Dickens and the Daughter of the House

Examines the role of ???legless angels??? (George Orwell), ???angry women??? and ???good daughters??? in Dicken??s narratives.

List of contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Making Fictions: 1. The uncanny daughter: Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, and the progress of Little Nell; Part II. On Not Committing Adultery in the Novel: 2. Dombey and Son: the daughter's nothing; 3. Hard Times and A Tale of Two Cities: the social inheritance of adultery; Part III. The Daughter's Portion: 4. Bleak House and the dead mother's property; 5. Amy Dorrit's prison notebooks; Part IV. A Violent Conclusion: 6. In the shadow of Satis House: the woman's story in Great Expectations; 7. Our Mutual Friend and the daughter's book of the dead; Notes; Index.

Summary

The daughter in Dickens' fiction is considered not as an emblem of tranquil domesticity and the hearth-fire, but as a bearer of cultural values - and as a potentially disruptive force. The daughter's secret inheritance, her 'portion', is to give Dickens a way of reading and writing his own culture differently.

Product details

• Authors: Hilary M. Schor, Hilary Margo Schor
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.10.2015
• EAN: 9780521440769
• ISBN: 978-0-521-44076-9
• No. of pages: 248
• Dimensions: 157 mm x 235 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 515 g
• Series: Cambridge Studies in Nineteent
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies