Victorian Reformations

In Victorian Reformations: Historical Fiction and Religious Controversy, 1820-1900, Miriam Elizabeth Burstein analyzes the ways in which Christian novelists across the denominational spectrum laid claim to popular genres—most importantly, the religious historical novel—to narrate the aftershocks of 1829, the year of Catholic Emancipation. Both Protestant and Catholic popular novelists fought over the ramifications of nineteenth-century Catholic toleration for the legacy of the Reformation. But despite the vast textual range of this genre, it remains virtually unknown in literary studies. Victorian Reformations is the first book to analyze how “high” theological and historical debates over the Reformation’s significance were popularized through the increasingly profitable venue of Victorian religious fiction. By putting religious apologists and controversialists at center stage, Burstein insists that such fiction—frequently dismissed as overly simplistic or didactic—is essential for our understanding of Victorian popular theology, history, and historical novels. Burstein reads “lost” but once exceptionally popular religious novels—for example, by Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Lady Georgiana Fullerton, and Emily Sarah Holt—against the works of such now-canonical figures as Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, and George Eliot, while also drawing on material from contemporary sermons, histories, and periodicals. Burstein demonstrates how these novels, which popularized Christian visions of change for a mass readership, call into question our assumptions about the nineteenth-century historical novel. In addition, her research and her conceptual frameworks have the potential to influence broader paradigms in Victorian studies and novel criticism.

Miriam Elizabeth Burstein studies the Protestant Reformation as it is represented and continually rewritten in 19th-century and Victorian fiction.

In early Victorian England there was intense interest in understanding the early Church as an inspiration for contemporary sanctity. This was manifested in a surge in archaeological inquiry and also in the construction of new churches using medieval models. Some Anglicans began to use a much more complicated form of ritual involving vestments, candles, and incense. This "Anglo-Catholic" movement was vehemently opposed by evangelicals and dissenters, who saw this as the vanguard of full-blown "popery." The disputed buildings, objects, and art works were regarded by one side as idolatrous and by the other as sacred and beautiful expressions of devotion. Dominic Janes seeks to understand the fierce passions that were unleashed by the contended practices and artifacts - passions that found expression in litigation, in rowdy demonstrations, and even in physical violence. During this period, Janes observes, the wider culture was preoccupied with the idea of pollution caused by improper sexuality. The Anglo-Catholics had formulated a spiritual ethic that linked goodness and beauty. Their opponents saw this visual worship as dangerously sensual. In effect, this sacred material culture was seen as a sexual fetish. The origins of this understanding, Janes shows, lay in radical circles, often in the context of the production of anti-Catholic pornography which titillated with the contemplation of images of licentious priests, nuns, and monks.

First published in 1987. Readers of Victorian literature, both poetry and prose, are constantly aware of a powerful undercurrent of change - political, social, and intellectual - which determines the shape of the literature being produced. Topics covered include parliamentary reform, the Gentleman, religious debate and secular thought, education; leisure and attitudes to the arts, and the Woman Question. This title will be of interest to students of history.

In Victorian England there was interest in understanding the early Church as an inspiration for contemporary sanctity. This was manifested in a surge in archaeological inquiry and in the construction of new churches using medieval models. Janes seeks to understand the fierce passions that were unleashed by the contended practices.

Gender, in the nineteenth century as now, is an integral part of identity. As a result, gender, along with race and class, has long been a vital part of public discourse about social concerns and reform. The fourteen essays in Gender and Victorian Reform address the overt and subtle ways in which gender influenced social reform in Victorian England. In addition to investigating the more readily apparent instances of gender in the areas of suffrage, women's education, and marriage law reform, the contributors to this collection examine the structure of charitable organizations, the interpretation of language and literacy, ideas of beauty, and religion through the lens of gender and offer diverse approaches to Victorian literature and culture. Some examine specific texts or single canonical authors, others introduce the reader to little-known authors and texts, and still others focus on the culture of reform rather than specific literary texts. Essays are arranged into four parts, with Part I focusing on historical context and a revisioning of the historical romance. Part II addresses more specifically the role of women in public life and in the professions. The essays in Part III look even more specificallyat the connections among reform, gender, literacy and literary genre in Eliot, Collins, and Gaskell. The final four essays offer readings of the impact of gender ideology on beauty, dress, politics and religion. Taken as a whole, the essays in this collection present a serious consideration of the role of gender in art and in public life that spans the Victorian era. Reformist impulses are revealed in a number of Victorian texts that are not generally read as overtly political. In this way, this collection thoughtfully focuses on the influence of gender on a wide range of social movements, and moves the significance of gender beyond simply the content of Victorian fiction and the identity of the authors and into the more fundamental connection of discourse to reform."

In the mid-nineteenth century many parts of England and Wales were still subjected to a system of regulated prostitution which, by identifying and detaining for treatment infected prostitutes, aimed to protect members of the armed forces (94 per cent of whom were forbidden to marry) from venereal diseases. The coercive nature of the Contagious Diseases Acts and the double standard which allowed the continuance of prostitution on the ground that the prostitute 'herself the supreme type of vice, she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue', aroused the ire of many reformers, not only women’s rights campaigners. Paul McHugh analyses the social composition of the different repeal and reform movements – the liberal reformists, the passionate struggle of the charismatic Josephine Butler, the Tory reformers whose achievement was in the improvement of preventative medicine, and finally the Social Purity movement of the 1880s which favoured a coercive approach. This is a fascinating study of ideals and principles in action, of pressure-group strategy, and of individual leaders in the repeal movement’s sixteen year progress to victory. The book was originally publised in 1980.

Originally published in 1987, this title was first submitted as a doctoral dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Completed just as the years of expansion in higher education were drawing to a close, it reflects the growing doubts of the period as to the ability of formal education provision alone to effect major changes in the distribution of socio-economic privilege at the group level, whether as between the sexes, classes, or ethnic groups. Reforms in women’s education had traditionally been dealt with as a small part of the women’s emancipation movement. This book approaches the education reforms in a different way and begins with the question of which social groups participated in the movement. Seen from this point of view, a primary interest of the reforms is the function they served in promoting a redefinition of the status and roles of a social elite.