Readers and Mistresses

Kept Women in Victorian Literature
Part recovery and part new reading method, this work locates the few kept mistresses in Victorian literature, while offering a queer way to read for their existences when less legible. This book offers a way to read old material with new eyes and a social justice ethic.

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2025

Readers and Mistresses: Kept Women in Victorian Literature identifies kept mistresses in British Victorian narrative and offers ways to understand their experiences. The author discusses kept women characters in Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and Ruth, Anne Brontë’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, and examines the methods their authors use to encourage reader empathy. This book also usefully demonstrates how to identify kept women when they are less visible in texts, including in Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre, Dickens' Hard Times and Dombey and Son, and George Gissing's The Odd Women.

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