TELLING TALES: ESSAYS ON GENDER AND NARRATIVE FORM IN VICTORIAN LITERATURE AND CULTURE (THEORY INTERPRETATION NARRATIV)

Publisher's description: Telling Tales offers new and original readings of novels by Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Margaret Oliphant, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It also presents new archival material on the lives and stories of working-class women in Victorian Britain. Finally, it sets forth innovative interpretations of the complex ways in which gender informs the abstract cultural narratives--like space, aesthetic value, and nationality--through which a populace comes to know and position itself. Focusing on the interrelations of form, gender, and culture in narratives of the Victorian period, Telling Tales explores the close interplay between gender as manifest in specific literary works and gender as manifest in Victorian culture. The latter does not reflect a shift away from form toward culture, but rather a steady concern of form-in-culture. Reading and analyzing Victorian novels provides an education for reading and interpreting the broader culture. The book's several chapters explore and pose answers to important questions about the impact of gender on narrative in Victorian culture: How do women writers respond to themes and narrative structures of precursor male writers? What are the very real differences that shape a newly emerging tradition of female authorship? How does gender enter into the determination of aesthetic value? How does gender enter into the national imaginary 3/4the idea of Englishness? In exploring these key concerns, Telling Tales establishes a broad terrain for future inquiries that take gender as an organizing term and principle for analysis of narratives in all periods Publisher's description: Telling Tales offers new and original readings of novels by Charlotte Brontë, Anne Brontë, Thomas Hardy, Margaret Oliphant, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It also presents new archival material on the lives and stories of working-class women in Victorian Britain. Finally, it sets forth innovative interpretations of the complex ways in which gender informs the abstract cultural narratives--like space, aesthetic value, and nationality--through which a populace comes to know and position itself. Focusing on the interrelations of form, gender, and culture in narratives of the Victorian period, Telling Tales explores the close interplay between gender as manifest in specific literary works and gender as manifest in Victorian culture. The latter does not reflect a shift away from form toward culture, but rather a steady concern of form-in-culture. Reading and analyzing Victorian novels provides an education for reading and interpreting the broader culture. The book's several chapters explore and pose answers to important questions about the impact of gender on narrative in Victorian culture: How do women writers respond to themes and narrative structures of precursor male writers? What are the very real differences that shape a newly emerging tradition of female authorship? How does gender enter into the determination of aesthetic value? How does gender enter into the national imaginary 3/4the idea of Englishness? In exploring these key concerns, Telling Tales establishes a broad terrain for future inquiries that take gender as an organizing term and principle for analysis of narratives in all periods Frontmatter Acknowledgements (page vii) Preface (page ix) Introduction (page xiii) 1. Mosaic, Dialogue, Discourse, Theft, and Mimicry: Charlotte Brontë Rereads Wiliam Makepeace Thackeray (page 1) 2. Dialogue and Narrative Transgressions in Ann Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall (page 30) 3. Becoming a Man in Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure (page 47) 4. Gender Geographies: The Lady and the Country House in Wilkie Collins's Woman in White and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret (page 64) 5. Private Space and Public Woman: Victorian Working-Class Narratives (page 77) 6. Cultural Capital and the Gendering of Values: Victorian Women Writers (page 91) 7. Nation and Nationality: Queen Victoria in the Developing Narrative of Englishness (page 111) Notes (page 131) Works Cited (page 145) Index (page 157) Mosaic, dialogue, discourse, theft, and mimicry : Charlotte Brontë rereads William Makepeace Thackeray Dialogue and narrative transgressions in Anne Brontë's Tenant of Wildfell Hall Becoming a man in Thomas Hardy's Jude the obscure Gender geographies : the lady and the country house in Wilkie Collins's Woman in white and Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's secret Private space and public women : Victorian working-class narratives Cultural capital and the gendering of values : Victorian women writers Nation and nationality : Queen Victoria in the developing narrative of Englishness. This book offers new and original readings of novels by Charlotte Bronte, ̈ Anne Bronte, ̈ Thomas Hardy, Margaret Oliphant, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. It also presents new archival material on the lives and stories of working-class women in Victorian Britain. Finally, it sets forth innovative interpretations of the complex ways in which gender informs the abstract cultural narratives--like space, aesthetic value, and nationality--through which a populace comes to know and position itself.--Publisher's description