Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists

239 Pages·1996·13.53 MB·English

by  Donald E. Hall (auth.)

FIXING PATRIARCHY
Also by Donald E. Hall
MUSCULAR CHRISTIANITY:
Embodying the Victorian Age (Editor)
REPRESENTING BISEXUALITIES:
Subjects and Cultures of Fluid Desire
(Co-editor with Maria Pramaggiore)
Fixing Patriarchy
Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male
Novelists
Donald E. Hall
© Donald E. Hall 1996
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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claims for damages.
First published 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-65578-8 ISBN 978-0-230-38954-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230389540
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
05 04 03 02 OJ 00 99 98 97 96
For my parents,
who always encouraged me to speak my mind
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Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Female Trouble: Nineteenth-Century
Feminism and a Literature of Threat 1
Part One: The 1840s
1 'Betsy Prig ... Try the Cowcumbers, God Bless You!':
Hierarchy, Transgression and Trouble in
Martin Chuzzlewit 21
2 Reading Tennyson Reading Fuller Reading Tennyson:
The Anti-Feminism of The Princess 44
3 Kingsley as Negotiator: Class/Gender
Discord/Discourse in Yeast and Alton Locke 63
Part Two: The 1850s
4 Gender in the Marketplace: Contestation and
Accommodation in Thackeray's The Newcomes 87
5 'None of Your Eyes at Me': The Patriarchal Gaze in
Little Dorrit 107
6 Becoming One's Own Worst Enemy: Muscular Anxiety
in Tom Brown's Schooldays 131
Part Three: The 1860s
7 From Margin to Center: Agency and Authority in the
Novels of Wilkie Collins 151
vii
viii Contents
8 Great Expectations and Harsh Realities 175
Conclusion: Trollope on Women/Women in Trollope 196
Notes 213
Bibliography 223
Index 233
Acknowledgments
Many people have contributed to the creation and completion of
this book; I have space to thank only a few here.
From my graduate days at the University of Maryland, I would
like to acknowledge the mentoring and advice of Martha Nell
Smith, Neil Fraistat, Susan Lanser, and especially, Deirdre David.
The support and helpful commentary of Linda Brigham, Ann
Steinecke, Michael Selmon, Kristin Vogt, Sharon Groves, Peggy Lin,
Lorrie Sprecher, and Kim Wright were also vital to my health, hap
piness, and intellectual growth there.
At California State University, Northridge, I would like to thank
the Office of Graduate Studies, Research, and International Pro
grams, for a grant to complete this work. Dean Jorge Garcia, Asso
ciate Dean Mark Rocha, and Professor William Walsh, Chair of the
Department of English, provided key support.
My colleagues in the English Department at Northridge have
also played important roles: Sandra Stanley, Jack Solomon, and
Anthony Dawahare, among many. But to no one do I owe a bigger
debt than Jan Ramjerdi, whose humor and delight in transgression
is infectious. She and Nancy Krusoe had an impact on this book
that is immeasurable.
Finally, R. Baird Shuman has provided many years of wise
counsel and good bourbon. Carolyn Francis has been both caring
and patient.
Two chapters of this study were published earlier in very dif
ferent forms. Chapter 2 first appeared as 'The Anti-Feminist Ideo
logy of Tennyson's The Princess' in Modern Language Studies, Vol. 21,
No. 4, 1991, pp. 49-62. Chapter 6 was published as a work in pro
gress entitled 'Muscular Anxiety: Degradation and Appropriation
in Tom Brown's Schooldays' in Victorian Literature and Culture, Vol.
21, 1993, pp. 327-43.
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