Description
Book SynopsisLove of home life, the intimate moments a family peacefully enjoyed in seclusion, had long been considered a hallmark of English character even before the Victorian era. This book explores how intimacy became a spectacle and how this paradox energized Victorian culture between 1835 and 1865.
Trade ReviewOne of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2000 "In readings that diplomatically maintain alliances among literature, politics, the law and social history, Chase and Levenson disclose a complex economy of public and private that transversed Victorian life. No separate spheres here; this is first-rate interdisciplinary scholarship."--Sarah Churchwell, Times Literary Supplement
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION The Trouble with Families 3 PART ONE: The Political Theater of Domesticity CHAPTER ONE The Trials of Caroline Norton: Poetry, Publicity, and the Prime Minister 21 CHAPTER TWO: The Young Queen and the Parliamentary Bedchamber: "I never saw a man so frightened" 46 PART Two: Beneath the Banner of Home t CHAPTER THREE Sarah Stickney Ellis: The Ardent Woman and the Abject Wife 65 CHAPTER FOUR Tom's Pinch: The Sexual Serpent beside the Dickensian Fireside 86 PART THREE: Was That an Angel in the House? CHAPTER FIVE Love after Death: The Deceased Wife's Sister Bill 105 CHAPTER SIX The Transvestite, the Bloomer, and the Nightingale 121 PART FOUR: The Architecture of Comfort and Ruin CHAPTER SEVEN On the Parapets of Privacy: Walls of Wealth and Dispossession 143 CHAPTER EIGHT Robert Kerr: The Gentleman's House and the One-Room Solution 156 PART FIVE: The Sensations of Respectability CHAPTER NINE The Empire of Divorce: Single Women, the Bill of 1857, and Revolt in India CHAPTER TEN Bigamy and Modernity: The Case of Mary Elizabeth Braddon 201 EPILOGUE: Between Manual and Spectacle 215 Notes 221 Index 247
