Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
5/5
Ebook283 pages7 hours
Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England
By Mary Poovey
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this ebook
Mary Poovey's The Proper Lady and the Woman Writer has become a standard text in feminist literary discourse. In Uneven Developments Poovey turns to broader historical concerns in an analysis of how notions of gender shape ideology.
Asserting that the organization of sexual difference is a social, not natural, phenomenon, Poovey shows how representations of gender took the form of a binary opposition in mid-Victorian culture. She then reveals the role of this opposition in various discourses and institutions—medical, legal, moral, and literary. The resulting oppositions, partly because they depended on the subordination of one term to another, were always unstable. Poovey contends that this instability helps explain why various institutional versions of binary logic developed unevenly. This unevenness, in turn, helped to account for the emergence in the 1850s of a genuine oppositional voice: the voice of an organized, politicized feminist movement.
Drawing on a wide range of sources—parliamentary debates, novels, medical lectures, feminist analyses of work, middle-class periodicals on demesticity—Poovey examines various controversies that provide glimpses of the ways in which representations of gender were simultaneously constructed, deployed, and contested. These include debates about the use of chloroform in childbirth, the first divorce law, the professional status of writers, the plight of governesses, and the nature of the nursing corps. Uneven Developments is a contribution to the feminist analysis of culture and ideology that challenges the isolation of literary texts from other kinds of writing and the isolation of women's issues from economic and political histories.
Asserting that the organization of sexual difference is a social, not natural, phenomenon, Poovey shows how representations of gender took the form of a binary opposition in mid-Victorian culture. She then reveals the role of this opposition in various discourses and institutions—medical, legal, moral, and literary. The resulting oppositions, partly because they depended on the subordination of one term to another, were always unstable. Poovey contends that this instability helps explain why various institutional versions of binary logic developed unevenly. This unevenness, in turn, helped to account for the emergence in the 1850s of a genuine oppositional voice: the voice of an organized, politicized feminist movement.
Drawing on a wide range of sources—parliamentary debates, novels, medical lectures, feminist analyses of work, middle-class periodicals on demesticity—Poovey examines various controversies that provide glimpses of the ways in which representations of gender were simultaneously constructed, deployed, and contested. These include debates about the use of chloroform in childbirth, the first divorce law, the professional status of writers, the plight of governesses, and the nature of the nursing corps. Uneven Developments is a contribution to the feminist analysis of culture and ideology that challenges the isolation of literary texts from other kinds of writing and the isolation of women's issues from economic and political histories.
Read more from Mary Poovey
Finance in America: An Unfinished Story Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Uneven Developments
Titles in the series (19)
Elsie Clews Parsons: Inventing Modern Life Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers' Pensions in Chicago, 1911-1929 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oglala Women: Myth, Ritual, and Reality Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen of the Renaissance Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Royal Representations: Queen Victoria and British Culture, 1837-1876 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300-1550 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDowntown Ladies: Informal Commercial Importers, a Haitian Anthropologist and Self-Making in Jamaica Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProstitution in Medieval Society: The History of an Urban Institution in Languedoc Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Equivocal Beings: Politics, Gender, and Sentimentality in the 1790s--Wollstonecraft, Radcliffe, Burney, Austen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, Compulsion, Modernity: The Moment of American Naturalism Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5
Related ebooks
Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen before the court: Law and patriarchy in the Anglo-American world, 1600–1800 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen in Medieval Society Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5‘Red Ellen’ Wilkinson: Her ideas, movements and world Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 5 to 9 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNoblewomen, aristocracy and power in the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman realm Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Literary Channel: The Inter-National Invention of the Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIdentity Politics: Lesbian Feminism and the Limits of Community Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Borders, Territories, and Ethics: Hebrew Literature in the Shadow of the Intifada Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPopulating the Novel: Literary Form and the Politics of Surplus Life Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarly modern women and the poem Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsReforming Philosophy: A Victorian Debate on Science and