Bleak Houses - Marital Violence in Victorian Fiction
“Professor Surridge exhibits a clear and persuasive historical sense as well as sensitivity to the novels and stories. I believe this study will have lasting value because of its careful historical research and corresponding interpretation of the texts,” says Naomi Wood, Kansas State University The Offenses Against the Person Act of 1828 was a piece of legislation that opened magistrates' courts to abused working-class wives. Newspapers in turn reported on these proceedings and in this way the Victorian scrutiny of domestic conduct began. But how did popular fiction treat the phenomenon of “private” family violence?
Facing a desperate public, a hostile press and reluctant witnesses, the Philadelphia Police Department must try and stop a new reign of violence - a terrifying spree of kidnapping and assault that has plunged the city into fear. The follow up to "Men in Blue.
Employing Northrop Frye and Rene Girard as his theoretical foundation, Johnsen reinterprets the works of three canonical modernists--Ibsen, Joyce, and Woolf--to argue for their commitment to analyzing collective violence as a defining motive in literary modernism. Johnsen shows how Frye's vision of a movement from mythic to ironic heroes parallels Girard's view of a society increasingly demythologized, and increasingly concerned with scapegoats and victims. He points to important similarities between these theoretical visions and a growing concern for weaker subjects across literary history, especially with the move into the modern period.
Private detective Monk makes his fourth appearance in the vivid Victorian series by the beloved creator of Inspector Pitt and wife. A gifted nurse has met death by strangulation, and William Monk is convinced it was no random act of violence. Soon he discerns the shadow of a tragic evil that darkens every level of society.
Medieval Europe was a rapidly developing society with a problem of violent disorder. Professor Kaeuper's original and authoritative study reveals that chivalry was not simply part of the solution. Chivalry praised heroic violence by knights, and fused such displays of prowess with honour,piety, high status, and attractiveness to women. Though the vast body of chivalric literature, here examined, praises chivalry as necessary to civilization, most texts also worry over knightly violence, criticize all ideals and practices of chivalry, and often propose reforms.
