Gender, Genre, and Victorian Historical WritingFirst published in 1999. and Middlemarch and of a range of nineteenth-century historical works, including works by and about women that are discussed extensively here for the first time. The blurring of boundaries between historical and fictional narratives, stimulated by the enormous success of Walter Scott's novels, and the development of social history are shown to have been key factors in an uneven, controversial, but persistent feminization of history, the first because of the longstanding association of novels with women the second because social history focuses on the private sphere, traditionally women's domain. Along with the appearance of numerous historical texts written by women and taking women as their subjects, these developments challenged conventional beliefs about historical authority and relevance that had long relegated women to the margins, both literally and metaphorically. In its exploration of these changes and their implications, Gender and Victorian Historical Writing revises standard assumptions about Victorian ideas of history, finding an awareness of and experimentation with gender and genre that prefigure theoretical and scholarly concerns in contemporary women's history. |
Contents
| 3 | |
Needlework and Victorian | 61 |
Gender and Historiography in Romola | 103 |
Not At All Like Being A Queen? Historicizing | 135 |
Reconfiguring Gender and Power | 161 |
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Ages appears argue associated authority become biographies called century changes Chapter character concerns considered continues critics cultural discourse discussions distinction domestic Dorothea Edinburgh effect Eliot Elizabeth embroidery English Essays example experience fact female feminine Feminism fiction figure finds Froude gender George George Eliot give Henry historiography human ideal important influence instance interest kind lady least less Literary Lives London Macaulay Macaulay's marriage Mary Mary's masculine means Memoirs narrative nature needle needlework never nineteenth nineteenth-century notes novel once particular past perhaps period political possibility practice present problems qualities queenly Queens of England questions readers remarks Review Vol rhetoric role Romola royal says seems significance social society sovereign sphere Stone story Strickland suggests Tapestry Theory tradition turn universal Victorian volumes woman women historians Women's History writing York