Author: Ruth Brandon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802779751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
Between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century, an army of sad women took up residence in other people's homes, part and yet not part of the family, not servants, yet not equals. To become a governess, observed Jane Austen in Emma, was to "retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever." However, in an ironic paradox, the governess, so marginal to her society, was central to its fiction-partly because governessing was the fate of some exceptionally talented women who later wrote novels based on their experiences. But personal experience was only one source, and writers like Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, and Jane Austen all recognized that the governess's solitary figure, adrift in the world, offered more novelistic scope than did the constrained and respectable wife. Ruth Brandon weaves literary and social history with details from the lives of actual governesses, drawn from their letters and journals, to craft a rare portrait of real women whose lives were in stark contrast to the romantic tales of their fictional counterparts. Governess will resonate with the many fans of Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose novels continue to inspire films and books, as well as fans of The Nanny Diaries and other books that explore the longstanding tension between mothers and the women they hire to raise their children.
Governess
Author: Ruth Brandon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802779751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
Between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century, an army of sad women took up residence in other people's homes, part and yet not part of the family, not servants, yet not equals. To become a governess, observed Jane Austen in Emma, was to "retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever." However, in an ironic paradox, the governess, so marginal to her society, was central to its fiction-partly because governessing was the fate of some exceptionally talented women who later wrote novels based on their experiences. But personal experience was only one source, and writers like Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, and Jane Austen all recognized that the governess's solitary figure, adrift in the world, offered more novelistic scope than did the constrained and respectable wife. Ruth Brandon weaves literary and social history with details from the lives of actual governesses, drawn from their letters and journals, to craft a rare portrait of real women whose lives were in stark contrast to the romantic tales of their fictional counterparts. Governess will resonate with the many fans of Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose novels continue to inspire films and books, as well as fans of The Nanny Diaries and other books that explore the longstanding tension between mothers and the women they hire to raise their children.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802779751
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
Book Description
Between the 1780s and the end of the nineteenth century, an army of sad women took up residence in other people's homes, part and yet not part of the family, not servants, yet not equals. To become a governess, observed Jane Austen in Emma, was to "retire from all the pleasures of life, of rational intercourse, equal society, peace and hope, to penance and mortification for ever." However, in an ironic paradox, the governess, so marginal to her society, was central to its fiction-partly because governessing was the fate of some exceptionally talented women who later wrote novels based on their experiences. But personal experience was only one source, and writers like Wilkie Collins, William Makepeace Thackeray, Henry James, and Jane Austen all recognized that the governess's solitary figure, adrift in the world, offered more novelistic scope than did the constrained and respectable wife. Ruth Brandon weaves literary and social history with details from the lives of actual governesses, drawn from their letters and journals, to craft a rare portrait of real women whose lives were in stark contrast to the romantic tales of their fictional counterparts. Governess will resonate with the many fans of Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose novels continue to inspire films and books, as well as fans of The Nanny Diaries and other books that explore the longstanding tension between mothers and the women they hire to raise their children.
A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen
Author: Agnes Porter
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852851644
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
We only know a surprisingly small number of eighteenth-century women as personalities. This is true, in particular, of women who had to work for their living. Which is why the survival of the letters and journals of Miss Agnes Porter, dating from 1788 to 1814, constitutes an unusually important find. Miss Porter, the daughter of a Church of England clergyman, was born in 1752 with brains but not looks or wealth. Although she would have liked to marry, her various hopes ended in disappointment. She therefore had to earn her living as a governess, working principally in teaching the daughters and grand-daughter of the second Earl of Ilchester. Agnes Porter was neither morbidly religious, as were many of her Victorian successors, nor did she spend her time dwelling on the unfairness of her situation. She emerges as a intelligent, warm and likeable woman ready to make the best of her lot. Joanna Martin has provided a substantial introduction which sets Miss Porter in her historical context. A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen is a detailed, and very early, portrait of a woman entering a profession.
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 9781852851644
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 402
Book Description
We only know a surprisingly small number of eighteenth-century women as personalities. This is true, in particular, of women who had to work for their living. Which is why the survival of the letters and journals of Miss Agnes Porter, dating from 1788 to 1814, constitutes an unusually important find. Miss Porter, the daughter of a Church of England clergyman, was born in 1752 with brains but not looks or wealth. Although she would have liked to marry, her various hopes ended in disappointment. She therefore had to earn her living as a governess, working principally in teaching the daughters and grand-daughter of the second Earl of Ilchester. Agnes Porter was neither morbidly religious, as were many of her Victorian successors, nor did she spend her time dwelling on the unfairness of her situation. She emerges as a intelligent, warm and likeable woman ready to make the best of her lot. Joanna Martin has provided a substantial introduction which sets Miss Porter in her historical context. A Governess in the Age of Jane Austen is a detailed, and very early, portrait of a woman entering a profession.
