Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture

Author:   Jill Rappoport (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, University of Kentucky)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
ISBN:  

9780199364947


Pages:   272
Publication Date:   09 January 2014
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
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Giving Women: Alliance and Exchange in Victorian Culture


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Full Product Details

Author:   Jill Rappoport (Associate Professor, Associate Professor, University of Kentucky)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.40cm , Height: 1.60cm , Length: 15.60cm
Weight:   0.417kg
ISBN:  

9780199364947


ISBN 10:   019936494
Pages:   272
Publication Date:   09 January 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order   Availability explained
Stock availability from the supplier is unknown. We will order it for you and ship this item to you once it is received by us.

Table of Contents

"INTRODUCTION I. Women Giving II. Gifts of Writing III. Organization of the Book PART I Balanced Accounts CHAPTER 1 Literary Offerings I. Benevolent Books, Receptive Readers II. Gifts of Freedom III. Alliance and Exchange CHAPTER 2 Fictions of Reciprocity in Jane Eyre and Aurora Leigh I. Jane's Inheritance II. ""An[other] Undowered Orphan"" III. Blind Economies CHAPTER 3 Conservation in Cranford: Sympathy, Secrets, and the First Law of Thermodynamics I. The Science of Giving II. Secrets in Circulation PART II Much Obliged CHAPTER 4 The Price of Redemption in ""Goblin Marke"" I. Sisterhood ""Beyond the Reach of Any Remuneration"" II. Lizzie's Silver Penny III. The Safest Investments CHAPTER 5 Service and Savings in the Slums I. ""Lower Still"": Sacrifice and Sistering the Slums II. Cupboards, Chairs, and Conversion III. ""Coming Down"" in order to Rise Up: Risk and Asset IV. Writing the Slums CHAPTER 6 The Give and Take of ""New-Woman"" Eugenics I. Consuming Women, Selfish Mothers II. Bio-Altruism III. The Sacrifice of Motherhood EPILOGUE 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 Generosity WORKS CITED"

Reviews

Teasing out the implications of women's gift-exchanges in fiction and poetry, and in philanthropy and activism, and even in reading practices, Rappoport's study offers both a pleasingly rich account of middle-class women's culture in the nineteenth-century and a nuanced challenge to the idea that a Victorian woman's generosity was a dangerous capitulation to misogynist gender norms....Because of its broad sweep and because of the depth of detail it has to offer about the Victorian community of women, Giving Women will join Sharon Marcus's Between Women (2007) as one of the most compelling works on Victorian culture and women in the past decade. --Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies Giving Women is an important examination of the Victorian ideology of self-sacrifice. Rappoport demonstrates how closely entwined were acts of benevolence and female power. Her fresh readings of canonical authors delineate the ambivalence felt towards saintly women. Chapters on Salvation Army workers, pro-maternity eugenicists and hunger-striking suffragists document the complicated pleasures of personal sacrifice, whether to the needy, the nation or the Cause. --Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 Beware the humble gift, for as Jill Rappoport cleverly demonstrates, generosity, for the Victorians, was never simply beneficial. Gifts could forge close ties or poison relations; they could bolster female community as well as individual autonomy. An astute analysis of key Victorian notions of sacrifice, community and duty, Rappoport's Giving Women is a very welcome present to the field. --Deborah A. Cohen, author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions Giving Women is scrupulously researched, with abundant use of archival materials, cogently argued, and beautifully written. Its impressive breadth and range will make it essential reading among literary, historical, and feminist scholars of the period. --Mary Jean


