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List of contents
PART 1 Introduction to part 1 CHAPTER 1 Madame Bovary : a novel about nothing CHAPTER 2 Madame Bovary : becoming a heroine CHAPTER 3 7#£ Woman in White: sensationalism, secrets and spying CHAPTER 4 Drawing a blank: the construction of identity in The Woman in White CHAPTER 5 The Portrait of a Lady and the 'house of fiction' CHAPTER 6 The Portrait of a Lady : identity and gender CHAPTER 7 'The art of fiction' : Henry James as critic CHAPTER 8 Books and their readers - part 1 PART 2 Introduction to part 2 CHAPTER 9 Dracula-, a fin-de-siècle fantasy CHAPTER 10 Dracula: narrative strategies and nineteenth-century fears CHAPTER 11 The Awakening, identities CHAPTER 12 The Awakening, contexts CHAPTER 13 Joseph Conrad and the imperial vision: Heart of Darkness CHAPTER 14 Heart of Darkness: plots, parallels and post-colonialism CHAPTER 15 Books and their readers - part 2
Summary
The Nineteenth-Century Novel: Identities provides an ideal starting point for understanding gender in the novels of this period. It explores the place of fiction in constructing gender identity within society at large, considering Madame Bovary, Portrait of a Lady and The Woman in White. The book continues with a consideration of the novel at the fin de siecle, examining Dracula, The Awakening and Heart of Darkness. These fascinating essays illuminate the ways in which the conventions of realism were disrupted as much by anxieties surrounding colonialism, decadence, degeneration and the 'New Woman' as by those new ideas about human psychology which heralded the advent of psychoanalysis. The concepts which are crucial to the understanding of the literature and society of the nineteenth century are brilliantly explained and discussed in this essential volume.
