The spectacle of intimacy: a public life for the Victorian family

Abstract

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi INTRODUCTION The Trouble with Families 3 PART ONE: The Political Theater of Domesticity CHAPTER ONE The Trials of Caroline Norton: Poetry, Publicity, and the Prime Minister 21 CHAPTER TWO: The Young Queen and the Parliamentary Bedchamber: I never saw a man so frightened 46 PART Two: Beneath the Banner of Home t CHAPTER THREE Sarah Stickney Ellis: The Ardent Woman and the Abject Wife 65 CHAPTER FOUR Tom's Pinch: The Sexual Serpent beside the Dickensian Fireside 86 PART THREE: Was That an Angel in the House? CHAPTER FIVE Love after Death: The Deceased Wife's Sister Bill 105 CHAPTER SIX The Transvestite, the Bloomer, and the Nightingale 121 PART FOUR: The Architecture of Comfort and Ruin CHAPTER SEVEN On the Parapets of Privacy: Walls of Wealth and Dispossession 143 CHAPTER EIGHT Robert Kerr: The Gentleman's House and the One-Room Solution 156 PART FIVE: The Sensations of Respectability CHAPTER NINE The Empire of Divorce: Single Women, the Bill of 1857, and Revolt in India CHAPTER TEN Bigamy and Modernity: The Case of Mary Elizabeth Braddon 201 EPILOGUE: Between Manual and Spectacle 215 Notes 221 Index 247