The Marked Body: Domestic Violence in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Literature

Discusses portrayals of domestic violence in six major works of mid-nineteenth-century literature.

The ambiguities and paradoxes of domestic violence were amplified in Victorian culture, which emphasized the home as a woman's place of security. In The Marked Body, Kate Lawson and Lynn Shakinovsky examine the discarded and violated bodies of middle-class women in selected texts of mid-nineteenth-century fiction and poetry. Guided by observations from feminism, psychoanalysis, and trauma theor...