Dickens & Women ReObserved [9781913087203]

Overview

Dickens & Women ReObserved is a rich collection of new essays by scholars and critics from various parts of the world who represent a new appreciation and understanding of Charles Dickens and things woman. / A new generation of scholars and critics, first led by feminist critics of the 1970s, began to re-observe the man and his works with fresh eyes. A second generation of critics—those now schooled in gender studies, cultural studies, psychological theory, play theory, eco-criticism, thing theory, and a range of isms and schisms that flourish in the academy today—have originated a new and more reflective discourse on Dickens and women, and women generally in the nineteenth century. / Collectively, the essays in this volume overturn a prevalent and largely unchallenged belief held for more than 150 years: that Dickens’ female characters were one-dimensional Victorian stereotypes only and that, as exemplified by his literary depictions and conflicted personal life, he did not understand or value women as important, capable, or gifted in their own right. / While neither ignoring nor discounting Dickens’ troubled relationships with women and reliance on certain Victorian stereotypes, the essays in Dickens & Women ReObserved demonstrate that in a myriad of ways Dickens’ appreciation of women in his fiction and his life was far more subtle, sophisticated, and complex than previously understood. Consciously or unconsciously he crafted characters more individualized, independent, rounded, and assertive than typical stock cultural characterizations of women. Additionally, in his exuberant social and professional life, he was drawn to and worked amiably with such “new” women. Dickens life and work today appear evidently modern and nuanced in his regard for women and their abilities. / Dickens & Women ReObserved is an important work for comprehending one of the world’s greatest novelists and, by extension, facilitating greater study of contemporary views of Victorian women. In prose accessible to the general reader as well as scholars in literary studies, the diverse essays in this volume investigate a broad range of subjects in Dickens’ celebrated artistry, including Modernism, Queen Victoria, Ellen Ternan, adaptations, composition methods, gender, sensuality, agency, major female characters, and French as well as African relevancies. / Contents: Complex Women Because of or Despite Dickens?: An Introduction - Edward Guiliano / “Making a rosebud of her mouth”: Erotics, Semiotics and Agency in Dickensian Female Mouth Dickens, Body Politics and the Perverse Female Mouth - Colette Ramuz / “Raving with love for the Queen”: Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, and National Belonging - Adrienne Munich and Anthony Teets / Romance Games: Gender and Play in Nicholas Nickleby and The Old Curiosity Shop - Robert Sirabian / Dickens’ Unlikely Feminist Heroines: Edith Skewton Granger Dombey and Louisa Gradgrind Bounderby - Susan Jhirad / The Complications of Virtue: Florence Dombey and Lizzie Hexam - Tasmin Evernden / Bleak House, Esther Summerson, and the Gendered Identity: A Material Feminist Rereading - Adrian Tait / The Design on the Skin: Rosa Dartle’s Scar as Multi-signifying Palimpsest - Céline Prest / Esther’s Potential “visible facts”: Visual Language and the Problem of Perception in Bleak House - Megan Hansen / Navigating the Beauty and Brokenness of Humility: Esther Summerson and Amy Dorrit as Presented by Dickens and Adapted by Hopcraft, Davies, and Edzard - Christine Colón / Complicating Little Dorrit’s Tiny Woman - Stacey Kikendall / Devilishly Attractive: Dickens on French Women - Claire Woods / Dickens’s Women in Great Expectations Against the African Social Landscape - Masumi Odari and Clarunji Chesaina / On the Gendered Nature of Dickens’ Young Girls and Women - Francesca Orestano / Nelly Onstage: Writing Our Mutual Friend - Stanley Friedman / “A horrid female waterman”: The Contentious Legacy of Grace Darling in Dickens’ Our Mutual Friend - Lydia Craig / Reflection and Refraction, in the Swiss Chalet: Controlling Femininity in “George Silverman’s Explanation” - Margaret Darby / The Woman Detective in The Mystery of Edwin Drood - Julia Clarke / Dickens Among Women Modernist Writers - Michael Hollington / Appendix: Women in Dickens, A Character List / Selected Bibliography of Dickens and Women / Contributors / Index

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