Avuncularism: Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Nineteenth-Century English Culture

by Eileen Cleere

Overview

Avuncularism explores the fiction of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and many other writers in order to argue that the "nuclear" nineteenth-century family was, in fact, far more fractured and contradictory than twentieth-century critics have assumed. One important and long-forgotten point of such fracture is the popular nickname given to pawnbrokers in the Victorian era: My Uncle. This fundamental connection between pawnbrokers and uncles provides the touchstone of the author's larger argument: that representations of the "avunculate" (a term borrowed from anthropology) in nineteenth-century literature and culture mark a preoccupation with the increasingly theorized and embattled directives of a new political economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804750257
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	05/19/2004
Edition description:	1
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Eileen Cleere is Assistant Professor of English at Southwestern University.

Table of Contents

	Introduction: Life Without Father--Uncles in History, Theory, and Literature	1
1.	Home Trading: Mansfield Park and the Economics of Endogamy	33
2.	Reproduction and Malthusian Economics: Fat, Fertility, and Family Planning in Adam Bede	76
3.	In Loco Parentis: Dickensian Uncles and the Victorian Pawnshop	109
4.	Turning Bones into Spoons: Jews, Pawnbrokers, and Daniel Deronda	144
5.	"Send the Letters, Uncle John": Trollope, Penny-Postage Reform, and the Domestication of Empire	171
	Conclusion: Home Trading Redux: Universal Brotherhood and the Redemption of Uncle	205
	Notes	215
	Index	233

Editorial Reviews

"Eileen Cleere has given us a curious, intriguing, impressively researched, agreeably written, and exhaustive argument for the importance of "uncle" in nineteenth-century England..."

Victorian Studies

"Eileen Cleere has given us a curious, intriguing, impressively researched, agreeably written, and exhaustive argument for the importance of "uncle" in nineteenth-century England..."—Victorian Studies


"This book is an innovative reconsideration of what patriarchy means and how it works in the Victorian context. By use of richly detailed readings and an exhaustive familiarity with the primary texts, Cleere literally gives new meaning to the word 'avuncular.'" —Robyn R. Warhol,University of Vermont


"Cleere makes judicious use of psychoanalytic theory, combined with economic theory, close readings, and well-grounded historical research to offer an insightful and broad commentary on the period." —Joseph W. Childers,University of California, Riverside

From the Publisher