Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages [Paperback]

Phyllis Rose (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 12, 1984

In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses as examples the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

In her study of the married couple as the smallest political unit, Phyllis Rose uses as examples the marriages of five Victorian writers who wrote about their own lives with unusual candor.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (October 12, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394725808
• ISBN-13: 978-0394725802
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #366,535 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Relevant Exploration of Marriage, August 16, 2002

By 

Katherine Woodbury "Woody" (Portland, ME) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (Paperback)

Phyllis Rose' Parellel Lives is an exploration of marriage: what makes a marriage, how marriages operate, the power struggles within marriage, the impact of patriarchy on marriage, sexuality within marriage and many, many other issues.

Ms Rose uses Victorian marriages to discuss these issues. This is a perceptive move. Our current culture, filled with self-help manuals and marriage classes, is in some ways less tolerate of eccentricity, more assured about how a successful marriage should operate. The tensions of sexuality, power and so on have been addressed, if not by individuals, within the culture and media at large. But Victorians did not have such an outlet. Dickens didn't know he was experiencing a well-documented male mid-life crisis when he engineered he and his wife's separation. This lack of self-knowledge makes the exploration of such marriages a fascinating study in human nature.

The book is split into the marriage biographies of five couples with two sections on Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle. A refreshing aspect of Ms Rose's Parallel Lives is that she is exploring these marriages from a feminist viewpoint that encompasses compassion for the man as well as for the woman. Her prose style is lively as she delves into the separate personal stories of her couples and how their personal stories influenced the marriage as a whole.

The book suffers a bit at the end. Ms Rose pulls back and attempts to apply general theory to her analysis. This is mostly unsuccessful. Ms Rose's gift lies in the personal--her ability to unravel this or that particular marriage and how this or that particular marriage was influenced by the problems of patricarchy--not in a general ideological stance that would supposedly solve those problems.

Recommendation: An intelligent and perceptive read. Buy it!

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning: don't lend this book to a friend!, March 9, 2004

By 

Lee "Four eyes" (London, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (Paperback)

I loved this book when it was first published in the 80s for all the reasons put forth by the preceeding enthusiatic reviewers. So was startled to see it had only a 3 star rating when I visited Amazon a short while ago, searching for a second-hand copy.

Why this book has been out of print for so long is totally mystifying. For, you see, I'm not alone in my love of it. - every person I've loaned it to has had nothing but praise for it.

But most telling of all, each person has liked it so much that they've passed it on to a friend of theirs, who's evidently done the same, in a never-ending chain of handovers.

Hence my search for yet another second-hand copy earlier today, But, more to the point, isn't this the best recommendation any book can genuinely have: being handed on from person to person with the exhotation : "You'll really love this book. . . you've got to read it now!"

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A gem!, October 3, 2000

By 

"observerite" (Ann Arbor, MI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (Paperback)

Wonderfully balanced and perceptive, this probing look at five unconventional Victorian marriages provides many insights into the sexual mores of that era. The section on the novelist George Eliot is especially haunting.