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The Resource Feeling for the poor : bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel, Carolyn Betensky

Feeling for the poor : bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel, Carolyn Betensky

Creator
Summary
"What if the political work of Victorian social-problem novels was precisely to make the reader feel as if reading them {u2014} in and of itself {u2014} mattered? Surveying novels by Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Henry James, Carolyn Betensky tracks the promotion of bourgeois feeling as a response to the suffering of the poor and working classes. Victorian social-problem novels, she argues, volunteered the experience of their own reading as a viable response to conflicts that seemed daunting or irreconcilable. Encoded at multiple levels within the novels themselves, reading became something to do about the pain of others. Beyond representations of conscious or unconscious wishes to control, conquer, or discipline the industrial poor, social-problem novels offered their middle-class readers the opportunity to experience themselves in the position of both benefactor and beneficiary. Betensky argues that these narratives were not only about middle-class fear of or sympathy for the working classes. They gave voice, just as importantly, to a middle-class desire for and even envy of the experience of the dominated classes. In their representations of poor and working-class characters, social-problem novels offered middle-class subjects an expanded range of emotional experience that included a claim to sympathy on their own behalf"--From the Jacket
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
ix, 225 pages
Contents
  • Introduction: feeling for the poor
  • Knowing who cares and caring who knows in Michael Armstrong and Oliver Twist
  • Symmetry, sympathy, and the "two-nations" trope
  • "Nought but tears and brave words": feeling and complaining in Gaskell's industrial fiction
  • Felix Holt and the radicalization of feeling
  • "It's a passion--it's my life--it's all I care for!": befriending the poor in The Princess Casamassima
Isbn
9780813930619
Instance
Label
Feeling for the poor : bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel
Title
Feeling for the poor
Title remainder
bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel
Statement of responsibility
Carolyn Betensky
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"What if the political work of Victorian social-problem novels was precisely to make the reader feel as if reading them {u2014} in and of itself {u2014} mattered? Surveying novels by Charles Dickens, Frances Trollope, Benjamin Disraeli, Elizabeth Gaskell, George Eliot, and Henry James, Carolyn Betensky tracks the promotion of bourgeois feeling as a response to the suffering of the poor and working classes. Victorian social-problem novels, she argues, volunteered the experience of their own reading as a viable response to conflicts that seemed daunting or irreconcilable. Encoded at multiple levels within the novels themselves, reading became something to do about the pain of others. Beyond representations of conscious or unconscious wishes to control, conquer, or discipline the industrial poor, social-problem novels offered their middle-class readers the opportunity to experience themselves in the position of both benefactor and beneficiary. Betensky argues that these narratives were not only about middle-class fear of or sympathy for the working classes. They gave voice, just as importantly, to a middle-class desire for and even envy of the experience of the dominated classes. In their representations of poor and working-class characters, social-problem novels offered middle-class subjects an expanded range of emotional experience that included a claim to sympathy on their own behalf"--From the Jacket
Member of
Cataloging source
DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorDate
1962-
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Betensky, Carolyn
Government publication
government publication of a state province territory dependency etc
Index
index present
LC call number
PR878.P66
LC item number
B47 2010
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Series statement
Victorian literature and culture series.
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • English fiction
  • Poor in literature
  • Social classes in literature
  • Compassion in literature
  • Social action in literature
  • Englisch
  • Roman
  • Armut
  • Soziale Klasse
  • Mitleid
  • Sozialer Roman
  • Englisch
  • Motiv
  • Soziale Klasse
  • Mitgefühl
  • Compassion in literature
  • English fiction
  • Poor in literature
  • Social action in literature
  • Social classes in literature
Label
Feeling for the poor : bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel, Carolyn Betensky
Instantiates
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Introduction: feeling for the poor -- Knowing who cares and caring who knows in Michael Armstrong and Oliver Twist -- Symmetry, sympathy, and the "two-nations" trope -- "Nought but tears and brave words": feeling and complaining in Gaskell's industrial fiction -- Felix Holt and the radicalization of feeling -- "It's a passion--it's my life--it's all I care for!": befriending the poor in The Princess Casamassima
Dimensions
24 cm.
Extent
ix, 225 pages
Isbn
9780813930619
Isbn Type
(cloth : alk. paper)
Lccn
2010013714
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
  • (OCoLC)606053844
  • (OCoLC)ocn606053844
Label
Feeling for the poor : bourgeois compassion, social action, and the Victorian novel, Carolyn Betensky
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Introduction: feeling for the poor -- Knowing who cares and caring who knows in Michael Armstrong and Oliver Twist -- Symmetry, sympathy, and the "two-nations" trope -- "Nought but tears and brave words": feeling and complaining in Gaskell's industrial fiction -- Felix Holt and the radicalization of feeling -- "It's a passion--it's my life--it's all I care for!": befriending the poor in The Princess Casamassima
Dimensions
24 cm.
Extent
ix, 225 pages
Isbn
9780813930619
Isbn Type
(cloth : alk. paper)
Lccn
2010013714
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
  • (OCoLC)606053844
  • (OCoLC)ocn606053844

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