Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian FictionThe Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 opened magistrates’ courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings, and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat “private” family violence? Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction traces novelists’ engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 27
... , or distributing of this work except as permitted manuscript neared completion: Marlene Tromp's The Private Rod: Mari- tal under U.S. copyright law is illegal and injures the author and publisher. Introduction |
... Tromp's study is closest to my own. We both see a close relationship between fiction and the law relating to spousal assaults; however, while Tromp argues that sensation fiction anticipated legal developments later in the century, I see ...
... Tromp sees the sensation fiction of the s as having re- vealed middle-class violence in an unprecedented way, I feel that this shift was inaugurated earlier in the century, with the revelation of working-class violence after ...
... Tromp argues that Oliver Twistlooks back to tales of family violence in The New- gate Calendar.3 I want to suggest a more immediate context for Dickens's depictions of marital violence—that is, the newspaper coverage of marital assault ...
Sorry, this page's content is restricted.
Contents
1 | |
15 | |
Domestic Violence and MiddleClass Manliness Dombey and Son | 44 |
From Regency Violence to Victorian Feminism The Tenant of Wildfell Hall | 72 |
The Abused Woman and the Community Janets Repentance | 103 |
Strange Revelations The Divorce Court the Newspaper and The Woman in White | 132 |
The Private Eye and the Public Gaze He Knew He Was Right | 165 |