Brenda Ayres – författare

Given their pedagogical nature, many Victorian novels are highly politicized; their narratives are filtered through the value schemes, social views, and conscious purposes of their authors. Victorian women were largely expected to dedicate themselves to the social and moral betterment of their families. Women were expected to be soft, meek, quiet, modest, submissive, gentle, patient, and spiritual; men were supposed to be aggressive, assertive, resilient, disciplined, and competitive. These expectations were repeatedly endorsed through the conduct books of the period, which encouraged people to adhere to proper behavior. The Victorian era also viewed fiction as a didactic tool and as a means to propagate morality. Thus novels of the period typically present women as subordinate to men and as angels of the home. Women who conform to the social norms are usually rewarded in these fictitious worlds, whereas women who violate society's standards are often penalized.Certainly the novels of Charles Dickens fall into the larger didactic trend of Victorian fiction, and like other works of the period, his novels overtly support the conventional values of Victorian society. Dickens typically uses descriptive detail to register approval or disapproval of certain women, and these women are rewarded or chastized through his plots. But on a less obvious level, Dickens also challenges the prevailing Victorian attitude toward women. A close look at his works shows that patriarchs do not automatically deserve the respect they command from their privileged social positions. Women—however virtuous—are unable to produce moral or social change, and many women succeed outside the constraints of domesticity. This book provides a penetrating analysis of how Dickens' novels ultimately fail to promote the conventional Victorian behavioral ideal for women and discusses how his works subvert the domestic ideology of the nineteenth century.

Victorian writer Frances Trollope has largely been relegated to a mere footnote in literary history as simply the mother of Anthony. Equally unfortunate is that, aside from her nonfiction work Domestic Manners of the Americans, her 34 novels have been out of print since the nineteenth century. She was, nonetheless, the most provocative female writer of the early Victorian period who used the novel to impel social change. She has been credited for writing the first anti-slavery novel that predates Uncle Tom's Cabin, along with a number of works that incited reform legislation regarding bastardy clauses, poor laws, and labor conditions.Expert contributors examine her life and writings, her social activism, and the impact of her works. The book includes discussions of her influence on Anthony Trollope, the rivalry between Frances Trollope and Charles Dickens, her belief in the power of female friendship, her ambivalence toward the ability of women to effect social change, her thoughts on Evangelicalism, her views on women and aging, and her innovative contribution to early crime fiction. Contributors argue for the value of reprinting her novels and travel books and point to her enduring literary legacy.

Some of the greatest English novels were written during the Victorian era, and many are still widely read and taught today. But many others written during that period have been neglected by scholars and modern readers alike. A number of these novels were written by women and were popular when published. Moreover, they reveal perspectives of 19th-century British culture not present in canonized works and therefore revise our understanding of Victorian life and attitudes. With the increasing interest in revising Victorian history and gender scholarship, especially through the rediscovery of lost texts written by women, this book is a timely and much needed study.The expert contributors to this volume argue the value of novels by such Victorian women writers as Grace Aguilar, Catherine Crowe, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, Annie E. Holdsworth, Ella Hepworth Dixon, Flora Annie Steel, Anne Thackeray, Sarah Grand, Marie Corelli, and others. Most of the chapters address numerous works by a particular writer. Each focuses on different social issues as well, though most of them share an interest in gender politics. Topics discussed include a 19th-century Jewish novelist's navigation through Protestant spirituality, the relationship of noncanonical governess novels to class and gender issues, and forgotten works by women crime writers. Other chapters analyze how women writers impelled social reform and subverted patriarchally defined religious issues.

Whether a secularized morality, biblical worldview, or unstated set of mores, the Victorian period can and always will be distinguished from those before and after for its pervasive sense of the "proper way" of thinking, speaking, doing, and acting. Animals in literature taught Victorian children how to be behave. If you are a postmodern posthumanist, you might argue, "But the animals in literature did not write their own accounts." Animal characters may be the creations of writers’ imagination, but animals did and do exist in their own right, as did and do humans. The original essays in Animals and Their Children in Victorian explore the representation of animals in children’s literature by resisting an anthropomorphized perception of them. Instead of focusing on the domestication of animals, this book analyzes how animals in literature "civilize" children, teaching them how to get along with fellow creatures—both human and nonhuman.

Victorians and Their Animals: Beast on a Leash investigates the notion that British Victorians did see themselves as a naturally dominant species over other humans and over animals. They were conscientiously, hegemonically determined to rule those beneath them and the animal within themselves, albeit with varying degrees of success and failure. The articles in this collection apply posthumanism and other theories, including queer, postcolonialist, deconstructionist, and Marxist approaches in their exploration of Victorian attitudes toward animals. They study the biopolitical relationships between human and nonhuman animals in several key Victorian literary works. Some of this book’s chapters deal with animal ethics and moral aesthetics. Also being studied is the representation of animals in several Victorian novels as narrative devices to signify class status and gender dynamics, either to iterate socially acceptable mores, to satirize hypocrisy or breach of behavior or to voice social protest. All of the chapters analyze the interdependence of people and animals during the nineteenth century.

This is the first collection to investigate Charles Dickens on his vast and various opinions about the uses and abuses of the tenets of Christian faith that imbue English Victorian culture. Although previous studies have looked at his well-known antipathies toward Dissenters, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews, they have also disagreed about Dickens’ thoughts on Unitarianism and speculated on doctrines of Protestantism that he endorsed or rejected. Besides addressing his depiction of these religious groups, the volume’s contributors locate gaps in scholarship and unresolved illations about poverty and charity, representations of children, graveyards, labor, scientific controversy, and other social issues through an investigation of Dickens’ theological concerns. In addition, given that Dickens’ texts continue to influence every generation around the globe, a timely inclusion in the collection is a consideration of the neo-Victorian multi-media representations of Dickens’ work and his ideas on theological questions pitched to a postmodern society.

This is the first collection to investigate Charles Dickens on his vast and various opinions about the uses and abuses of the tenets of Christian faith that imbue English Victorian culture. Although previous studies have looked at his well-known antipathies toward Dissenters, Evangelicals, Catholics, and Jews, they have also disagreed about Dickens’ thoughts on Unitarianism and speculated on doctrines of Protestantism that he endorsed or rejected. Besides addressing his depiction of these religious groups, the volume’s contributors locate gaps in scholarship and unresolved illations about poverty and charity, representations of children, graveyards, labor, scientific controversy, and other social issues through an investigation of Dickens’ theological concerns. In addition, given that Dickens’ texts continue to influence every generation around the globe, a timely inclusion in the collection is a consideration of the neo-Victorian multi-media representations of Dickens’ work and his ideas on theological questions pitched to a postmodern society.

Whether a secularized morality, biblical worldview, or unstated set of mores, the Victorian period can and always will be distinguished from those before and after for its pervasive sense of the "proper way" of thinking, speaking, doing, and acting. Animals in literature taught Victorian children how to be behave. If you are a postmodern posthumanist, you might argue, "But the animals in literature did not write their own accounts." Animal characters may be the creations of writers’ imagination, but animals did and do exist in their own right, as did and do humans. The original essays in Animals and Their Children in Victorian explore the representation of animals in children’s literature by resisting an anthropomorphized perception of them. Instead of focusing on the domestication of animals, this book analyzes how animals in literature "civilize" children, teaching them how to get along with fellow creatures—both human and nonhuman.

The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume:Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum.Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians.Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers.Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms.This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria’s reign of propriety.

The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture exposes, explores, and examines what Victorians once considered flagrant breaches of decorum. Infringements that were fantasized through artforms or were actually committed exceeded entertaining parlor gossip; once in print they were condemned as socially contaminative but were also consumed as delightfully sensational. Written by scholars in diverse disciplines, this volume:Demonstrates that spreading scandals seemed to have been one of the most entertaining sources of activities but were also normative efforts made by the Victorians to ensure conformity of decorum.Provides a broad spectrum of infractions that were considered scandalous to the Victorians.Identifies Victorian transgressions that made the news and that may still shock modern readers.Covers a gamut of moral infractions and transgressions either practiced, rumored, or fantasized in art forms.This handbook is an invaluable resource about Victorian literature, art, and culture which challenges its readers to ponder perplexing questions about how and why some scandals were perpetrated and propagated in the nineteenth century while others were not, and what the controversies reveal about the human condition that persists beyond Victoria’s reign of propriety.

Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and Works draws from biography to explain her works, and it analyses the works to draw a biographical composite of Wollstonecraft. Becoming Wollstonecraft will be more fully developed than previous works, with added information that has not previously been associated with Wollstonecraft, such as the story of Reverend Mr. Joshua Waterhouse.Although there are over fifty book-length biographies published on Wollstonecraft, very few agree on much about Wollstonecraft. She seems to have become an “everywoman,” or a figure unfixed in time and protean. Deemed the Mother of Feminism, like feminism itself, she is what people have wanted her to be and is by no means an immutable or universal personage.A study of her life as evident by her works and vice versa, this monograph intends to refocus the image of Wollstonecraft for students and scholars, informed by biographical texts on Wollstonecraft and on those people in Wollstonecraft’s life and acquaintance, historical context, and exposition from her works.

Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and Works draws from biography to explain her works, and it analyses the works to draw a biographical composite of Wollstonecraft. Becoming Wollstonecraft will be more fully developed than previous works, with added information that has not previously been associated with Wollstonecraft, such as the story of Reverend Mr. Joshua Waterhouse.Although there are over fifty book-length biographies published on Wollstonecraft, very few agree on much about Wollstonecraft. She seems to have become an “everywoman,” or a figure unfixed in time and protean. Deemed the Mother of Feminism, like feminism itself, she is what people have wanted her to be and is by no means an immutable or universal personage.A study of her life as evident by her works and vice versa, this monograph intends to refocus the image of Wollstonecraft for students and scholars, informed by biographical texts on Wollstonecraft and on those people in Wollstonecraft’s life and acquaintance, historical context, and exposition from her works.

Although history records that the British nineteenth century was obsessed with order,conventionality, and conformity, there were many Victorians from all walks of life, across lines of class, race, and gender, who resisted social mores and sometimes the laws themselves, in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Some expressed dissension through music, art, literature, and social protest. Others were more subtle like manipulative wives who gained what they wanted while seemingly remaining docile and submissive. Some rebellion fermented into social and political movements. The revolt of still others was extremely executed by serial killers, criminals, and suicides. Contemporary readers can learn from these rebels and discern what values and ways that were uniquely Victorian should be retained and those that should be rejected after having observed their outcomes. To that end, this collection of essays offers a study for both novice and expert on Victorian rebels.

Although history records that the British nineteenth century was obsessed with order,conventionality, and conformity, there were many Victorians from all walks of life, across lines of class, race, and gender, who resisted social mores and sometimes the laws themselves, in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Some expressed dissension through music, art, literature, and social protest. Others were more subtle like manipulative wives who gained what they wanted while seemingly remaining docile and submissive. Some rebellion fermented into social and political movements. The revolt of still others was extremely executed by serial killers, criminals, and suicides. Contemporary readers can learn from these rebels and discern what values and ways that were uniquely Victorian should be retained and those that should be rejected after having observed their outcomes. To that end, this collection of essays offers a study for both novice and expert on Victorian rebels.

Over the course of her 57-year career, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson published nine best-selling novels, but her significant contributions to American literature have until recently gone largely unrecognized. Brenda Ayres, in her long overdue critical biography of the novelist once referred to as the 'first Southern woman to enter the field of American letters,' credits the importance of Wilson's novels for their portrait of nineteenth-century America. As Ayres reminds us, the nineteenth-century American book market was dominated by women writers and women readers, a fact still to some extent obscured by the make-up of the literary canon. In placing Wilson's novels firmly within their historical context, Ayres commemorates Wilson as both a storyteller and maker of American history. Proceeding chronologically, Ayres devotes a chapter to each of Wilson's novels, showing how her views on Catholicism, the South, the Civil War, male authority, domesticity, Reconstruction, and race were both informed by and resistant to the turbulent times in which she lived. This comprehensive and meticulously researched biography contributes not only to our appreciation of Wilson's work, but also to her importance as a figure for understanding women's roles in history and their art, evolving gender roles, and the complicated status of women writers.

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Victorians and Their Animals: Beast on a Leash investigates the notion that British Victorians did see themselves as a naturally dominant species over other humans and over animals. They were conscientiously, hegemonically determined to rule those beneath them and the animal within themselves, albeit with varying degrees of success and failure. The articles in this collection apply posthumanism and other theories, including queer, postcolonialist, deconstructionist, and Marxist approaches in their exploration of Victorian attitudes toward animals. They study the biopolitical relationships between human and nonhuman animals in several key Victorian literary works. Some of this book’s chapters deal with animal ethics and moral aesthetics. Also being studied is the representation of animals in several Victorian novels as narrative devices to signify class status and gender dynamics, either to iterate socially acceptable mores, to satirize hypocrisy or breach of behavior or to voice social protest. All of the chapters analyze the interdependence of people and animals during the nineteenth century.

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Contains three early examples of the genre of New Woman writing, each portraying women in ways wholly different to those which had gone before. This title includes "Kith and Kin" (1881), "Miss Brown" and "The Wing of Azrael".

Frances Milton Trollope (1779-1863) was a prolific, provocative and hugely successful novelist. She greatly influenced the generation of Victorian novelists who came after her such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. This book features Trollope's social problem novels.

Frances Milton Trollope (1779-1863) was a prolific, provocative and hugely successful novelist. She greatly influenced the generation of Victorian novelists who came after her such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. This book features Trollope's social problem novels.

Frances Milton Trollope (1779-1863) was a prolific, provocative and hugely successful novelist. She greatly influenced the generation of Victorian novelists who came after her such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. This book features Trollope's social problem novels.

Frances Milton Trollope (1779-1863) was a prolific, provocative and hugely successful novelist. She greatly influenced the generation of Victorian novelists who came after her such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell. This book features Trollope's social problem novels.

The writings of Frances Trollope have been subject to increasing academic interest in recent years, and are now widely studied. In this four-volume set her comical, yet subversive, treatment of Victorian marriage provides an interesting contrast to some of the more earnest but conventional fiction of the time.

The writings of Frances Trollope have been subject to increasing academic interest in recent years, and are now widely studied. In this four-volume set her comical, yet subversive, treatment of Victorian marriage provides an interesting contrast to some of the more earnest but conventional fiction of the time.