Woman and the Demon: The Life of a Victorian Myth
Select Format
Select Condition 
Book Overview
Here is a bold new vision of Victorian culture: a study of myths of womanhood that shatters the usual generalizations about the squeezed, crushed, and ego-less Victorian woman.
Through copious examples drawn from literature, art, and biography, Nina Auerbach reconstructs three central paradigms: the angel/demon, the old maid, and the fallen woman. She shows how these animate a pervasive Victorian vision of a mobile female outcast with divine and demonic powers. Fear of such disruptive, self-creating figures, Auerbach argues, produces the approved ideal of the dutiful, family-bound woman. The awe they inspire associates them with characters in literature, the only vehicles of immortality in whom most Victorians could unreservedly believe. Auerbach looks at a wonderful variety of sources: Svengali, Dracula, and Freud; poets and major and minor novelists Carlyle, John Stuart Mill, and Ruskin; lives of women, great and unknown; Anglican sisterhoods and Magdalen homes; bardolatry and the theater; Pre-Raphaelite paintings and contemporary cartoons and book illustrations. Reinterpreting a medley of fantasies, she demonstrates that female powers inspired a vivid myth central to the spirit of the age.Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0674954076
ISBN13:9780674954076
Release Date:January 1984
Publisher:Harvard University Press
Length:272 Pages
Weight:0.05 lbs.
Dimensions:0.8" x 6.0" x 9.3"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
An excellent Essay
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
Ms. Auerbach takes the reader back to the Victorian ages through the medias of art and literature to examine the image of the female during the period. She portrays the image of the female as "Mythic" - that is, as very broad and also very powerful, effecting the entire age and the ages to come. She discusses such works as Svengali, The New Magdalen, and the artistic works of Rossetti. Her thesis is basically that during the Victorian Era there was a sort of "crisis of faith," and the image of the woman stepped up to replace the ideas held by religions, thereby becoming angelic or demonic. The book is well written, thought provoking and informitive in its presentation.
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com
Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
