Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot

by Deirdre David

Overview

Examines the works of three Victorian writers, looks at the ways they subverted and affirmed their society, and discusses women's higher education in nineteenth century England.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780333447260
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	09/01/1987
Edition description:	1987
Pages:	273
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

Editorial Reviews

Viewing Victorian culture as intractably patriarchal, David laboriously concludes that her three writers both complicitly reinforced and subverted its values. Antonio Gramsci's theories on the social function of intellectuals suggest to David that Barrett Browning and Eliot mythologized themselves into ``traditional'' intellectuals left unmolested by contemporary forces even as they remained much aware of them. Meanwhile, Martineau functioned as one of Gramsci's ``organic'' intellectuals, legitimizing through her journalism the ruling class's political and social control. While a vitiating equation of the true ``intellectual'' with the merely cultured person damages the argument, women's studies collections should add this title. Barbara J. Dunlap, City Coll. Lib., CUNY

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