Subjectivities: A History of Self-Representation in Britain, 1832-1920

by Regenia Gagnier

Overview

This comparative analysis draws on working-class autobiography, public and boarding school memoirs, and the canonical autobiographies by women and men in the United Kingdom to define subjectivity and value within social class and gender in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain. Gagnier reconsiders traditional distinctions between mind and body, private desire and public good, aesthetics and utility, and fact and value in the context of everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195060966
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	02/14/1991
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.10(d)

Table of Contents

	Introduction	3
	Pragmatics, Rhetoric, and Cultural Studies	3
	Subjectivity	8
	Value	14
1.	Situating Subjectivities	31
	Rhetorical Projects in Participation and Antagonism	31
	Gendered, Classed Subjects and Cultural Narratives	41
2.	Subjectivity, the Body, and Material Culture	55
	Working Women's Uncanny World of Childbirth	59
	Henry Mayhew's Rich World of Poverty	62
	Florence Nightingale's Violent World of Leisure	93
3.	Representations of the Working Classes by Nonworking-Class Writers: Subjectivity and Solidarity	99
	The Classic Victorian Novel: Solidarity for Whom?	103
	Nonfictional Representations	114
	Late Victorian Short Fiction	123
4.	Working-Class Autobiography, Subjectivity, and Value	138
	Working-Class Subjectivity and Aesthetics	139
	The Variety of Working-Class Autobiography	150
	Conclusions: Subjectivity and Value	168
5.	The Making of Middle-Class Identities: School and Family	171
	The Male Public Schools	171
	Women on Schools and Rules	194
6.	Literary Subjectivity and Other Possibilities in Some Classic Texts	220
	Literary Subjectivity	220
	Other Possibilities	239
	Concluding Observations through 1990	275
	Notes	279
	Index	311