Women Alone
Author: Bridget Hill
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300088205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book opens a window into the lives of British spinsters in the mid-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, assessing the opportunities open to them and the restrictions placed upon them within different social classes, occupations, and periods. Hill examines how often spinsters were able to earn enough money to live independently, She looks at the part single women played in religious organisations and the role of friendship and letter-writing in their daily lives. She describes the nature of close relationships between women, some lesbian but many others not. Exploring the spinsters' possibilities of escape from restrictive lives, particularly by emigration or crossdressing, she discusses how successful these were. She provides details about the degree of surveillance single women suffered from the authorities and how often they were seen as a threat to social order. Finally she addresses the question of whether all spinsters of this era were suffering victims or potential viragoes, or neither.
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300088205
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
This book opens a window into the lives of British spinsters in the mid-seventeenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, assessing the opportunities open to them and the restrictions placed upon them within different social classes, occupations, and periods. Hill examines how often spinsters were able to earn enough money to live independently, She looks at the part single women played in religious organisations and the role of friendship and letter-writing in their daily lives. She describes the nature of close relationships between women, some lesbian but many others not. Exploring the spinsters' possibilities of escape from restrictive lives, particularly by emigration or crossdressing, she discusses how successful these were. She provides details about the degree of surveillance single women suffered from the authorities and how often they were seen as a threat to social order. Finally she addresses the question of whether all spinsters of this era were suffering victims or potential viragoes, or neither.
Breaking the Governess's Rules
Author: Michelle Styles
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1460349792
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
'How delightful to meet you again, Miss Louisa Sibson.' Jonathon, Lord Chesterholm's eyes bored holes into Louisa Sibson's back. The former fiancée he's thought dead is very much alive… Louisa has rebuilt her life, after being dishonourably dismissed from her post as governess for allowing Jonathon to seduce her. Now Louisa lives by a rulebook of morals and virtue—the devastating Lord Chesterholm will not ruin her again! But Jonathon will get to the bottom of Louisa's disappearance—and he'll enjoy breaking a few of her rules along the way…!
Publisher: Harlequin
ISBN: 1460349792
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
'How delightful to meet you again, Miss Louisa Sibson.' Jonathon, Lord Chesterholm's eyes bored holes into Louisa Sibson's back. The former fiancée he's thought dead is very much alive… Louisa has rebuilt her life, after being dishonourably dismissed from her post as governess for allowing Jonathon to seduce her. Now Louisa lives by a rulebook of morals and virtue—the devastating Lord Chesterholm will not ruin her again! But Jonathon will get to the bottom of Louisa's disappearance—and he'll enjoy breaking a few of her rules along the way…!
"We are Three Sisters"
Author: Drew Lamonica
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826262686
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
ISBN: 0826262686
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 274
Book Description
Handbook of the English Novel, 1830–1900
Author: Martin Middeke
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110394219
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 788
Book Description
Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110394219
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 788
Book Description
Part I of this authoritative handbook offers systematic essays, which deal with major historical, social, philosophical, political, cultural and aesthetic contexts of the English novel between 1830 and 1900. The essays offer a wide scope of aspects such as the Industrial Revolution, religion and secularisation, science, technology, medicine, evolution or the increasing mediatisation of the lifeworld. Part II, then, leads through the work of more than 25 eminent Victorian novelists. Each of these chapters provides both historical and biographical contextualisation, overview, close reading and analysis. They also encourage further research as they look upon the work of the respective authors at issue from the perspectives of cultural and literary theory.
The Nineteenth-century Novel
Author: Stephen Regan
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415238281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 594
Book Description
Provides a valuable selection of nineteenth- century essays on the art of fiction. These contemporary essays are strategically placed alongside a selection of modern critical responses to twelve familiar nineteenth-century novels.
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415238281
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 594
Book Description
Provides a valuable selection of nineteenth- century essays on the art of fiction. These contemporary essays are strategically placed alongside a selection of modern critical responses to twelve familiar nineteenth-century novels.
The Art of Adapting Victorian Literature, 1848-1920
Author: Dr Karen Laird
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472424417
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
In The Art of Adapting Victorian Literature, 1848-1920, Karen E. Laird alternates between readings of nineteenth-century stage and twentieth-century silent film adaptations to investigate the working practices of the first adapters of Victorian fiction. Laird’s juxtaposition between stage and screen brings to life the dynamic culture of literary adaptation as it developed throughout the long nineteenth-century. Focusing on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Laird demonstrates how adaptations performed the valuable cultural work of expanding the original novel’s readership across class and gender divides, exporting the English novel to America, and commemorating the novelists through adaptations that functioned as virtual literary tourism. Bridging the divide between literary criticism, film studies, and theatre history, Laird’s book reveals how the Victorian adapters set the stage for our contemporary film adaptation industry.
