I. Wuthering Heights (1847) -- 1. Heathcliff's Social Climbing -- 2. Masculine Privilege, Absent Mothers, Merging Lovers: Gender Roles and Love Relationships -- II. Jane Eyre (1847) -- 3. Judging People by Color, Physiognomy, and Phrenology -- 4. Wide Sargasso Sea--Dark Secrets of the Caribbean: Hatred, Murder, Madness -- III. Vanity Fair (1848) -- 5. Race and Empire -- 6. Aporia, Metafiction, and the Narrator -- IV. North and South (1854) -- 7. Roman Daughter and Milquetoast Father -- 8. Regional and Class Prejudice -- V. A Tale of Two Cities (1859) -- 9. London versus Paris: Is This a Competition? -- 10. Allegory and Personification -- 11. Law and Justice -- VI. Great Expectations (1861) -- 12. Little Pip's Outsized Guilt -- 13. Jack Maggs--Magwitch Writes Back -- 14. Refining Fire and Doppelgänger Devils -- 15. Anti-Semitism, Casual Racism, and Pedagogy -- VII. Middlemarch (1871) -- 16. Angel of Destruction or Spacious Mind? -- 17. Mrs. Cadwallader, Busybody -- 18. What Is a Gentleman? -- 19. Dorothea and Lydgate's Unrealized Potential -- VIII. Far from the Madding Crowd (1874) -- 20. Bathsheba's Feminism -- 21. The Role of the Rustics -- 22. Hardy's Life and Loves -- IX. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) -- 23. Jekyll's Downfall--Sadism or Repression? -- 24. Dr. Jekyll and Mary Reilly: Abuse, Trauma, and Gender -- X. Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) -- 25. Hardy's Modernity and Cosmic Irony -- 26. Pagan versus Christian Values -- XI. The Odd Women (1893) -- 27. The Challenge of Writing a Novel of Ideas -- 28. The Skewed Income Scale: Intersections of Gender and Class.
Summary:
"Enormous social changes during the Victorian era inspired some of the finest novels in the English language. In the final decades of the century, rigid application of gender rules and class hierarchies began to relax. Consciousness of the injustice of class- and gender-based discrimination was growing. Meanwhile, bias against nonwhite peoples was worsening. The British used scientific racism to justify their relentless expansion in Africa and Asia. Viewing Victorian literature through the lens of these social changes gives the modern reader a fresh way to interpret the novels and to appreciate their relevance to contemporary issues. Nineteenth-century novelists deployed realism, satire, and the bildungsroman to resist or support leading ideologies of their time, including the separate spheres doctrine and British supremacism. Each chapter is an elaboration of the author's university lectures about Victorian classics. The tone is scholarly yet conversational, directed to the undergraduate student as well as the general reader or Victoriaphile. The text presents concepts in interdisciplinary cultural studies, discusses the uses of genre for rhetorical and social purposes, and exposes paradoxes of the era. The coherent style, abundant examples, discussion questions, and literary glossary make this book a valuable supplement for readers of the Victorian novel"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.