Drawing on novels, poetry, periodicals, and political pamphlets, Giving Women examines the literary expression and cultural consequences of gift exchange among English women from the 1820s until the end of the First World War. Altruism and self-assertiveness went hand in hand for Victorian women. During a period when most lacked property rights and professional opportunities, gift transactions allowed them to enter into economic negotiations of power as volatile and potentially profitable as those within the market systems that so frequently excluded or exploited them. They made presents of holiday books and homemade jams, transformed inheritances into intimate and aggressive bequests, and,in both proseand practice, offered up their own bodies in sacrifice. Far more than selfless acts of charity or sure signs of their suitability for marriage, such gifts radically reconstructed women's personal relationships and public activism in the nineteenth century.Giving Women examines the literary expression and cultural consequences of English women's giving from the 1820s to the First World War. Attending to the dynamic action and reaction of gift exchange in fiction and poetry by Charlotte Bront, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Christina Rossettias well as in literary annuals, Salvation Army periodicals, and political pamphlets, Rappoport demonstrates how female authors and fictional protagonists alike mobilizednetworks outside of marriage and the market. Through giving, women redefined the primary allegiances of their everyday lives, forged public coalitions, andadvanced campaigns for abolition, slum reform, eugenics, and suffrage. INTRODUCTION I. Women Giving II. Gifts of Writing III. Organization of the BookPART I Balanced AccountsCHAPTER 1 Literary Offerings I. Benevolent Books, Receptive Readers II. Gifts of Freedom III. Alliance and ExchangeCHAPTER 2 Fictions of Reciprocity in Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh I. Jane's Inheritance II. "An[other] Undowered Orphan" III. Blind EconomiesCHAPTER 3 Conservation in Cranford:Sympathy, Secrets, and the First Law of ThermodynamicsI. The Science of GivingII. Secrets in CirculationPART II Much ObligedCHAPTER 4 The Price of Redemption in <"Goblin Marke" I. Sisterhood "Beyond the Reach of Any Remuneration" II. Lizzie's Silver Penny III. The Safest InvestmentsCHAPTER 5 Service and Savings in the SlumsI. "Lower Still": Sacrifice and Sistering the SlumsII. Cupboards, Chairs, and ConversionIII. "Coming Down" in order to Rise Up: Risk and AssetIV. Writing the SlumsCHAPTER 6 The Give and Take of "New-Woman" Eugenics I. Consuming Women, Selfish Mothers II. Bio-Altruism III. The Sacrifice of MotherhoodEPILOGUE Homemade Jams & Militant Martyrs: Politics of Generosity in Campaigns for Women's Suffrage I. Appealing for the Vote II. Dying for the Vote III. A Politics of GenerosityWORKS CITED
- ISBN: 978-0-19-977260-5
- Editorial: Oxford University
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Páginas: 304
- Fecha Publicación: 05/01/2012
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés