Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution

by Susan Zlotnick

Overview

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title

The industrial revolution in nineteenth-century England disrupted traditional ways of life. Condemning these transformations, the male writers who explored the brave new world of Victorian industrialism looked longingly to an idealized past. However, British women writers were not so pessimistic and some even foresaw the prospect of real improvement. As Susan Zlotnick argues in Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution, novelists Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Frances Trollope, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna were more willing to embrace industrialism than their male counterparts. While these women's responses to early industrialism differed widely, they imagined the industrial revolution and the modernity it heralded in ways unique to their gender. Zlotnick extends her analysis of the literature of the industrial revolution to the poetry and prose produced by working-class men and women. She examines the works of Chartist poets, dialect writers, and two "factory girl" poets who wrote about their experiences in the mills.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801866494
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/21/2001
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan Zlotnick is an associate professor of English at Vassar College.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1. A "World Turned Upside Downwards": Men, Dematerialization, and the Disposition-of-England Question
Chapter 2. The Fortunate Fall: Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Female Myths of Progress
Chapter 3. Frances Trollope, Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna, and the Early Industrial Discourse
Chapter 4. Nostalgia and the Ideology of Domesticity in Working-Class Literature
Conclusion. Past and Present: The Industrial Revolution in a (Victorian) Post-Industrial World

Editorial Reviews

Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution provides us not only with a rigorous and persuasive reworking of some gender and class assumptions about nineteenth-century industrialism, but also with some vibrant and illuminating critical readings.
—Julia Swindells, Victorian Studies

[Zlotnick] forces us to rethink the whole issue of industrial capitalism and especially its effect on women in the workforce (including female novelists themselves, who benefited greatly from the expanded market for literature capitalism made possible). This is a far-reaching and original book that should be required reading for all students and scholars of 19th-century literature.
—Virginia Quarterly Review

A compelling new reading of an important facet of British cultural history, based on contrasting literary treatments of the effects of the industrial revolution by male and female writers.
—Victorian Periodicals Review

Distinguished by clarity of prose and quality of research . . . Contributing a new reading of the social problem genre in relation to gender, this study adds a crucial perspective through its emphasis on noncanonical and working-class writing.
—Lynette Felber, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

Susan Zlotnick's study is a highly readable contribution to what looks like being a revisionist (and distinctly feminist) phase in the academic project of 're-reading the industrial revolution'.
—Ella Westland, Dickens Quarterly

From the Publisher

Distinguished by clarity of prose and quality of research . . . Contributing a new reading of the social problem genre in relation to gender, this study adds a crucial perspective through its emphasis on noncanonical and working-class writing.

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature - Lynette Felber

[Zlotnick] forces us to rethink the whole issue of industrial capitalism and especially its effect on women in the workforce (including female novelists themselves, who benefited greatly from the expanded market for literature capitalism made possible). This is a far-reaching and original book that should be required reading for all students and scholars of 19th-century literature.

Virginia Quarterly Review

A compelling new reading of an important facet of British cultural history, based on contrasting literary treatments of the effects of the industrial revolution by male and female writers.

Victorian Periodicals Review

Susan Zlotnick's study is a highly readable contribution to what looks like being a revisionist (and distinctly feminist) phase in the academic project of 're-reading the industrial revolution'.

Dickens Quarterly - Ella Westland

Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution provides us not only with a rigorous and persuasive reworking of some gender and class assumptions about nineteenth-century industrialism, but also with some vibrant and illuminating critical readings.

Victorian Studies - Julia Swindells

Susan Zlotnick's study is a highly readable contribution to what looks like being a revisionist (and distinctly feminist) phase in the academic project of 're-reading the industrial revolution'.

— Ella Westland

Dickens Quarterly

Distinguished by clarity of prose and quality of research... Contributing a new reading of the social problem genre in relation to gender, this study adds a crucial perspective through its emphasis on noncanonical and working-class writing.

— Lynette Felber

Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

Women, Writing, and the Industrial Revolution provides us not only with a rigorous and persuasive reworking of some gender and class assumptions about nineteenth-century industrialism, but also with some vibrant and illuminating critical readings.

— Julia Swindells

Victorian Studies

Distinguished by clarity of prose and quality of research ... Contributing a new reading of the social problem genre in relation to gender, this study adds a crucial perspective through its emphasis on noncanonical and working-class writing. —Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature

Lynette Felber

Demonstrates that Britain's female writers were more willing to embrace industrialism than their male counterparts, through exploration of the writings of Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Bronte, Frances Trollope, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna. Also examines poetry and fiction produced by working-class men and women, including texts by the Chartists, the largest laboring-class movement of the early 19th century, as well as popular commercial literature on the industrial working class. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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