Ancestry and Narrative in Nineteenth-Century British Literature: Blood Relations from Edgeworth to Hardy

by Sophie Gilmartin

• ISBN13: 9780521560948
• ISBN10: 0521560942
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-02-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This study addresses the question of why ideas of ancestry and kinship were so important in nineteenth-century society, and particularly in the Victorian novel. Through readings of a range of literary texts, Sophie Gilmartin explores questions fundamental to the national and racial identity of Victorian Britons: what makes people believe that they are part of a certain region, race or nation? Is this sense of belonging based on superstitious beliefs, invented traditions, or fictions created to gain a sense of unity or community? As Britain extended her empire over foreign nations and races, questions of blood relations, of assimilation and difference, and of national and racial definition came to the fore. Gilmartin's study shows how the ideas of ancestry and kinship, and the narratives inspired by or invented around them, were of profound significance in the construction of Victorian identity.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Oral and written genealogies in Edgeworth's The Absentee

2. A mirror for matriarchs: the cult of Mary Queen of Scots in nineteenth-century literature

3. Pedigree, nation, race: the case of Disraeli's Sybil and Tancred

4. 'A sort of royal family': alternative pedigrees and class in Meredith's Evan Harrington

5. 'True to my dust! - true to my name!': pedigree, suttee and the widow in Meredith's The Egoist

6. 'If memory o'er their tombs no trophies raise': pedigree and forgetting in Hardy

7. Geology and genealogy: The Well-Beloved

Conclusion.