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Relational Reading

Review products

Ronjaunee Chatterjee, Feminine Singularity: The Politics of Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2022).

Carolyn Dever, Chains of Love and Beauty: The Diary of Michael Field (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2022).

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2023

Extract

Two recently published books ask the same question: How might we read textual representations of Victorian women by focusing on their relationality, not their separate individuality? Ronjaunee Chatterjee's Feminine Singularity: The Politics of Subjectivity in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Carolyn Dever's Chains of Love and Beauty: The Diary of Michael Field both stress that multiple genres of Victorian writing depend upon the intimate play of tension and identification among women who are not-quite-one. They enact that idea, however, in rather different ways.

Type
Review Essay
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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