Queen Victoria's supporters argued that her intense commitment to
her private life made her the more fit to "mother" her people.
Critics charged that it distracted her from public
responsibilities. Whichever group was right, one thing is certain:
The Victorians were passionate about family. This insightful book
focuses particularly on the conflicting and powerful images of
family life Victorians produced in their fiction and
nonfiction--that is, on how the Victorians themselves conceived of
family, which continues both to influence and to help explain
visions of family today. Drawing upon a wide variety of
19th-century fiction and nonfiction, Nelson examines the English
Victorian family both as it was imagined and as it was experienced.
For many Victorians, family was exalted to the status of secular
religion, endowed with the power of fighting the contamination of
unchecked commercialism or sexuality and holding out the promise of
reforming humankind. Although in practice this ideal might have
proven unattainable, the many detailed 19th-century descriptions of
the outlook and behavior appropriate to fathers and mothers, sons
and daughters, and other family members illustrate the extent of
the pressure felt by members of this society to try to live up to
the expectations of their culture. Defining family to include the
extended family, the foster or adoptive family, and the stepfamily,
Nelson considers different roles within the Victorian household in
order to gauge the ambivalence and the social anxieties surrounding
them--many of which continue to influence our notions of family
today.
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