The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Rebels

by Brenda Ayres (Editor)

Overview

Although history records that the British nineteenth century was obsessed with order,conventionality, and conformity, there were many Victorians from all walks of life, across lines of class, race, and gender, who resisted social mores and sometimes the laws themselves, in a variety of ways and to varying degrees. Some expressed dissension through music, art, literature, and social protest. Others were more subtle like manipulative wives who gained what they wanted while seemingly remaining docile and submissive. Some rebellion fermented into social and political movements. The revolt of still others was extremely executed by serial killers, criminals, and suicides. Contemporary readers can learn from these rebels and discern what values and ways that were uniquely Victorian should be retained and those that should be rejected after having observed their outcomes. To that end, this collection of essays offers a study for both novice and expert on Victorian rebels.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032830629
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/19/2025
Series:	Routledge Literature Handbooks
Pages:	420
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Brenda Ayres, now retired from full‑time residential teaching, currently teaches online in the graduate program for English Literature for Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. She has edited and authored chapters in The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorianism (2024), The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture (2023), Neo-Victorian Things (2022), Neo-Disneyism: Inclusivity in the Twenty-First Century of Disney’s Magic Kingdom (2022), The Theological Dickens (Routledge, 2022), Neo-Victorian Madness: Rediagnosing Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature and Other Media (2020), Neo-Gothic Narratives: Illusory Allusions from the Past (2020), Animals and Their Children in Victorian Culture (Routledge, 2019), and Reinventing Marie Corelli for the Twenty-first Century (2019). Most recently, she has written and published Wollstonecraft and Religion (2024), and Becoming Wollstonecraft: The Interconnection of Her Life and Works (Routledge, 2024). Many of her other works are listed at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=brenda+ayres&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2.

Table of Contents

Figures

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction: What Is a Victorian Rebel?

            Brenda Ayres and Catherine Layton

Part I: A Rebel with a Pen

 

1          Oscar Wilde’s Velvet Rebellion

            Nick Freeman

 

2          George Egerton’s Marriage Questions: Henry Peter Higginson “of unsavory memory” and Egerton Clairmonte, Imperial Vagabond

            Gail Savage

 

3          The Morphology of Rebellions: Critiquing Colonial Alterity, Subversive Subalternity, and Dangerous Desires During the Great India Revolt in On the Face of the Waters

Preeshita Biswas and Purna Banerjee

 

4          Works of Quiet Rebels: The Unconventional Brontë Sisters

            Catherine Golden

 

5          Florence Marryat’s Rebel Spiritualism

            S. Brooke Cameron and Rachel Friars

 

6          Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Rebellion against “Monkeyhood”: The Contest Between the “Determinate Counsel” and the Evolution Theories of Robert Chambers

            Lauren Nicole Cameron

 

7          The Covert Rebels: The Curious Case of the Two Country-Born Anglo-Indians, Kipling and Kim

Sujata (Susie) Chattopadhyay

 

8          “Fierce as a Dragon”: New Zealand’s Rebellious Mary Taylor

            Emily Dotson

 

9          Folly to Suppose It: Grace Aguilar’s Talmudic Apologia

            Lindsay Katzir

 

Part II: A Rebel with a Cause

 

10        Lord Alfred Douglas: “Two Loves” and Two Rebellions

            Aaron Eames

 

11        Rebellious Crank or Cranky Rebel? Caroline Giacometti Prodgers and Married Women’s Property, 1860‒1890

            Ginger Frost

 

12        Rebel and Reactionary: The Case of Millicent Garrett Fawcett

            Julie Donovan

 

13        From Helston to Benares: Katie Johns’ Journey to Theosophy

            Julie Courtney

 

14        Free of Stays: Lady Florence Dixie and the Woman Question

            Catherine Layton

 

15        Victorian Suicide: The Ultimate Act of Rebellion

            Brenda Ayres

 

Part III: Rebels in Movement(s)

 

16        Bohemians and Bohemianism: Rebelling Against Mrs. Grundy

            Catherine Layton

 

17        The Pre-Raphaelite Rebellion

            Anne Anderson

 

18        Cranks and Crankdoms: Arts and Crafts Rebels and Rural Utopias

            Anne Anderson

 

19        Topsy-Turvy Gilbert and Sullivan

            Scott Hayes

 

20        Old Boy Uprisings: Rebellion and Reform at Victorian Public Schools

            Daniel Stuart

 

21        Creating Work Opportunities for Women: The Tortoise of Polite Rebellion

            Catherine Layton

 

22        Ishan Chandra Rai and the Pabna Peasant Uprising

            Marshall Needleman Armintor

 

23        Enfranchising the Uitlanders: The Second Boer War and “Good Citizenship” in Chesterton and Baden-Powell

            Clay Cogswell

 

24        Victorian Ghosts: Too Rebellious to Stay Dead

            Brenda Ayres

 

25        Pickling the Past: Neo-Victorian Rebellion Against Victorian Morality

            Brenda Ayres

 

Index