Subjects on display

Description:

"Subjects on Display explores a recurrent figure at the heart of many nineteenth-century English novels: the retiring, self-effacing woman who is conspicuous for her inconspicuousness. Beth Newman draws upon both psychoanalytic theory and recent work in social history as she argues that this paradoxical figure, who often triumphs over more dazzling, eye-catching rivals, is a response to the forces that made personal display a vexed issue for Victorian women. Chief among these is the changing socioeconomic landscape that made the ideal of the modest woman outlive its usefulness as a class signifier even as it continued to exert moral authority." "Through a consideration of fiction by Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, and Henry James, Newman shifts the inquiry toward the observed in the experience of being seen. In the process she reopens the question of the gaze and its relation to subjectivity."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: History and criticism,  Assertiveness in women,  Women and literature,  Psychoanalysis and literature,  Expectation (Psychology) in literature,  Sex role in literature,  Assertiveness (Psychology) in literature,  Femininity in literature,  English fiction,  History,  English Psychological fiction,  Bashfulness in literature,  Women in literature,  English fiction, history and criticism, 19th century,  Psychological fiction, history and criticism,  Psychology in literature,  Great britain, history, 19th century

Places: Great Britain

Times: 19th century