Bigamy Plot - Sensation and Convention in the Victorian Novel

This study explores the prevalence of bigamy in Victorian fiction to challenge traditional understanding of the period's social and narrative conventions.

List of contents

Introduction; Part I. A Wife and Not a Wife: 1. The plot in time: historical bigamy and Sylvia's Lovers; 2. The plot in space: skeletons in the closet in Jane Eyre and East Lynne; Part II. Dead Yet Not Dead: 3. David Copperfield's angelic bigamy; 4. Dorothea's simultaneous remarriage; Part III. Sensational and Canonical: 5. Colonial return: Pendennis and Lady Audley's Secret; 6. The improper end: Aurora Floyd and Jude the Obscure; Coda: the end of bigamy; Appendix: list of Victorian bigamy novels; Bibliography.

About the author

Maia McAleavey is Assistant Professor in the English Department at Boston College. She has published articles on Victorian literature in Representations, Victorian Studies, the Dickens Studies Annual and Victorian Review.

Summary

A study exploring the prevalence of bigamy as a popular plot in Victorian fiction that upends familiar categories and revises our sense of the period's social and narrative conventions. It features the innovative use of periodical archives, an exhaustive appendix, and detailed close readings of familiar and unfamiliar novels.

Product details

• Authors: Maia Mcaleavey, Maia (Boston College Mcaleavey, McAleavey Maia
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.12.2017
• EAN: 9781107501348
• ISBN: 978-1-107-50134-8
• No. of pages: 259
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature & Culture; Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature & Culture; Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; English, Social & cultural history, c 1800 to c 1900, 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900, Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers, Literary studies: fiction, novelists and prose writers