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
ISBN: 1472424417
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 249
Book Description
In The Art of Adapting Victorian Literature, 1848-1920, Karen E. Laird alternates between readings of nineteenth-century stage and twentieth-century silent film adaptations to investigate the working practices of the first adapters of Victorian fiction. Laird’s juxtaposition between stage and screen brings to life the dynamic culture of literary adaptation as it developed throughout the long nineteenth-century. Focusing on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, and Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, Laird demonstrates how adaptations performed the valuable cultural work of expanding the original novel’s readership across class and gender divides, exporting the English novel to America, and commemorating the novelists through adaptations that functioned as virtual literary tourism. Bridging the divide between literary criticism, film studies, and theatre history, Laird’s book reveals how the Victorian adapters set the stage for our contemporary film adaptation industry.
Infertilities
Author: Robin Truth Goodman
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816634880
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
"In today's global market, ideas about family, femininity, and reproduction are traded on as actively as any currency or stock. The connection has a history, one rooted in a conception of feminine identities invented through a science interwoven with the pursuit of empire, the accumulation of goods, and the furtherance of power. It is this history that Robin Truth Goodman exposes in her analysis of literary and political representations of female infertility from the mid-nineteenth century to our day." "Goodman takes Darwin's studies on sterility between species as her starting point, exploring evolutionary science as the intersection of a colonial worldview based on class struggle and the pathologizing of female identities that fall outside of reproductive normalcy. She then examines how Joseph Conrad constructs a vision of feminism as a product of miscegenation, how Alejo Carpentier and Mario Vargas Llosa deploy female figures of miscegenation to recast Latin American literature as "difference," and how ecological devastation in the Brazilian Amazon is envisioned through failures in Indian marriage. Locating points of conjunction between queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories, Infertilities points to the role of lesbian representation and reproductive politics in ongoing critiques of globalism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 9780816634880
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 270
Book Description
"In today's global market, ideas about family, femininity, and reproduction are traded on as actively as any currency or stock. The connection has a history, one rooted in a conception of feminine identities invented through a science interwoven with the pursuit of empire, the accumulation of goods, and the furtherance of power. It is this history that Robin Truth Goodman exposes in her analysis of literary and political representations of female infertility from the mid-nineteenth century to our day." "Goodman takes Darwin's studies on sterility between species as her starting point, exploring evolutionary science as the intersection of a colonial worldview based on class struggle and the pathologizing of female identities that fall outside of reproductive normalcy. She then examines how Joseph Conrad constructs a vision of feminism as a product of miscegenation, how Alejo Carpentier and Mario Vargas Llosa deploy female figures of miscegenation to recast Latin American literature as "difference," and how ecological devastation in the Brazilian Amazon is envisioned through failures in Indian marriage. Locating points of conjunction between queer, feminist, and postcolonial theories, Infertilities points to the role of lesbian representation and reproductive politics in ongoing critiques of globalism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
British Women's Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, Volume 1
Author: Adrienne E. Gavin
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319782266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
This five-volume series, British Women’s Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940, historically contextualizes and traces developments in women’s fiction from 1840 to 1940. Critically assessing both canonical and lesser-known British women’s writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscape of women’s authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each of its volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined. Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s inaugurates the series by historically and culturally contextualizing Victorian women’s writing distinctly within the 1840s and 1850s. Using a range of critical perspectives including political and literary history, feminist approaches, disability studies, and the history of reading, the volume’s 16 original essays consider such developments as the construction of a post-Romantic tradition, the politicization of the domestic sphere, and the development of crime and sensation writing. Centrally, it reassesses key mid-nineteenth-century female authors in the context in which they first published while also recovering neglected women writers who helped to shape the literary landscape of the 1840s and 1850s.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319782266
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 293
Book Description
This five-volume series, British Women’s Writing From Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940, historically contextualizes and traces developments in women’s fiction from 1840 to 1940. Critically assessing both canonical and lesser-known British women’s writing decade by decade, it redefines the landscape of women’s authorship across a century of dynamic social and cultural change. With each of its volumes devoted to two decades, the series is wide in scope but historically sharply defined. Volume 1: 1840s and 1850s inaugurates the series by historically and culturally contextualizing Victorian women’s writing distinctly within the 1840s and 1850s. Using a range of critical perspectives including political and literary history, feminist approaches, disability studies, and the history of reading, the volume’s 16 original essays consider such developments as the construction of a post-Romantic tradition, the politicization of the domestic sphere, and the development of crime and sensation writing. Centrally, it reassesses key mid-nineteenth-century female authors in the context in which they first published while also recovering neglected women writers who helped to shape the literary landscape of the 1840s and 1850s.