1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910454274303321

Autore

Fernandez Jean <1956-, >

Titolo

Victorian servants, class, and the politics of literacy / / Jean Fernandez

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York : , : Routledge, , 2010

ISBN

1-135-20210-9

1-135-20211-7

1-282-28388-X

9786612283888

0-203-87088-3

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (218 p.)

Collana

Routledge studies in nineteenth-century literature ; ; 2

Disciplina

820.9/355

Soggetti

English fiction - 19th century - History and criticism

Household employees in literature

Literacy in literature

Social classes in literature

Household employees - Great Britain - Biography - History and criticism

Household employees - Education - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Working class - Books and reading - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Literacy - Great Britain - History - 19th century

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Book Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; Figures; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Literary Handmaids: Mary Wollstonecraft's Maria or The Wrongs of Woman (1798) and Catherine Crowe's Susan Hopley or The Adventures of a Maidservant (1841); 3 Oral Pleasures: Repression and Desire in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (1847) and Elizabeth Gaskell's "The Old Nurse's Story" (1852); 4 Obedient Servants of Empire: Narrating Imperial History in William Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868)



5 "Master's Made Away With": Servant Voices and Narrational Politics in R. L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr.Hyde (1886)6 The Ventriloquized Servant; 7 In Their Own Voice: Servants and Autobiography; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index

Sommario/riassunto

In this volume, Fernandez brings the under-examined figure of the Victorian servant out of obscurity in order to tell the story of his or her encounter with literacy, as imagined and represented in nineteenth-century fiction, autobiography, pamphlets and diaries. A vast body of writing is uncovered on the management of servant literacy in Victorian periodicals, advice manuals, cartoons, sermons, books on household management, and pornography, thereby revealing that the domestic sphere was a crucial war zone in the battle over mass literacy. By attending to how fictional and nonfictional tex