Nobody's Angels: Middle-Class Women and Domestic Ideology in Victorian Culture

Synopsis

Victoria's accession to the throne in 1837 coincided with the birth of a now notorious gender stereotype-- the Angel in the House. Comparing the position of real women-- from the Queen of England to middle-class housewives-- with their status as household angels, Elizabeth Langland explores a complex image of femininity in Victorian culture. Langland offers provocative readings of nineteenth-century fiction as well as a rare glimpse into etiquette guides, home management manuals, and cookbooks. She traces the implications of a profound contradiction: although the home was popularly depicted as a private moral haven, running the middle-class household-- which included at least one servant-- was in fact an exercise in class management. Drawing on the work of Foucault, Benjamin, and Bourdieu, and of recent feminist theorists, Langland considers novels by Dickens, Gaskell, Oliphant, and Eliot, as well as the memoirs of Hannah Cullwick, a former domestic servant who married a middle-class man. Langland discovers that the middle-class wife assumed a more complex and important function than has ever been recognized. With her substantial power veiled in myth, the Victorian angel mastered skills that enabled her to support a rigid class system; at the same time, however, her achievements unobtrusively set the stage for a feminist revolution. Nobody's Angels reconstructs a disturbing picture of social change that depended as much on protecting class inequity as on promoting gender equality.

Copyright:

1995

Book Details

Book Quality:

Excellent

Book Size:

267 Pages

ISBN-13:

9780801482205

Publisher:

Cornell University Press

Date of Addition:

09/23/09

Copyrighted By:

Cornell University

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Literature and Fiction, Social Studies, Language Arts

Submitted By:

Kari G

Proofread By:

Lori C.

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.