Antifeminism and the Victorian Novel: Rereading Nineteenth-Century Women Writers

This book provides a critical reconsideration of nineteenth-century women's writing by exploring the significance of antifeminist representations for literary developments in the century's second half. It seeks to draw new attention to still neglected authors and works, while suggesting that their reappraisal at once demands and helps to facilitate a more encompassing rethinking of a number of long neglected writers and their still underestimated contribution to Victorian literary culture. Their changing classification, their marginalisation within canon formation, and most importantly, their resistance to simplifications suggested by these shifting categorisations prompts us to break out of such ideological straightjackets ourselves. In analysing a range of material that testifies to the wide spectrum, versatility, and reflexive interchanges of popular Victorian fiction, the essays in this collection work together to interrogate the significance of these still neglected works for the development of the novel genre.This collection makes an important contribution to the study of Victorian literature and especially of recently rediscovered popular writers. It will be of interest to literary critics and students working on the formation of the novel genre in general as well as on nineteenth-century culture more specifically.