Includes bibliographical references (p. 255-262) and index.
Contents
Private violence in the public eye: the early writings of Charles Dickens -- Domestic violence and middle-class manliness: Dombey and Son -- From regency violence to Victorian feminism: the tenant of Wildfell Hall -- The abused woman and the community: "Janet's Repentance" -- Strange revelations: the divorce court, the newspaper, and the woman in white -- The private eye and the public gaze: he knew he was right -- Marital violence and the new woman: the wing of Azrael -- Are women protected? Sherlock Holmes and the violent home.
Summary
'Bleak Houses: Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction' traces novelists' engagement with the wife-assault debates in the public press between 1828 and the turn of the century.
