Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists
The 1840s, 50s, and 60s: three decades during which the British feminist movement saw some of its most intense activity of the nineteenth-century, and readers find some of the most monstrous, troubling representations of women by male writers in all of literary history. In Fixing Patriarchy, Donald E. Hall suggests that feminism at mid-century posed intertwined social, economic, political and psychological threats to patriarchy. Hall explores the metamorphic nature of Victorian definitions of masculinity and femininity through an analysis of male authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Kingsley, Thackeray, Hughes, Collins, and Trollope in dialogue with Victorian feminists and other women writers.Synthesizing historical research with pertinent queer, feminist, post-structuralist, and materialist theories, Hall locates both startling admissions of moral fallibility and violent strategies of retrenchment and containment of this perceived threat to the male social body. Fixing Patriarchytraces parallels among Victorian discourses of religion, science, economics, and aesthetics, as it explores a cultural dynamic of un-fixedness and heightened desires for fixity.

"1101234659"
Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists
The 1840s, 50s, and 60s: three decades during which the British feminist movement saw some of its most intense activity of the nineteenth-century, and readers find some of the most monstrous, troubling representations of women by male writers in all of literary history. In Fixing Patriarchy, Donald E. Hall suggests that feminism at mid-century posed intertwined social, economic, political and psychological threats to patriarchy. Hall explores the metamorphic nature of Victorian definitions of masculinity and femininity through an analysis of male authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Kingsley, Thackeray, Hughes, Collins, and Trollope in dialogue with Victorian feminists and other women writers.Synthesizing historical research with pertinent queer, feminist, post-structuralist, and materialist theories, Hall locates both startling admissions of moral fallibility and violent strategies of retrenchment and containment of this perceived threat to the male social body. Fixing Patriarchytraces parallels among Victorian discourses of religion, science, economics, and aesthetics, as it explores a cultural dynamic of un-fixedness and heightened desires for fixity.

32.0 In Stock
Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists

Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists

Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists

Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists

Paperback

$32.00 
  • SHIP THIS ITEM
    Qualifies for Free Shipping
  • PICK UP IN STORE
    Check Availability at Nearby Stores

Related collections and offers


Overview

The 1840s, 50s, and 60s: three decades during which the British feminist movement saw some of its most intense activity of the nineteenth-century, and readers find some of the most monstrous, troubling representations of women by male writers in all of literary history. In Fixing Patriarchy, Donald E. Hall suggests that feminism at mid-century posed intertwined social, economic, political and psychological threats to patriarchy. Hall explores the metamorphic nature of Victorian definitions of masculinity and femininity through an analysis of male authors such as Dickens, Tennyson, Kingsley, Thackeray, Hughes, Collins, and Trollope in dialogue with Victorian feminists and other women writers.Synthesizing historical research with pertinent queer, feminist, post-structuralist, and materialist theories, Hall locates both startling admissions of moral fallibility and violent strategies of retrenchment and containment of this perceived threat to the male social body. Fixing Patriarchytraces parallels among Victorian discourses of religion, science, economics, and aesthetics, as it explores a cultural dynamic of un-fixedness and heightened desires for fixity.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780814735374
Publisher: New York University Press
Publication date: 01/01/1997
Pages: 416
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Donald E. Hall is Jackson Family Distinguished Chair in the Department of English at West Virginia University and the author of Fixing Patriarchy: Feminism and Mid-Victorian Male Novelists, also from NYU Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements - Introduction: Female Trouble: Nineteenth-Century Feminism and a Literature of Threat - PART 1: THE 1840s - 'Betsy Prig...try the cowcumbers, God Bless You!': Hierarchy, Transgression, and Trouble in Martin Chuzzlewit - Reading Tennyson Reading Fuller Reading Tennyson: The Anti-Feminism of The Princess - Kingsley as Negotiator: Class/Gender Discord/Discourse in Yeast and Alton Locke - PART 2: THE 1850s - Gender in the Marketplace: Contestation and Accommodation in Thackeray's The Newcomes - 'None of your eyes at me': The Patriarchal Gaze in Little Dorrit - Becoming One's Own Worst Enemy: Muscular Anxiety in Tom Brown's Schooldays - PART 3: THE 1860s - From Margin to Centre: Agency and Authority in the Novels of Wilkie Collins - Great Expectations and Harsh Realities - Conclusion: Trollope on Women/Women in Trollope - Works Cited
From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews