{"product_id":"romances-rival-familiar-marriage-in-victorian-fiction-9780190887414","title":"Romance's Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction","description":"\u003cem\u003eRomance's Rival \u003c\/em\u003eargues that the central plot of the most important genre of the nineteenth century, the marriage plot novel, means something quite different from what we thought. In Victorian novels, women may marry for erotic desire--but they might, instead, insist on familiar marriage, \u003cbr\u003emarrying trustworthy companions who can offer them socially rich lives and futures of meaningful work. \u003cem\u003eRomance's Rival\u003c\/em\u003e shows how familiar marriage expresses ideas of female subjectivity dating back through the seventeenth century, while romantic marriage felt like a new, risky idea. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eUndertaking a major rereading of the rise-of-the-novel tradition, from Richardson through the twentieth century, Talia Schaffer rethinks what the novel meant if one tracks familiar-marriage virtues. This alternative perspective offers new readings of major texts (Austen, the Brontës, Eliot, \u003cbr\u003eTrollope) but it also foregrounds women's popular fiction (Yonge, Oliphant, Craik, Broughton). Offering a feminist perspective that reads the marriage plot from the woman's point of view, Schaffer inquires why a female character might legitimately wish to marry for something other than passion. For\u003cbr\u003ethe past half-century, scholars have valorized desire, individuality, and autonomy in the way we read novels; \u003cem\u003eRomance's Rival\u003c\/em\u003e asks us to look at the other side, to validate the yearning for work, family, company, or social power as legitimate reasons for women's marital choices in Victorian fiction. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eComprehensive in its knowledge of several generations of scholarship on the novel, \u003cem\u003eRomance's Rival \u003c\/em\u003econvinces us to re-examine assumptions about the nature and function of marriage and the role of the novel in helping us not simply imagine marriage but also process changing ideas about what it might\u003cbr\u003elook like and how it might serve people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Talia Schaffer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press, USA\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 12\/01\/2018\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 354\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 1.25lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.90d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780190887414\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTalia Schaffer \u003c\/strong\u003eis Professor of English at Queens College and The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of \u003cem\u003eNovel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Forgotten Female Aesthetes: Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis title is not returnable\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Oxford University Press, USA","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":39929225609331,"sku":"9.78E+12","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/products\/img_160538ee-150e-4d15-8565-444914cdc272.jpg?v=1647612020","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/romances-rival-familiar-marriage-in-victorian-fiction-9780190887414","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}