description: Was nineteenth-century British philanthropy the "truestand noblest woman's work" and praiseworthy for having raised the nation'smoral tone, or was it a dangerous mission likely to cause the defeminization of itspractitioners as they became "public persons"? In VictorianEngland, women's participation in volunteer work seemed to be a natural extension oftheir domestic role, but like many other assumptions about gender roles, theconnection between charitable and domestic work is the result of specific historicalfactors and cultural representations. Proponents of women as charitable workersencouraged philanthropy as being ideal work for a woman, while opponents feared thepractice was destined to lead to overly ambitious and manlybehavior.In The Angel out of the House DoriceWilliams Elliott examines the ways in which novels and other texts that portrayedwomen performing charitable acts helped to make the inclusion of philanthropic workin the domestic sphere seem natural and obvious. And although many scholars havedismissed women's volunteer endeavors as merely patriarchal collusion, Elliottargues that the conjunction of novelistic and philanthropic discourse in the worksof women writers -- among them George Eliot and Elizabeth Gaskell, Hannah More andAnna Jameson -- was crucial to the redefinition of gender roles and classrelations.In a fascinating study of how literaryworks contribute to cultural and historical change, Elliott's exploration ofphilanthropic discourse in nineteenth-century literature demonstrates just howessential that forum was in changing accepted definitions of women and socialrelations.
language: English
title: The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England
titlecomplete: The Angel out of the House: Philanthropy and Gender in Nineteenth-Century England
ratings_count: 1