Society Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMovie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture after the Nickelodeon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (Including the Biography of the Author) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShame and Honor: A Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmerica in the World: A History in Documents since 1898, Revised and Updated Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWomen, dowries and agency: Marriage in fifteenth–century Valencia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA History of Eighteenth-Century British Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChang and Eng Reconnected: The Original Siamese Twins in American Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe American Counterfeit: Authenticity and Identity in American Literature and Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA People's History of London Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBurdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Culture, 1865-1915 Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Contest for Knowledge: Debates over Women's Learning in Eighteenth-Century Italy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEleanor Marx: A Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Men Explain Things to Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Book of Hygge: Danish Secrets to Happy Living Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dumbing Us Down - 25th Anniversary Edition: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Living Resistance: An Indigenous Vision for Seeking Wholeness Every Day Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Verbal Judo, Second Edition: The Gentle Art of Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unhumans: The Secret History of Communist Revolutions (and How to Crush Them) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mythology 101: From Gods and Goddesses to Monsters and Mortals, Your Guide to Ancient Mythology Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Close Encounters with Addiction Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related podcast episodes
Episode 3: True Womanhood: Season 1: Episode 3 0% found this document usefulGregory Downs: Did the Real War Ever Get in the Books? 0% found this document usefulAnne Boleyn through Cromwell's eyes 0% found this document usefulWitnessing: A Discussion with Ulrich Baer 0% found this document usefulAlison Stone, "Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770-1900" (Oxford UP, 2024): An interview with Alison Stone 0% found this document usefulAlison Stone, "Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770-1900" (Oxford UP, 2024): An interview with Alison Stone 0% found this document usefulAlison Stone, "Women on Philosophy of Art: Britain 1770-1900" (Oxford UP, 2024): An interview with Alison Stone 0% found this document usefulHelena De Bres on Life-Writing (JP, EF) 0% found this document useful620 Necromantics (with Renee Fox) | Herman Hesse on What We Learn from Trees 0% found this document useful366 Evelyn Waugh (with Phil Klay) 0% found this document useful
Related articles
Oceans The Paris ReviewUNLIMITED
Oceans
Mar 15, 2019
I used to be interested in mountains. They moved at a speed I could deal with. They waited for me to catch up. It was like that all my life. Then we moved to California, and after eight years of earthquakes I began to doubt my ability to put things i
12 min readGirl, Haunted The AtlanticUNLIMITED
Girl, Haunted
Jul 23, 2019
1 min readAnya Taylor-Joy’s Masterclass In Complex Femininity The Big IssueUNLIMITED
Anya Taylor-Joy’s Masterclass In Complex Femininity
Apr 18, 2022
3 min readOrbiting The Sun King All About HistoryUNLIMITED
Orbiting The Sun King
Nov 7, 2019
2 min readHitler’s Forgotten Victims BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
Hitler’s Forgotten Victims
May 11, 2023
7 min readNine Books About Groups That Changed the World The AtlanticUNLIMITED
Nine Books About Groups That Changed the World
Jun 26, 2022
7 min readTuesday New Release Day: Starring Cusk, Barry, Eltahawy, Foer, Klein, Kois, and More The MillionsUNLIMITED
Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Cusk, Barry, Eltahawy, Foer, Klein, Kois, and More
Sep 17, 2019
It's blockbuster season, which means new books from big names: Naomi Klein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jacqueline Woodson, and Tracey Chevalier. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Cusk, Barry, Eltahawy, Foer, Klein, Kois, and More appeared first o
8 min readLucile Scott: Mysticism and Resistance Guernica MagazineUNLIMITED
Lucile Scott: Mysticism and Resistance
Jun 25, 2021
11 min readCurrent Affairs The OldieUNLIMITED
Current Affairs
Sep 21, 2022
Wm Collins, 308pp, £20 Before Covid struck, the Prince Rupert hotel in Shrewsbury was a sumptuous, timber-framed four-star hostelry, 900 years old. But then it was forced to close and its management responded to the government’s ‘everyone in’ initiat
6 min readDisrupting Canadian Myths POV MagazineUNLIMITED
Disrupting Canadian Myths
Sep 7, 2022
7 min readA Call To Look North History ScotlandUNLIMITED
A Call To Look North
Dec 11, 2021
Sexual Progressives: Reimagining Intimacy in Scotland, 1880-1914 Tanya Cheadle Manchester University Press, 2020 233 pages Hardcover, £70.88; paperback, £25.00 ISBN: 9781526125255 To paraphrase the author in the introduction to this book, it’s about
4 min readCandice Lin ArtAsiaPacificUNLIMITED
Candice Lin
May 3, 2021
11 min read10 Best Books Of January The Christian Science MonitorUNLIMITED
10 Best Books Of January
Jan 24, 2019
A new novel by 'The Thirteenth Tale' author Diane Setterfield and a nonfiction title about the mass exodus of one-quarter of Shanghai’s population in the 1940s are two of the titles that Monitor reviewers liked best this month.
