Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy : Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot

Examines the works of three Victorian writers, looks at the ways they subverted and affirmed their society, and discusses women's higher education in nineteenth century England. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: Thinking Women and Victorian Ideas....Pages 1-24 Front Matter....Pages 25-25 Textual Services....Pages 27-39 Political Economy and Feminist Politics....Pages 40-57 The Social Parent: Slavery, History, and Reform....Pages 58-73 A Novel Liberty: Deerbrook....Pages 74-93 Front Matter....Pages 95-95 A Clerisy of Poets and the Softer Sex....Pages 97-113 The Social Wound and the Poetics of Healing....Pages 114-127 Defiled Text and Political Poetry....Pages 128-142 Woman’s Art as Servant of Patriarchy: the Vision of Aurora Leigh....Pages 143-158 Front Matter....Pages 159-159 Iconic Sage....Pages 161-176 Instructed Women and the Case of Romola....Pages 177-196 Subversive Sexual Politics: Felix Holt, the Radical ....Pages 197-208 Maggie Tulliver’s Desire....Pages 209-224 Afterword: ‘The Authority to Speak’....Pages 225-231 Back Matter....Pages 232-273