The Maternal Voice in Victorian Fiction: Rewriting the Patriarchal Family

by Barbara Z. Thaden

Overview

This is the first full-length study to focus specifically on representations of motherhood in fiction by such Victorian writers as Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Oliphant, Caroline Norton, and Ellen Price Wood. These authors presented an idealized view of motherhood as part of a campaign to gain social and legal status for mothering in a society in which married women were not legal entities and children born in wedlock were the inalienable property of their fathers. These writers used dead mother plots which reversed New Testament parables so that the mother plays the leading role, and maternal circle plots, which portray adult daughters and their mothers raising children outside marriage. This fiction, which showed how children benefit from good mothering, was instrumental in married mothers eventually obtaining equal parental rights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780815327776
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	08/01/1997
Series:	Literature and Society in Victorian Britain , #2
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction; Chapter 1 The Dead Mother; Chapter 2 God the Mother; Chapter 3 The Maternal Circle; Chapter 4 Der Familienroman der Mutter; Conclusion;

Editorial Reviews

"The research is thorough so graduate students and researchers in literature or women's studies may take it off the shelf." — Choice

From the Publisher

Studies representations of motherhood in fiction by Victorian women writers who offered an idealized image as part of a campaign to gain social and legal status for mothering in a society in which married women were not legal entities and legitimate children were the inalienable property of their fathers. Cites examples of the dead mother plots in which mothers play the leading role, and maternal circle plots in which adult daughters and their mothers raise children outside of marriage. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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