Re-familiarizing Victorian Marriage

Authors

  • Talia Schaffer

Keywords:

familiar marriage model, fiction

Abstract

This article will define the familiar marriage model, discuss its historical evolution, and explore its presence in Victorian fiction. What I want to suggest here is that the central plot of the Victorian novel, the marriage plot, is about love only inasmuch as love is a problem. As Victorian novels obsessively rehearse the clash between romantic and familiar marriage, we see a culture struggling to come to terms with the event that defined its subjects’ – above all, its female subjects’ – lives.

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Published

2011-04-25

Issue

Section

Articles