Patricia Zakreski's interdisciplinary study draws on fiction, prose, painting, and the periodical press to expand and redefine our understanding of women's relationship to paid work during the Victorian period. While the idea of 'separate spheres' has largely gone uncontested by feminist critics studying female labour during the nineteenth century, Zakreski challenges this distinction by showing that the divisions between public and private were, in fact, surprisingly flexible, with homes described as workplaces and workplaces as homes. By combining art with forms of industrial or mass production in representations of the respectable woman worker, writers projected a form of paid creative work that was not violated or profaned by the public world of the market in which it was traded. Looking specifically at sewing, art, writing, and acting, Zakreski shows how these professions increasingly came to be defined as 'artistic' and thus as suitable professions for middle-class women, and argues that the supposedly degrading activity of paid work could be transformed into a refining experience for women. Rather than consigning working women to the margins of patriarchal culture, then, her study shows how representations of creative women, by authors such as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dinah Craik, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, and Charlotte Yonge, participated in and shaped new forms of mainstream culture.
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About the Author
Patricia Zakreski teaches English literature at the University of Exeter, UK.
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Writing in 1861 about the need for a realistic understanding of women's lives in Victorian England, the author of 'Facts Versus Ideas' for the English Woman's Journal listed a series of 'stereotyped phrases' that she thought had become overused and meanin Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
female artistic labour, genteel seamstress, critical chivalry, distressed seamstress, professional female artist, distressed needlewoman, reduced gentlewoman, private respectability, female artistry, conventional domesticity, dramatic temperament, divided subjectivity, domestic identity, domestic woman, feminine writing, authorial identity, natural acting Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Barrett Browning, Art Journal, Aurora Leigh, Lady Carbury, Daniel Deronda, George Eliot, Saturday Review, Oxford University Press, Royal Academy, The Times, English Woman's Journal, Elizabeth Gaskell, Half Sisters, Ellen Terry, Eliza Cook's Journal, Dinah Craik, Dynevor Terrace, Miss Marjoribanks, Margaret Oliphant, Fanny Kemble, Mary Barton, Way We Live, Cambridge University Press, North British Review, Nina Auerbach Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Writing in 1861 about the need for a realistic understanding of women's lives in Victorian England, the author of 'Facts Versus Ideas' for the English Woman's Journal listed a series of 'stereotyped phrases' that she thought had become overused and meanin Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
female artistic labour, genteel seamstress, critical chivalry, distressed seamstress, professional female artist, distressed needlewoman, reduced gentlewoman, private respectability, female artistry, conventional domesticity, dramatic temperament, divided subjectivity, domestic identity, domestic woman, feminine writing, authorial identity, natural acting Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Barrett Browning, Art Journal, Aurora Leigh, Lady Carbury, Daniel Deronda, George Eliot, Saturday Review, Oxford University Press, Royal Academy, The Times, English Woman's Journal, Elizabeth Gaskell, Half Sisters, Ellen Terry, Eliza Cook's Journal, Dinah Craik, Dynevor Terrace, Miss Marjoribanks, Margaret Oliphant, Fanny Kemble, Mary Barton, Way We Live, Cambridge University Press, North British Review, Nina Auerbach Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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