Description

Book Synopsis

Discusses portrayals of domestic violence in six major works of mid-nineteenth-century literature.

The ambiguities and paradoxes of domestic violence were amplified in Victorian culture, which emphasized the home as a woman''s place of security. In The Marked Body, Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky examine the discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Guided by observations from feminism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, they argue that, in these works, domestic violence is a crucible in which the female body is placed, where it becomes marked by scars and disfigurement. Yet, they contend, these wounds go beyond violence to bring these women to a broader state of female subjectivity, sexuality, and consciousness. The female body, already the site of alterity, is inscribed with something that cannot be expressed; it thus becomes that which is culturally and physically denied, the place which is not.

Marked Body

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    A Paperback / softback by Kate Lawson, Lynn Shakinovsky

    £22.96

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    RRP £25.51 – you save £2.55 (9%)

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      Book details

      Publisher State University of New York Press
      Published 18 July 2002
      ISBN-13 9780791453766
      978-0791453766
      ISBN-10 791453766
      Also in:
      Domestic abuse Feminism and feminist theory

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      Discusses portrayals of domestic violence in six major works of mid-nineteenth-century literature.

      The ambiguities and paradoxes of domestic violence were amplified in Victorian culture, which emphasized the home as a woman''s place of security. In The Marked Body, Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky examine the discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Guided by observations from feminism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theory, they argue that, in these works, domestic violence is a crucible in which the female body is placed, where it becomes marked by scars and disfigurement. Yet, they contend, these wounds go beyond violence to bring these women to a broader state of female subjectivity, sexuality, and consciousness. The female body, already the site of alterity, is inscribed with something that cannot be expressed; it thus becomes that which is culturally and physically denied, the place which is not.

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