Desire and Domestic Fiction
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"A very interesting look at the relationship between our political system and the novel--it should prove to be a springboard for class discussion."--Robert W. Langran, Villanova University
"The provocative thesis Armstrong develops challenges traditional descriptions of the rise of the novel by locating the essential force of the 18th century's new fiction in the domestic novel depicting the household as a center of female power....A genuine contribution to the growing shelf of feminist criticism."--Choice
"A work of considerable intelligence and insight."--South Atlantic Review
"This is the first book-length study to bring the insights of Michel Foucault to bear upon the subject of women and literature, and the resulting innovations are important and salutary....Her book provides a challenging revision of the history of the novel. Moreover, it entirely reassesses the roles played by both novels and women in the making of modern culture."--Victorian Studies
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In this strikingly original treatment of the rise of the novel, Nancy Armstrong argues that the novels and non- fiction written by and for women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England paved the way for the rise of the modern English middle class. Most critical studies of the novel mistakenly locate political power exclusively in the official institutions of state, ignoring the political domain over which women hold authority, which includes courtship practices, family relations, and the use of leisure time. To remedy this, Armstrong provides a dual analysis, tracing both the rise of the novel and the evolution of female authority as part of one phenomenon.
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From the beginning, domestic fiction actively sought to disentangle the language of sexual relations from the language of politics and, in so doing, to introduce a new form of political power. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
From the beginning, domestic fiction actively sought to disentangle the language of sexual relations from the language of politics and, in so doing, to introduce a new form of political power. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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35 of 35 people found the following review helpful
The Importance of Armstrong's Desire and Domestic Fiction
10 May 2000
Format:Paperback
Nancy Armstrong's influential book, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel, connects the rise of the novel with the history of sexuality (ie. gender difference) and the rise of the English middle class. Armstrong's three part explination for the rise of the novel acts as a correction of Isaac Watts' influential triple rise thesis in his study, The Rise of the Novel. Watts connects the rise of the novel to the rise of the middle class, the rise of Puritan values, and the rise of literacy. Armstrong's emphasis clearly differs from Watts insofar as she defines the novel as domestic, women's writing. Armstrong not only redefined Watts' history of the novel, but created a new space in the academic debates about domesticity. By stating the domestic novels were bound up in (indeed antecedent to) the formation of gender difference and the middle class she grants more power to domestic novels than previous ciritics had allowed. Armstrong's analysis of novels (though her writing also has illumunating sections on eighteenth century conduct books and educational theory) begins with Samuel Richardson's Pamela and Jane Austen's Emma, in which she notes the importance of a woman's qualities of mind, as opposed to rank, and how Austen's writing worked to standarize the English language. The study contiues with a history of unions (combinations) in the early ninteenth century, and then moves onto examine the Brontes and how Victorian novels construct the domestic space as one in which women have the power of survelliance, as well as the Vicotrian phenomenon of a character's desiring the one person they are not permitted to obtain (Catherine and Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights). Her study concludes with a discussion of the process and importance of reading itself. I highly reccomend Desire and Domestic Fiction. It is well worth the read, especially for people who care about the history of the novel, redefinitions of the political sphere and a political and cultural history of sexuality and domesticity.
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