Description
Book SynopsisIn nineteenth-century France an obsession with jealousy swept the culture as a whole. Virtually every major French novelist employed it as a central plot device. At the same time, jealousy became a key theme for a broad range of medical, journalistic, and moralist authors interested in the study of contemporary mores. In The Anxiety of Dispossession: Jealousy in Nineteenth-Century French Culture, Masha Belenky argues that it was through narratives of jealousy that writers grappled with the crises of political and moral authority, anxieties surrounding changing gender roles, and new ideas about marriage that defined post-Revolution
Trade Review'The green-eyed monster provides Masha Belenky with a wonderful topic to explore in The Anxiety of Dispossession. As she ably demonstrates, jealousy haunted the cultural imagination of nineteenth-century France. . . . Lucid, informative and persuasive, The Anxiety of Dispossession allows us to re-examine nineteenth-century literature and culture from a fresh and intriguing perspective.' -- Anne Green, King's College London, Nineteenth-Century French Studies
