The Brother-Sister Culture in Nineteenth-Century Literature : From Austen to Woolf

This book argues that brother-sister relationships--idealized by the Romantics and intensified in 19th-century English domestic culture--is a neglected key to understanding Victorian gender relations. Attracted by the apparent purity of the sibling bond, novelists and poets also acknowledged its innate ambivalence and instability, through conflicting patterns of sublimated devotion, revenge fantasy, and corrosive obsession. The final chapter shows how the brother-sister bond was permanently changed by the experience of the First World War. Machine generated contents note: Introduction 1 The Brother and Sister Culture 2 Brother-Sister Collaborative Relationships Romantic partnerships: the Lambs and the Wordsworths Victorian partnerships: the Brontes and the Rossettis The Sitwell phenomenon 3 'One of the Highest Forms of Friendship': Brother-Sister relationships in women's autobiography Margaret Oliphant and Elizabeth Sewell Harriet and James Martineau Conclusion 4 The Brother as Lover Jane Austen and Mary Shelley The Bronte novels Family sagas of the 1860s Dickens and George Eliot Conclusion 5 The Family Revenge Novel Early nineteenth-century Gothic representations Dickens and L. P. Hartley: sisters in wheelchairs Bertha Rochester: the mad sister in the attic Bad Brothers: an introduction Trollope and Oliphant Protective Rivalry: Mary Cholmondeley and William Hamilton 6 Changing Places: Siblings and Cross-Gendering The Brontes Walter Pater Sarah Grand's Heavenly Twins Eliza Lynn Linton's Christopher Kirkland 7 'Most Unwillingly Alive': Brothers and Sisters in the First World War Virginia Woolf Vera Brittain and Rebecca West Katherine Mansfield Conclusion Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index. Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgements......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1. The Brother and Sister Culture......Page 22 2. Brother-Sister Collaborative Relationships......Page 43 3.‘One of the Highest Forms of Friendship’: Brother-Sister Relationships in Women's Autobiography......Page 68 4. The Brother as Lover......Page 91 5. The Family Revenge Novel......Page 117 6. Changing Places: Siblings and Cross-Gendering......Page 141 7. ‘Most Unwillingly Alive’: Brothers and Sisters in the First World War......Page 166 Conclusion......Page 191 Notes......Page 197 Bibliography......Page 216 Index......Page 229 This book argues that brother-sister relationships, idealized by the Romantics, intensified in nineteenth-century English domestic culture, and is a neglected key to understanding Victorian gender relations. Attracted by the apparent purity of the sibling bond, novelists and poets also acknowledged its innate ambivalence and instability, through conflicting patterns of sublimated devotion, revenge fantasy, and corrosive obsession. The final chapter shows how the brother-sister bond was permanently changed by the experience of the First World War. This book argues that brother-sister relationships -- idealized by the Romantics and intensified in 19th-century English domestic culture -- is a neglected key to understanding Victorian gender relations. Attracted by the apparent purity of the sibling bond, novelists and poets also acknowledged its innate ambivalence and instability, through conflicting patterns of sublimated devotion, revenge fantasy, and corrosive obsession. The final chapter shows how the brother-sister bond was permanently changed by the experience of the First World War