Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages (Paperback)

by Phyllis Rose (Author) "Take the case of an heiress, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and a happy disposition, who has lived some twenty years in..." (more)
Key Phrases: George Eliot, Miss Evans, Marian Evans (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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.

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: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #23,333 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #8 in	Books > History > Europe > England > 19th Century
  #28 in	Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > British

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 26 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)

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!

22 of 26 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

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Victorian Marriages, March 1, 2009

By	James Henderson "Frugal Reviewer" (Chicago, Illinois) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Who would imagine that a brief book highlighting the marriages of five literary Victorian couples would be such a delightful read. In the capable hands of author Phyllis Rose it is, as she surveys the marriages of John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, John Stuart Mill, and Marian Evans (George Eliot). The chapter on Evans focuses on her relationship with George Henry Lewes rather than her husband. The story of Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle bookends the narrative. The insights of the author into the incidents and foibles of these couples' lives portray their Victorian lives in a totally new perspective. This is a unique literary biography and her balanced and perceptive approach to each provides more insights than one might expect from such a slim volume. The analysis of their marriages and friendships is still relevant and speaks to our relationships more than a century later. I would recommend this book to anyone who has ever read and enjoyed any of these authors or who is just interested in what their lives were all about.