Language of Gender and Class: Transformation in the Victorian Novel

The Language of Gender and Classchallenges widely-held assumptions about the study of the Victorian novel. The author analyzes language as the framework for the concepts of gender and the formations of social class, specifically, how stereotypes of gender and class encode cultural myths that reinforce the status quo. Re-examining six major Victorian novels:Shirleyby Charlotte Bronte;North and Southby Elizabeth Gaskell;Felix Holtby George Eliot;Hard Timesby Charles Dickens;The Unclassedby George Gissing; andJude the Obscureby Thomas Hardy, Patricia Ingham demonstrates that none of the writers, male or female, easily accept stereotypes of gender and class. The classic figures of Angel and Whore are reassessed and modified. And the result, argues Ingham, is that new representations of femininity can begin to emerge.