The feminine political novel in Victorian England
By: Barbara Leah Harman.
Series: Victorian literature and culture series
Publisher: University Press of Virginia
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Charlottesville
Language: eng
Number of pages: 224
Subjects: English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.; Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Feminism and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.; Women and literature -- England -- History -- 19th century.; Political fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Feminist fiction, English -- History and criticism.; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1837-1901.
Description: In this book, Barbara Leah Harman convincingly establishes a new category in Victorian fiction: the feminine political novel. By studying Victorian female protagonists who participate in the public universe conventionally occupied by men - the world of mills and city streets, of political activism and labor strikes, of public speaking and parliamentary debates - she is able to reassess the public realm as the site of noble and meaningful action for women in Victorian England.

Harman examines at length Bronte's Shirley, Gaskell's North and South, Meredith's Diana of the Crossways, Gissing's In the Year of Jubilee, and Elizabeth Robins's The Convert, reading these novels in relation to each other and to developments in the emerging British women's movement.

She argues that these texts constitute a countertradition in Victorian fiction: neither domestic fiction nor fiction about the public "fallen" woman, these novels reveal how nineteenth-century English writers began to think about female transgression into the political sphere and about the intriguing meanings of women's public appearances.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [207]-215) and index.