Dickens and the Daughter of the House

By (author): "Hilary M. Schor"
Genres:Nonfiction books  British Literature books  19th Century books  Grad School books  Feminist Studies books  
Publish Date: January 27th 2000
Dickens and the Daughter of the House
ISBN0521042631
ISBN139780521042635
AsinDickens and the Daughter of the House
Original titleDickens and the Daughter of the House (Cambridge Studies in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture)
The daughter in Dickens' fiction is considered in this study not as an emblem of tranquil domesticity and the hearth-fire, but as a bearer of cultural values--and as a potentially disruptive force. As the good daughters in his novels (Little Nell, Agnes Wickfield, Esther Summerson, Amy Dorrit) must leave the father's house and enter the wider world, so they transform and rewrite the stories they are empowered to tell. The daughter's secret inheritance, her "portion," is to give Dickens a way of reading and writing his own culture differently.