This dissertation argues that silence played a fundamental role in the Victorian novel and in Victorian novel writing, operating as a productive force in service of sympathetic exchange and creative labor. It examines Charles Lamb's and Thomas Carlyle’s foundational roles in detaching silence from its traditional Romantic associations with solitude,...
Celebrity, reputation, and identity were complex issues for nineteenth-century British actresses. This dissertation examines how actresses responded to, integrated, and defied gender norms and social structures as they performed “authentic” identities for consuming publics. I investigate how actresses participated in charity events and bazaars, autobiographical writing, and advertising campaigns in...
Victorian novels’ characteristic preoccupation with marriage and inheritance has led scholars to view the form as socially conservative in the mid-nineteenth century. Yet contemporary commentators feared what young women might conceive as a result of reading. The key to this dilemma, I argue, is the usual consequence of nineteenth-century marriage...