Intimate Violence and Victorian Print Culture

Suzanne Rintoul identifies an important contradiction in Victorian representations of abuse: the simultaneous compulsion to expose and to obscure brutality towards women in intimate relationships. Through case studies and literary analysis, this book illustrates how intimate violence was both spectacular and unspeakable in the Victorian period.

Suzanne Rintoul's Intimate Violence and Victorian Print Culture is an insightful, diverse, and serious study of nineteenth-century depiction of battered women. While Rintoul makes substantial claims about how violence against women was represented, she provides evidence through a thoughtfully curated selection of texts, allowing her relatively brief 160-page study to be surprisingly diverse. The author provides occasional detailed descriptions of abuse and graphic illustrations, but only when there is a true need. (Sara Melton, Victorians Institute Journal, Vol. 43, 2015)

Autorentext
Suzanne Rintoul is a Professor in the School of Language and Communications Studies at Conestoga College, Canada.

Inhalt
Introduction: The Struggle To Represent Intimate Violence Against Women PART I: INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND UNDERSTANDINGS OF SOCIAL CLASS 1. Sensational Crime Street Literature, 1817-1880 2. Oliver Twist , Journalistic Discourse, and the Working-Class Body PART II: INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND AUTHORSHIP 3. Unfixing Identity and Resisting Violence: Caroline Norton's Pamphlets and Fiction 4. Sensational Sympathy in The Woman in White PART III: INTIMATE VIOLENCE AND INSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY 5. Scrutinizing the Disabled Body in Barchester Towers 6. Marital Cruelty in The History of Mary Prince Conclusion: The Limits of Oppositionality Through Victorian Representations of Intimate Violence