Wisps of violence : producing public and private politics in the turn-of-the-century British novel

Resource Information

The work Wisps of violence : producing public and private politics in the turn-of-the-century British novel represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Wisps of violence : producing public and private politics in the turn-of-the-century British novel

Title remainder

producing public and private politics in the turn-of-the-century British novel

Statement of responsibility

Eileen Sypher

Creator

• Sypher, Eileen

Subject

• English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism
• English fiction -- 20th century -- History and criticism
• Feminism and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
• History
• Political fiction, English -- History and criticism
• Politics and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Public opinion in literature
• Sex role in literature
• Violence in literature
• Women and literature -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century
• Privacy in literature

Genre

• History
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Language

eng

Summary

Eric Hobsbawm has characterized the period from 1880 to 1914 as 'years when wisps of violence hung in the English air', years in which increasingly militant socialists, anarchists and feminists seriously threatened the peace. Curiously, however, few novels of the period openly acknowledged this threat, whether to welcome or criticize it, and those which did under-represent the public political sphere. By juxtaposing both well-known and lesser-known novels - such as Henry James' Princess Casamassima, Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, George Bernard Shaw's An Unsocial Socialist, and Gertrude Dix's The Image Breakers - and using the insights of feminist and Machereyan literary theory, Sypher interprets the image of turn-of-the-century politics produced by fiction. Wisps of Violence argues that this fiction tried to contain the threat of the new politics and the nascent collapse of distinct public and private spheres, by attempting to reinvent a separate, domestic sphere presided over by 'woman'. Though few of these novels are 'feminist' texts, they nevertheless suggest as a whole the subtle yet far-reaching extent of this period's social instability, particularly in the area of gender relations

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

823/.809358

Index

index present

LC call number

PR878.P6

LC item number

S97 1993

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography