Focusing on the ways in which female novelists have, in their
creative work, challenged or scrutinised contemporary assumptions
about their own sex, this book's critical interest in women s
fiction shows how mid-nineteenth-century women writers confront the
conflict between the pressures of matrimonial ideologies and the
often more attractive alternative of single or professional life.
In arguing that the tensions and dualities of their work represent
the honest confrontation of their own ambivalence rather than
attempted conformity to convention, it calls for a fresh look at
patterns of imaginative representation in Victorian women s
literature.
Making extensive use of letters and non-fiction, this study
relates the opinions expressed there to the themes and methods of
the fictional narratives. The first chapter outlines the social and
ideological framework within which the authors were writing; the
subsequent five chapters deal with the individual novelists, Craik,
Charlotte Bronte, Sewell, Gaskell, and Eliot, examining the works
of each and also pointing to the similarities between them, thus
suggesting a shared female voice .
Dealing with minor writers as well as better-known figures, it
opens up new areas of critical investigation, claiming not only
that many nineteenth-century female novelists have been
undeservedly neglected but also that the major ones are further
illuminated by being considered alongside their less familiar
contemporaries.
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