| Description |
xiv, 264 pages ; 25 cm |
| Contents |
Making and breaking the rules : an introduction -- "Cousins in love, &c." in Jane Austen -- Husband, wife, and sister : making and unmaking the early Victorian family -- Orphan stories : adoption and affinity in Charlotte Brontë -- Intercrossing, interbreeding, and The mill on the Floss -- Fictive kinship and natural affinities in Wives and daughters -- Virginia Woolf and Victorian "incests" |
| Summary |
"In Family Likeness, Mary Jean Corbett shows how the domestic fiction of novelists including Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Virginia Woolf reflected the shifting boundaries of "family" and even helped refine those borders." "Corbet takes up historically contingent and culturally variable notions of who is and is not a relative and whom one can and cannot marry. Her argument is informed by legal and political debates; texts in sociology and anthropology; and discussions on the biology of heredity, breeding, and eugenics. In Corbett's view, marriage within families - between cousins, in-laws, or adoptees - offered Victorian women, both real and fictional, an attractive alternative to romance with a stranger, not least because it allowed them to maintain and strengthen relations with other women within the family."--BOOK JACKET |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-257) and index |
| Subject |
Austen, Jane, 1775-1817 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Brontë, Charlotte, 1816-1855 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Woolf, Virginia, 1882-1941 -- Criticism and interpretation.
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Families in literature.
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English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism.
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English fiction -- Women authors -- History and criticism.
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Sex in literature.
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Marriage in literature.
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Incest in literature.
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| LC no. |
2008019568 |
| ISBN |
9780801447075 : |
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