The 'Improper' Feminine
The Women's Sensation Novel and the New Woman Writing
1st Edition
Published on 8. December 2003
248 pages
978-1-134-94483-5 (ISBN)
Description
The women's sensation novel of the 1860s and the New Woman fiction of the 1890s were two major examples of a perceived feminine invasion of fiction which caused a critical furore in their day.
Both genres, with their shocking, `fast' heroines, fired the popular imagination by putting female sexuality on the literary agenda and undermining the `proper feminine' ideal to which nineteenth-century women and fictional heroines were supposed to aspire.
By exploring in impressive depth and breadth the material and discursive conditions in which these novels were produced, The `Improper' Feminine draws attention to key gendered interrelationships within the literary and wider cultures of the mid-Victorian and fin-de-diecle periods.
Both genres, with their shocking, `fast' heroines, fired the popular imagination by putting female sexuality on the literary agenda and undermining the `proper feminine' ideal to which nineteenth-century women and fictional heroines were supposed to aspire.
By exploring in impressive depth and breadth the material and discursive conditions in which these novels were produced, The `Improper' Feminine draws attention to key gendered interrelationships within the literary and wider cultures of the mid-Victorian and fin-de-diecle periods.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
File size
3,80 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-134-94483-5 (9781134944835)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
10/2013
1st Edition
Routledge
€96.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
Book
09/1992
1st Edition
Routledge
€206.10
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Lyn Pykett
Content
Part 1 The 'Improper' Feminine; Chapter 1 Gender and writing, writing and gender; Chapter 2 The subject of Woman; Chapter 3 The subject of Woman and the subject of women's fiction; Chapter 4 Fiction and the feminine: a gendered critical discourse; Chapter 5 Fiction, the feminine and the sensation novel; Chapter 6 Representation and the feminine: engendering fiction in the 1890s; Part 2 The Sentimental and Sensational Sixties: The Limits of the Proper Feminine; Chapter 7 Historicising genre (1): the cultural moment of the woman's sensation novel; Chapter 8 Surveillance and control: women, the family and the law; Chapter 9 Spectating the Social Evil: fallen and other women; Chapter 10 Reviewing the subject of women: the sensation novel and the 'Girl of the Period'; Chapter 11 Historicising genre (2): sensation fiction, women's genres and popular narrative forms; Chapter 12 Mary Elizabeth Braddon: the secret histories of women; Chapter 13 Ellen Wood: secret skeletons in the family, and the spectacle of women's suffering; Part 3 Breaking the Bounds; Chapter 14 The New Woman; Chapter 15 The New Woman writing and some marriage questions; Chapter 16 Writing difference differently; Chapter 17 Feeling, motherhood and True Womanhood; Chapter 18 Woman's 'affectability' and the literature of hysteria; Chapter 19 Writing women: writing woman; Chapter 20 New Woman: new writing; Chapter 21 Conclusion: reading out women's writing;
