04881nam 2200805Ia 450 991081196590332120200520144314.097866120701121-282-07011-80-226-67531-910.7208/9780226675312(CKB)1000000000725349(EBL)432278(OCoLC)367863022(SSID)ssj0000264901(PQKBManifestationID)11217005(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000264901(PQKBWorkID)10290468(PQKB)10546781(MiAaPQ)EBC432278(DE-B1597)535657(OCoLC)1135579840(DE-B1597)9780226675312(Au-PeEL)EBL432278(CaPaEBR)ebr10286151(CaONFJC)MIL207011(dli)HEB01744(MiU)MIU01000000000000009749879(EXLCZ)99100000000072534919890227d1988 uy 0engurcn|||||||||txtrdacontentcrdamediacrrdacarrierUneven developments the ideological work of gender in mid-Victorian England /Mary Poovey1st ed.Chicago University of Chicago Pressc19881 online resource (xi, 282 pages)Women in culture and societyDescription based upon print version of record.0-226-67530-0 0-226-67529-7 Includes bibliographical references and index.Front matter --Contents --Foreword --Acknowledgments --CHAPTER ONE. The Ideological Work of Gender --CHAPTER TWO. Scenes of an Indelicate Character: The Medical Treatment of Victorian Women --CHAPTER THREE. Covered but Not Bound: Caroline Norton and the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act --CHAPTER FOUR. The Man-of-Letters Hero David Copperfield and the Professional Writer --CHAPTER FIVE. The Anathematized Race: The Governess and Jane Eyre --CHAPTER SIX. A Housewifely Woman: The Social Construction of Florence Nightingale --Conclusion --Notes --Bibliography --IndexMary Poovey's The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer has become a standard text in feminist literary discourse. In Uneven Developments Poovey turns to broader historical concerns in an analysis of how notions of gender shape ideology. Asserting that the organization of sexual difference is a social, not natural, phenomenon, Poovey shows how representations of gender took the form of a binary opposition in mid-Victorian culture. She then reveals the role of this opposition in various discourses and institutions-medical, legal, moral, and literary. The resulting oppositions, partly because they depended on the subordination of one term to another, were always unstable. Poovey contends that this instability helps explain why various institutional versions of binary logic developed unevenly. This unevenness, in turn, helped to account for the emergence in the 1850's of a genuine oppositional voice: the voice of an organized, politicized feminist movement. Drawing on a wide range of sources-parliamentary debates, novels, medical lectures, feminist analyses of work, middle-class periodicals on demesticity-Poovey examines various controversies that provide glimpses of the ways in which representations of gender were simultaneously constructed, deployed, and contested. These include debates about the use of chloroform in childbirth, the first divorce law, the professional status of writers, the plight of governesses, and the nature of the nursing corps. Uneven Developments is a contribution to the feminist analysis of culture and ideology that challenges the isolation of literary texts from other kinds of writing and the isolation of women's issues from economic and political histories.Women in culture and society.Sex roleGreat BritainHistory19th centuryAnesthesia in obstetricsHistory19th centuryDivorceGreat BritainHistory19th centuryWomen authors, BritishSocial conditionsGovernessesGreat BritainSocial conditionsNursesGreat BritainSocial conditionsSex role in literatureSex roleHistoryAnesthesia in obstetricsHistoryDivorceHistoryWomen authors, BritishSocial conditions.GovernessesSocial conditions.NursesSocial conditions.Sex role in literature.305.3/0942Poovey Mary149338MiAaPQMiAaPQMiAaPQBOOK9910811965903321Uneven developments1380750UNINA