Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel

Download or read book Professional Domesticity in the Victorian Novel written by Monica F. Cohen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-02-05 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questioning the stereotypes associated with Victorian domesticity, Monica F. Cohen offers new readings of narratives by Austen, Charlotte Bront , Dickens, Eliot, Eden, Gaskell, Oliphant and Reade. Cohen traces ways in which domestic work, often perceived as the most feminine of all activities, gained social credibility through being described in the vocabulary of nineteenth-century professionalism. She shows how women sought identity and privilege within Victorian culture, and revises our understanding of nineteenth-century domestic ideology.