1st Edition
Victorian Jewelry, Identity, and the Novel Prisms of Culture
By Jean Arnold
Copyright 2011
182 Pages
by
Routledge
184 Pages
by
Routledge
182 Pages
by
Routledge
Also available as eBook on:
In this study of Victorian jewels and their representation, Jean Arnold explores the role material objects play in the cultural cohesion of the West. Diamonds and other gems, Arnold argues, symbolized the most closely held beliefs of the Victorians and thus can be considered "prisms of culture." Mined in the far reaches of the empire, they traversed geographical space and cultural boundaries,... Read more
Contents: Introduction: jewels and the formation of identity in Victorian literature and culture; Perceiving objects; The commodity fetish in Thackeray's The Great Hoggarty Diamond; Gift, theft, and exchange in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins; Cameo appearances: aesthetics and gender in Middlemarch; Tactics and 'strate-gems': jewelry, gender and the law in Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds; Afterword; Bibliography; Index.
Biography
Jean Arnold is a Lecturer in the Department of English at California State University, San Bernardino, California, USA.
'Arnold [...] includes both historically contextualized readings of individual novels and explanations of the importance of jewelry as material objects for interpreting cultural ideas and literature. ... Using jewelry to interpret the novels by taking into account cultural context, Arnold provides close readings of salient passages. ... Recommended.' Choice ’Arnold should be congratulated on writing a book that while it is focussed on one significant aspect of Victorian material culture, suggests new avenues of discovery and insight and will certainly act as a stimulus to many critical historians of the Victorian period.’ Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
