The Ohio State University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-8142-5681-7 | eISBN: 978-0-8142-7985-4 | Cloth: 978-0-8142-0286-9 Library of Congress Classification PR468.M596O75 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 820.9355
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK Other Mothers, edited by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman and Claudia C. Klaver, offers a range of essays that open a conversation about Victorian motherhood as a wide-ranging, distinctive experience and idea. In spite of its importance, however, it is one of the least-studied aspects of the Victorian era, subsumed under discussions of femininity and domesticity.
This collection addresses this void, revealing the extraordinary diversity of Victorian motherhood. Exploring diaries, novels, and court cases, with contexts ranging from London to Egypt to Australia, these varied accounts take the collection “beyond the maternal ideal” to consider the multiple, unpredictable ways in which motherhood was experienced and imagined in this formative historical period.
Other Mothers joins revisionist approaches to femininity that now characterize Victorian studies. Its contents trace intersections among gender, race, and class; question the power of separate spheres ideology; and insist on the context-specific nature of social roles. The fifteen essays in this volume contribute to the fields of literary criticism, history, cultural studies, and history.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ellen Bayuk Rosenman is professor of English, and affiliate in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Claudia C. Klaver is associate professor of English at Syracuse University.
REVIEWS
“Other Mothers is consistently interesting and fresh and the scholars involved make significant contributions to the study of Victorian literature and culture, to cultural studies more generally, and to studies of the family, gender, race, and class. This collection stands out from other scholarship on the Victorian mother in its breadth of approaches and of materials studied. I look forward to owning a copy myself.” —Beverly Taylor, professor of English at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
“Other Mothers not only introduces readers to a number of little-known historical cases that enlarge our sense of the maternal experience, but it offers fresh perspectives on canonical literary works as well—perspectives that suggest that Victorians themselves may have been rather more skeptical, if rarely loudly critical, of ‘the maternal ideal’ than we have hitherto supposed.” —Eileen Gillooly, Columbia University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction
Claudia Klaver and Ellen Bayuk Rosenman
Part I. Beyond the Maternal Ideal
1. How to be a Domestic Goddess Redux
Deirdre d¿Albertis
2. Maternal Failure and Masculine Exhaustion in Margaret Oliphant¿s Autobiography
Laura Green
3. ¿Bland, Adoring and Gently Tearful Women¿: Debunking the Maternal Ideal in
George Eliot¿s Felix Holt
Heather Milton
4. Elderly Mothers and Middle-Aged Daughters in Charles Dickens¿s Dombey and Son
Teresa Mangum
Part II. Caretaking, Class, and Maternal Violence
5. Unforgiven: Drunken Mothers in Hesba Stretton¿s Religious Tract Society and Scottish Temperance Society Fiction
Deborah Deneholz Morse
6. Infant-Doping and Middle-Class Motherhood: Opium Warnings and Yonge¿s The
Daisy Chain
Dara Rossman Regaignon
7. Motherhood on Trial: Violence and Unwed Mothers in Victorian England
Ginger Frost
8. A Murdering Mother: Frances Knorr
Lucy Sussex
Part III. Maternity and Difference: Nation, Race, and Empire
9. ¿My Own Dear Sons¿: Discursive Maternity and Proper British Bodies in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
Deidre H. McMahon
10. Conceiving the Nation: Visions and Versions of Colonial Pre-natality
Deirdre Osborne
11. Orphan Stories and Maternal Legacies in Charlotte Brontë
Mary Jean Corbett
12. Distance Mothering and the ¿Cradle Lands¿: Imperial Motherhood and Lady Duff
Gordon¿s Letters from Egypt
Cara Murray
Part IV. The Maternal Body
13. The Text as Child: Gender/Sex and Metaphors of Maternity at the Fin de Siècle
Brenda R. Weber
14. The Widest Lap: Fatness, Fasting, and Nurturance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Lillian E. Craton
15. Mother Love: Edith Simcox, Maternity, and Lesbian Erotics
Ellen Bayuk Rosenman
Index
The Ohio State University Press, 2008 Paper: 978-0-8142-5681-7 eISBN: 978-0-8142-7985-4 Cloth: 978-0-8142-0286-9
Other Mothers, edited by Ellen Bayuk Rosenman and Claudia C. Klaver, offers a range of essays that open a conversation about Victorian motherhood as a wide-ranging, distinctive experience and idea. In spite of its importance, however, it is one of the least-studied aspects of the Victorian era, subsumed under discussions of femininity and domesticity.
