From Library Journal
Armstrong argues for a causal relationship between the appearance of domestic fiction and the rise of the middle class in 18th- and 19th-century England. As the female-dominated home became the respite from harsh economic realities, powerful middle-class values eventually obliterated those of the aristocracy and the working class. By this time women were achieving power because of, not in spite of, their gender. Rereading Richardson, Fielding, Austen, the Brontes, Eliot, Dickens, and Shelley, among others, and drawing on Marx, Freud, economics, semiotics, and popular culture, Armstrong offers a complicated scholarly feminist view of literary history just when you thought this burgeoning academic industry was running out of steam. For academic libraries. Rhoda Yerburgh, Adult Degree Program, Vermont Coll., Montpelier
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Pressestimmen
"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"A bold and original book....It is nothing less than a radical reinterpretation of the rise of the novel in England which simultaneously overturns...not only the established view issuing from Ian Watt, but also recently entrenched feminist readings.... It is a work with a powerful thesis and will have to be reckoned with by anyone concerned with feminism, the theory of fiction, or the rise to hegemony of the English middle class."--Allon White,
University of Sussex