Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel

Caught in the Act: Theatricality in the Nineteenth-Century English Novel
ISBN-10
0520911377
ISBN-13
9780520911376
Series
Caught in the Act
Category
Literary Criticism
Pages
304
Language
English
Published
1992-01-15
Publisher
Univ of California Press
Author
Joseph Litvak

Description

Litvak demonstrates that private experience in the novels of Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Eliot, and James is a rigorous enactment of a public script that constructs normative gender and class identities. He suggests that the theatricality which pervades these novels enforces social norms while introducing opportunities for novelists to resist them. This approach encourages a rethinking of the genre and its cultural contexts in all their instability and ambivalence.

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