package of reticence, reserve, and repression associated with the evangelical wing of nineteenth-century dissenting sects.2 The typical sociological view of the function of dress within conservative religious groups holds that “strict dress codes are enforced because dress is considered symbolic of religiosity. Hence dress becomes a symbol of social control as it controls the external body” (Arthur 1). The control of female sexuality and the restraint of desire would seem to be the core function of modest clothing. Then the plain dress of some of the liveliest heroines of Victorian fiction presents a puzzle that can be solved only by recuperating the meaning of that clothing for Victorians. As fashion historian Anne Hollander points out, nineteenth-century novels testify to the way that clothes “always correctly express character” (Feeding the Eye 12), but the meaning of particular articles of clothing or styles can slip away. Accurately reading the characters of Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot thus requires careful interpretation of their dress, in this case reversing the conventional reading of their plain, modest, and simple style. This essay argues that Quakerish clothing expresses both a promise of spirited sexuality and an admonition about the class-crossing potential of the respectable female contained within it.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document