This collection addresses this void, revealing the extraordinary diversity of Victorian motherhood. Exploring diaries, novels, and court cases, with contexts ranging from London to Egypt to Australia, these varied accounts take the collection “beyond the maternal ideal” to consider the multiple, unpredictable ways in which motherhood was experienced and imagined in this formative historical period.
Other Mothers joins revisionist approaches to femininity that now characterize Victorian studies. Its contents trace intersections among gender, race, and class; question the power of separate spheres ideology; and insist on the context-specific nature of social roles. The fifteen essays in this volume contribute to the fields of literary criticism, history, cultural studies, and history.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Ellen Bayuk Rosenman is professor of English, and affiliate in Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Kentucky.
Claudia C. Klaver is associate professor of English at Syracuse University.
REVIEWS
“Other Mothers is consistently interesting and fresh and the scholars involved make significant contributions to the study of Victorian literature and culture, to cultural studies more generally, and to studies of the family, gender, race, and class. This collection stands out from other scholarship on the Victorian mother in its breadth of approaches and of materials studied. I look forward to owning a copy myself.” —Beverly Taylor, professor of English at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill
“Other Mothers not only introduces readers to a number of little-known historical cases that enlarge our sense of the maternal experience, but it offers fresh perspectives on canonical literary works as well—perspectives that suggest that Victorians themselves may have been rather more skeptical, if rarely loudly critical, of ‘the maternal ideal’ than we have hitherto supposed.” —Eileen Gillooly, Columbia University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction
Claudia Klaver and Ellen Bayuk Rosenman
Part I. Beyond the Maternal Ideal
1. How to be a Domestic Goddess Redux
Deirdre d¿Albertis
2. Maternal Failure and Masculine Exhaustion in Margaret Oliphant¿s Autobiography
Laura Green
3. ¿Bland, Adoring and Gently Tearful Women¿: Debunking the Maternal Ideal in
George Eliot¿s Felix Holt
Heather Milton
4. Elderly Mothers and Middle-Aged Daughters in Charles Dickens¿s Dombey and Son
Teresa Mangum
Part II. Caretaking, Class, and Maternal Violence
5. Unforgiven: Drunken Mothers in Hesba Stretton¿s Religious Tract Society and Scottish Temperance Society Fiction
Deborah Deneholz Morse
6. Infant-Doping and Middle-Class Motherhood: Opium Warnings and Yonge¿s The
Daisy Chain
Dara Rossman Regaignon
7. Motherhood on Trial: Violence and Unwed Mothers in Victorian England
Ginger Frost
8. A Murdering Mother: Frances Knorr
Lucy Sussex
Part III. Maternity and Difference: Nation, Race, and Empire
9. ¿My Own Dear Sons¿: Discursive Maternity and Proper British Bodies in Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands
Deidre H. McMahon
10. Conceiving the Nation: Visions and Versions of Colonial Pre-natality
Deirdre Osborne
11. Orphan Stories and Maternal Legacies in Charlotte Brontë
Mary Jean Corbett
12. Distance Mothering and the ¿Cradle Lands¿: Imperial Motherhood and Lady Duff
Gordon¿s Letters from Egypt
Cara Murray
Part IV. The Maternal Body
13. The Text as Child: Gender/Sex and Metaphors of Maternity at the Fin de Siècle
Brenda R. Weber
14. The Widest Lap: Fatness, Fasting, and Nurturance in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
Lillian E. Craton
15. Mother Love: Edith Simcox, Maternity, and Lesbian Erotics
Ellen Bayuk Rosenman
Index
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC