Overview

First published in 1988, Affairs of the Hearth challenges many widely held assumptions about Victorian culture and shows that its poetry was far more innovative and experimental than it is often considered to be. The author argues that, far from being complacent about domesticity or reticent about sexuality, Victorian writers discussed these matters perceptively and in detail. He shows that the poems analyzed by Clough, Tennyson, Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Meredith are preoccupied with the stresses of marriage, sexuality, gender, the role of women, parent-child relationships, and adolescence. The same themes are explored as the author makes comparisons with contemporary painting, fiction, and diaries. He discovers a collection of unhappy homes and appalling families and finds the tensions of Victorian life in the very images of domestic comfort. In analysing the texts both closely and historically, Edmond draws accessibly on the theoretical work by Foucault, Williams, and Eagleton, and tests it against specific texts and a particular culture. He also contributes to the historical debate of the time about the history of the family and will be of interest to all students of Victorian literature, social history, women’s studies, and literary theory.

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9781041245551

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Reviews

Review of the first publication: ‘…approachable and pleasantly written book…’ — Marion Shaw, The Review of English Studies

Author Information

Rod Edmond was born in New Zealand and educated at Victoria University Wellington and Merton College Oxford. Subsequently Professor, he is now Emeritus Professor of Modern Literature and Cultural History at the University of Kent. His main fields of publication include Victorian, postcolonial and Pacific writing, history and literature of empire, migration, travel writing, island studies, history of medicine, the Kent coast, and the history of cricket. He is the co-founder and formerly co-editor of the Routledge Research in Postcolonial Literatures series.

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