TY - BOOK AU - Bodenheimer,Rosemarie TI - The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction SN - 9781501733444 AV - PR878.S62 U1 - 823.8093242 19 PY - 2019///] CY - Ithaca, NY PB - Cornell University Press KW - English fiction KW - 19th century KW - History and criticism KW - Politics in literature KW - Social problems in literature KW - Women and literature KW - Great Britain KW - History KW - Women in literature KW - Working class in literature KW - Working class writings, English KW - Literary Studies KW - LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh KW - bisacsh N1 - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Acknowledgments --; Introduction --; Part One. Women’s Fates and Factory Questions --; Part Two. Narrative History and the Social Record --; Afterword --; Bibliography --; Index; restricted access N2 - The most telling expression of the politics of a novel, Rosemarie Bodenheimer asserts, lies not in its proclaimed social intent, its continuity with nonfictional discourse, or its truth to class experience, but in the models of social movement and transformation traced out in the thread of its narrative. The Politics of Story in Victorian Social Fiction explores the story patterns and other narrative conventions through which the industrial or social-problem novel gives fictional shape to questions that were experienced as new, unpredictable, and troubling in the Victorian age. Bodenheimer considers novels explicitly linked with the condition of England debates that preoccupied public-minded Victorians, narratives that confront such topics as the factory system, industrial and rural poverty, working-class politics, and the plight of women.Grouping well-known novels with less frequently read works according to shared narrative patterns, Bodenheimer delineates lines of influence, argument, and development within the subgenre of social fiction. Among the works she discusses are Charlotte Bronte's Shirley, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, two novels by Frances Trollope, Geraldine Jewsbury's Marian Withers, George Eliot's Felix Holt the Radical, Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist, and Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil UR - https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501733444 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781501733444 UR - https://www.degruyter.com/document/cover/isbn/9781501733444/original ER -