Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body

Anna Silver examines the ways nineteenth-century British writers used physical states of the female body--hunger, appetite, fat and slenderness--in the creation of female characters. She argues that anorexia nervosa, first diagnosed in 1873, serves as a paradigm for the cultural ideal of middle-class womanhood in Victorian Britain. Silver uses the works of a wide range of writers (including Charlotte Bront , Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker and Lewis Carroll) to demonstrate that mainstream models of middle-class Victorian womanhood share important qualities with the beliefs or behaviors of the anorexic female.

Author: Anna Krugovoy Silver
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 03/30/2006
Pages: 236
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.81lbs
Size: 9.14h x 5.98w x 0.59d
ISBN: 9780521025515

About the Author
Silver, Anna Krugovoy: - Anna Krugovoy Silver is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Women's and Gender Studies at Mercer University. She has published essays in Studies in English and Victorians Institute Journal.

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