What Giving Women does best is to provide us with a wealth of detail on the ways in which Victorian women use the models of exchange associated with gift and sacrifice to authorize a range of social, political, and literary interventions. --Victorian Studies Teasing out the implications of women's gift-exchanges in fiction and poetry, and in philanthropy and activism, and even in reading practices, Rappoport's study offers both a pleasingly rich account of middle-class women's culture in the nineteenth-century and a nuanced challenge to the idea that a Victorian woman's generosity was a dangerous capitulation to misogynist gender norms....Because of its broad sweep and because of the depth of detail it has to offer about the Victorian community of women, Giving Women will join Sharon Marcus's Between Women (2007) as one of the most compelling works on Victorian culture and women in the past decade. --Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies Giving Women is an important examination of the Victorian ideology of self-sacrifice. Rappoport demonstrates how closely entwined were acts of benevolence and female power. Her fresh readings of canonical authors delineate the ambivalence felt towards saintly women. Chapters on Salvation Army workers, pro-maternity eugenicists and hunger-striking suffragists document the complicated pleasures of personal sacrifice, whether to the needy, the nation or the Cause. --Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 Beware the humble gift, for as Jill Rappoport cleverly demonstrates, generosity, for the Victorians, was never simply beneficial. Gifts could forge close ties or poison relations; they could bolster female community as well as individual autonomy. An astute analysis of key Victorian notions of sacrifice, community and duty, Rappoport's Giving Women is a very welcome present to the field. --Deborah A. Cohen, author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions Giving Women is scrupulously researched, with abundant use of archival materials, cogently argued, and beautifully written. Its impressive breadth and range will make it essential reading among literary, historical, and feminist scholars of the period. --Mary Jean Corbett, author of FamilyLikeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf A fascinating journey through literature and the social landscape of the nineteenth-century world of gift giving in its multifarious forms...Rappoport's ambitious text serves as a new model of scholarship on the rich array of subjects she analyses. --The Latchkey Rappoport offers rich rereadings of canonical Victorian authors that contribute to the ongoing reassessment of female agency in the Victorian novel. --Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century Giving Women requires a giving up of preconceptions and a giving in to being tantalized by the world it reconstitutes through fictions, real and literary. --Adrienne Munich, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature


What Giving Women does best is to provide us with a wealth of detail on the ways in which Victorian women use the models of exchange associated with gift and sacrifice to authorize a range of social, political, and literary interventions. --Victorian Studies Teasing out the implications of women's gift-exchanges in fiction and poetry, and in philanthropy and activism, and even in reading practices, Rappoport's study offers both a pleasingly rich account of middle-class women's culture in the nineteenth-century and a nuanced challenge to the idea that a Victorian woman's generosity was a dangerous capitulation to misogynist gender norms....Because of its broad sweep and because of the depth of detail it has to offer about the Victorian community of women, Giving Women will join Sharon Marcus's Between Women (2007) as one of the most compelling works on Victorian culture and women in the past decade. --Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies Giving Women is an important examination of the Victorian ideology of self-sacrifice. Rappoport demonstrates how closely entwined were acts of benevolence and female power. Her fresh readings of canonical authors delineate the ambivalence felt towards saintly women. Chapters on Salvation Army workers, pro-maternity eugenicists and hunger-striking suffragists document the complicated pleasures of personal sacrifice, whether to the needy, the nation or the Cause. --Martha Vicinus, author of Intimate Friends: Women Who Loved Women, 1778-1928 Beware the humble gift, for as Jill Rappoport cleverly demonstrates, generosity, for the Victorians, was never simply beneficial. Gifts could forge close ties or poison relations; they could bolster female community as well as individual autonomy. An astute analysis of key Victorian notions of sacrifice, community and duty, Rappoport's Giving Women is a very welcome present to the field. --Deborah A. Cohen, author of Household Gods: The British and their Possessions Giving Women is scrupulously researched, with abundant use of archival materials, cogently argued, and beautifully written. Its impressive breadth and range will make it essential reading among literary, historical, and feminist scholars of the period. --Mary Jean Corbett, author of Family Likeness: Sex, Marriage, and Incest from Jane Austen to Virginia Woolf A fascinating journey through literature and the social landscape of the nineteenth-century world of gift giving in its multifarious forms...Rappoport's ambitious text serves as a new model of scholarship on the rich array of subjects she analyses. --The Latchkey Rappoport offers rich rereadings of canonical Victorian authors that contribute to the ongoing reassessment of female agency in the Victorian novel. --Recent Studies in the Nineteenth Century Giving Women requires a giving up of preconceptions and a giving in to being tantalized by the world it reconstitutes through fictions, real and literary. --Adrienne Munich, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature


Author Information

Jill Rappoport is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky.

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