Subjects on display
Subtitle: psychoanalysis, social expectation, and Victorian femininity
By: Beth Newman.
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Published: 2004
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 192
Subjects: English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Women in literature.; Psychoanalysis and literature -- Great Britain.; Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Psychological fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Assertiveness (Psychology) in literature.; Expectation (Psychology) in literature.; Bashfulness in literature.; Femininity in literature.; Sex role in literature.; Assertiveness in women.
Description: "Subjects on Display explores a recurrent figure at the heart of many nineteenth-century English novels: the retiring, self-effacing woman who is conspicuous for her inconspicuousness. Beth Newman draws upon both psychoanalytic theory and recent work in social history as she argues that this paradoxical figure, who often triumphs over more dazzling, eye-catching rivals, is a response to the forces that made personal display a vexed issue for Victorian women. Chief among these is the changing socioeconomic landscape that made the ideal of the modest woman outlive its usefulness as a class signifier even as it continued to exert moral authority." "Through a consideration of fiction by Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Henry James, Newman shifts the inquiry toward the observed in the experience of being seen. In the process she reopens the question of the gaze and its relation to subjectivity."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 173-181) and index.