Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction PDF
Preview Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction
communities of care Communities of Care the social ethics of victorian fiction Talia Schafer prince ton university press princet on & oxford Copyright © 2021 by Prince ton University Press “Small Kindnesses” from Bonfre Opera by Danusha Laméris, © 2020. Reprinted by permission of the University of Pittsburgh Press. Prince ton University Press is committed to the protection of copyright and the intellectual property our authors entrust to us. Copyright promotes the prog ress and integrity of knowledge. Thank you for supporting free speech and the global exchange of ideas by purchasing an authorized edition of this book. If you wish to reproduce or distribute any part of it in any form, please obtain permission. Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to permissions@press . princeton . edu Published by Prince ton University Press 41 William Street, Prince ton, New Jersey 08540 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press . princeton . edu All Rights Reserved ISBN 9780691199634 ISBN (e-b ook) 9780691226514 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available Editorial: Anne Savarese and James Collier Production Editorial: Sara Lerner Jacket Design: Pamela L. Schnitter Production: Erin Suydam Publicity: Alyssa Sanford and Amy Stewart Copyeditor: Cynthia Buck Jacket Credit: Ford Madox Brown, Henry Fawcett; Dame Millicent Fawcett, 1872. Oil on canvas, 42 3/4 in. × 33 in. (1086 mm × 838 mm). Bequeathed by Sir Charles Went worth Dilke, 2nd Bt, 1911. © National Portrait Gallery, London This book has been composed in Miller Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of Amer ic a 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Dedicated to the friends who have sustained me, especially Nicole, who for the past twenty years has been a care community in herself Small Kindnesses I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” when someone sneezes, a leftover from the Bubonic plague. “ Don’t die,” we are saying. And sometimes, when you spill lemons from your grocery bag, someone else will help you pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. We want to be handed our cup of cofee hot, and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. We have so l ittle of each other, now. So far from tribe and fre. Only these brief moments of exchange. What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these feeting temples we make together when we say, “H ere, have my seat,” “Go ahead— you frst,” “I like your hat.” —d anusha laméris, bonfire opera contents Preface and Acknowl edgments · xi Introduction: Care Communities Today 1 chapter 1 Ethics of Care and the Care Community 28 chapter 2 Austen, Dickens, and Brontë: Bodies before the Normate 60 chapter 3 Global Mi grant Care and Emotional L abor in Villette 88 chapter 4 Beyond Sympathy: The State of Care in Daniel Deronda 117 chapter 5 Care Meets the S ilent Treatment in The Wings of the Dove 140 chapter 6 Composite Fiction and the Care Community in The Heir of Redclyfe 160 Epilogue: Critical Care 189 Notes · 219 Works Cited · 243 Index · 2 67 [ ix ]
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