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Bezig met laden... Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian Englanddoor Sharon Marcus
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Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. Desafiando la visión tópica de la Inglaterra Victoriana, la autora nos muestra cómo las realciones entre mujeres constituían un componente crucial de la feminidad. A partir de fuentes literarias, memorias, cartas, revistas y debates políticos, la autora elabora una visión del mundo victoriano que subvierte las concepciones habituales y ofrece un nuevo paradigma. In Between Women, Sharon Marcus aims to disprove the misconception that female friendship, desire, and marriage were not contrary to heterosexual relations in Victorian England, as well as to show that "the asexual Victorian woman able only to respond to male advances is a myth -- not a Victorian myth, but our own." She presents three forms of female relationships. The first is female friendship, which was considered to be an important aspect of a woman's education in feminity. It was important in the Victorian era that a woman maintain friendships with other women, friendships that were intimate and passionate (but nonsexual), otherwise she may be deemed unwomanly by her lack of such friendship. In fact, Marcus shows how female friendship was vital to a successful marriage instead of opposed to it, and presents several novel plots in which the happy marriage at the end would not have been possible without female friendship. The second form of relations involves female desire, namely in the eroticised figures of fashion plates and dolls. Marcus presents evidence that rather than being simply an objectification of women for male desires, fashion plates and dolls were meant primarily to represent and avenue for female enjoyment and pleasure. The third relationship form she looks at are female marriages, in which two women merge their housholds, will their property to their partner, and behave in the same way as any married couple. Marcus shows these marriages were not the antithesis of heterosexual marriage, but an acceptable alternative to it. Women in female marriages were not outcastes, but for the most part accepted as couples in certain circles of society. And in fact it was partially the example of female marriage as contractual that aided in the reform of heterosexual marriages. This book was a fascinating reading, opening my mind to new perspectives about Victorian England. Looking back on the past, it is easy to generalize, often to the result that some aspect of history and culture gets ignored in trying to define it. This book is a reminder that one should not assume that everyone bevaed a certain way in the past, and that culture is as infinitly complicated as in our every day lives. I would certainly recomend this book to anyone interested in Victorian history. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law.--From publisher description. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)306.84Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Culture and Institutions Marriage and Parenting Non-traditional familiesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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I found the first third of the book insightful and useful, the rest less so. My perspective may be colored somewhat by the fact that I am reading for research purposes and the first third was much more relevant to what I'm working on. The final section, about female (same-sex) marriage in the Victorian era, was interesting and definitely piqued my curiosity because I didn't really know anything about it, but I felt that her treatment of it was a bit scattershot. ( )