3 min read"Patriarchal Systems Have Existed In Europe For Thousands Of Years - But In Other Parts Of The World They Are Very New" BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
"Patriarchal Systems Have Existed In Europe For Thousands Of Years - But In Other Parts Of The World They Are Very New"
Apr 13, 2023
4 min readCHRISTOPHER SILVESTER Selects The Best Summer Books On Prisons The OldieUNLIMITED
CHRISTOPHER SILVESTER Selects The Best Summer Books On Prisons
Jun 26, 2024
Letters for the Ages Behind Bars: Letters from History’s Most Famous Prisoners (Bloomsbury Continuum, 320pp, £20), edited by James Drake and Edward Smyth, brings together letters from figures as various as St. Paul, Anne Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots,
3 min readMetaphysical Influences Fortean TimesUNLIMITED
Metaphysical Influences
Jan 25, 2024
11 min readFIVE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT… late medieval England BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
FIVE THINGS YOU (PROBABLY) DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT… late medieval England
Jul 4, 2024
England in the late Middle Ages was a dangerous place. Violence was rife – both at an interpersonal level, and as enacted in legal punishments. A newly produced medieval murder map (medievalmurdermap.co.uk) points to terrifying levels of brutality. N
3 min readWhere Angels Call Home Country LifeUNLIMITED
Where Angels Call Home
Nov 13, 2024
5 min readHeroes, Villains And Lessons In Life The Critic MagazineUNLIMITED
Heroes, Villains And Lessons In Life
Nov 28, 2024
IN A YEAR THAT HAS SEEN MORE HISTORY in the making than most, several outstanding books have come from our historians. Sir Noel Malcolm’s Forbidden Desire in Early Modern Europe: Male-Male Sexual Relations, 1400-1750 (OUP, £25) upends almost everythi
4 min readWhat Was the Most Influential Power Couple in History? The AtlanticUNLIMITED
What Was the Most Influential Power Couple in History?
Oct 10, 2017
3 min readWake Up To Reality! The Critic MagazineUNLIMITED
Wake Up To Reality!
Oct 28, 2021
5 min readWhat If Joan of Arc Wasn’t a Woman? The AtlanticUNLIMITED
What If Joan of Arc Wasn’t a Woman?
Sep 2, 2022
11 min readAn Intimate History BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
An Intimate History
Oct 28, 2021
1 min readTruth Be Told: The 10 Best Books Of August Highlight Honesty The Christian Science MonitorUNLIMITED
Truth Be Told: The 10 Best Books Of August Highlight Honesty
Aug 17, 2022
2 min readViking Realities And Imaginings Fortean TimesUNLIMITED
Viking Realities And Imaginings
Apr 21, 2022
TO SEND REVIEW COPIES, CONTACT THE BOOK REVIEWS EDITOR AT [email protected] The Story of a Founding Myth Gordon Campbell Oxford University Press 2021 Hb, 272pp, £20, ISBN 9780198861553 The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women Nancy Marie B
11 min readI Found the Feminism I Was Looking For in the Lost Writings of a 17th-Century Priest The AtlanticUNLIMITED
I Found the Feminism I Was Looking For in the Lost Writings of a 17th-Century Priest
Jul 28, 2021
19 min readThe Brutish Empire BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
The Brutish Empire
Mar 17, 2022
4 min readIn The Salon New InternationalistUNLIMITED
In The Salon
Dec 5, 2023
Radicals and Rogues The Women Who Made New York Modern by Lottie Whalen (Reaktion, ISBN 9781789147865) reaktionbooks.co.uk In 1917, a reporter for the New York Evening Sun declared that ‘women were the cause of modernism, whatever that is’. The socia
3 min readSummer Reading! 2020 BBC History MagazineUNLIMITED
Summer Reading! 2020
Jul 9, 2020
11 min readCurrent Affairs The OldieUNLIMITED
Current Affairs
Sep 22, 2021
WHY WOMEN ARE STILL TAKEN LESS SERIOUSLY THAN MEN, AND WHAT WE CAN DO ABOUT IT MARY ANN SIEGHART Doubleday, 384pp, £16.99 Sieghart opens her book with the story of Mary McAleese, president of Ireland, on an official delegation to the Vatican in 1999.
6 min read
Reviews for Uneven Developments
Rating: 3.6666667 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
3 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Uneven Developments - Mary Poovey
Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1