Synopses & Reviews
The ideal woman of the Victorian era was a combination of sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption, and worship of the family hearth--with marriage and procreation being a woman's only function. Suffer and Be Still is a collection of ten lively essays which document the feminine stereotypes that Victorian women fought against, but only partially defeated.
Review
.".. indispensable reading for any scholar of Victorian cultural andsexual history." -- Journal of Social History
Review
"... indispensable reading for any scholar of Victorian cultural and sexual history." --Journal of Social History Indiana University Press Indiana University Press
Table of Contents
Introduction: The Perfect Victorian Lady
Martha Vicinus
1: The Victorian Governess: Status Incongruence in Family and Society
M. Jeanne Peterson
2: From Dame to Woman: W.S. Gilbert and Theatrical Transvestism
Jane W. Stedman
3: Victorian Women and Menstruation
Elaine and English Showalter
4: Marriage, Redundancy or Sin: The Painter's View of Women in the First Twenty-Five Years of Victoria's Reign
Helene E. Roberts
5: A Study of Victorian Prostitution and Venereal Disease
E.M. Sigsworth and T.J. Wyke
6: Working-Class Women in Britain, 1890-1914
Peter N. Stearns
7: The Debate over Women: Ruskin vs. Mill
Kate Millett
8: Sterotypes of Femininity in a Theory of Sexual Evolution
Jill Conway
9: Innocent Femina Sensualis in Unconscious Conflict
Peter T. Cominos
10: The Women of England in a Century of Social Change, 1815-1914: A Select Bibliography
S. Barbara Kanner
Notes
Index