Bleak Houses

Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism, British
Cover of the book Bleak Houses by Lisa Surridge, Ohio University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Lisa Surridge ISBN: 9780821441992
Publisher: Ohio University Press Publication: November 15, 2005
Imprint: Ohio University Press Language: English
Author: Lisa Surridge
ISBN: 9780821441992
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Publication: November 15, 2005
Imprint: Ohio University Press
Language: English

The Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 opened magistrates' courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings, and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat “private” family violence? Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction traces novelists' engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century.

Lisa Surridge examines the early works of Charles Dickens and reads Dombey and Son and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the context of the intense debates on wife assault and manliness in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Surridge explores George Eliot's Janet's Repentance in light of the parliamentary debates on the 1857 Divorce Act. Marital cruelty trials provide the structure for both Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right.

Locating the New Woman fiction of Mona Caird and the reassuring detective investigations of Sherlock Holmes in the context of late-Victorian feminism and the great marriage debate in the Daily Telegraph, Surridge illustrates how fin-de-siècle fiction brought male sexual violence and the viability of marriage itself under public scrutiny. Bleak Houses thus demonstrates how Victorian fiction was concerned about the wife-assault debates of the nineteenth century, debates which both constructed and invaded the privacy of the middle-class home.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 opened magistrates' courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings, and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat “private” family violence? Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction traces novelists' engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century.

Lisa Surridge examines the early works of Charles Dickens and reads Dombey and Son and Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in the context of the intense debates on wife assault and manliness in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Surridge explores George Eliot's Janet's Repentance in light of the parliamentary debates on the 1857 Divorce Act. Marital cruelty trials provide the structure for both Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White and Anthony Trollope's He Knew He Was Right.

Locating the New Woman fiction of Mona Caird and the reassuring detective investigations of Sherlock Holmes in the context of late-Victorian feminism and the great marriage debate in the Daily Telegraph, Surridge illustrates how fin-de-siècle fiction brought male sexual violence and the viability of marriage itself under public scrutiny. Bleak Houses thus demonstrates how Victorian fiction was concerned about the wife-assault debates of the nineteenth century, debates which both constructed and invaded the privacy of the middle-class home.

More books from Ohio University Press

Cover of the book Waiting for the Sky to Fall by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Hard-Boiled Crime Fiction and the Decline of Moral Authority by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Reel Pleasures by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Postcards from Stanland by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Melodramatic Imperial Writing by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Triumph of the Expert by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book The Emergence of the Moundbuilders by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book The Optimist by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book From Disarmament to Rearmament by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Imagined Spiritual Communities in Britain's Age of Print by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book The Common Lot and Other Stories by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Narrative Theory Unbound by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Counting Down by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Literary Cincinnati by Lisa Surridge
Cover of the book Mama's Gun by Lisa Surridge
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy