Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
Brenda Ayres's Dissenting Women in Dickens' Novels: Subversion of Domestic Ideology addresses an issue in academic feminism, the problem of how, since Charles Dickens `has often been referred to as a domestic tyrant and patriarchal bully,' `such subversive texts squeaked from Dickens' pen.'Studies in English Literature
Synopsis
Given their pedagogical nature, many Victorian novels are 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. The woman was supposed to be soft, meek, quiet, modest, submissive, gentle, patient, and spiritual. These expectations were repeatedly endorsed by the advice books of the period, which encouraged people to adhere to "proper" behavior. In an age when fiction was seen as a vehicle for propagating moral and behavioral norms, the Victorian novels frequently presented the woman as the angel in the home. On the surface, Dickens' novels certainly advance the view that women should be subordinate to men. But on closer look, Dickens' works also challenge the Victorian conceptions of how women should behave. This book provides an illuminating analysis of how the Dickens text modifies and subverts conventional Victorian ideology through a convoluted characterization of women that fails to promote domesticity.
Synopsis
Examines Dickens' novels as stages for the dramatization of gender roles and conflicts.
About the Author
BRENDA AYRES is Professor of English at Middle Georgia College.
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Women of David Copperfield
Barnaby Rudge's Mrs. Varden
The Spinster of Barnaby Rudge
The Women Inside the Fold
The Women Outside the Fold
The Women Who Don't Fit into the Fold
The True Heroine in Oliver Twist
The Passionate and the Contained Women of Oliver Twist
The "Pattern" of Bleak House
Bibliographical Essay
Index