Disorderly Sisters: Sibling Relations and Sororal Resistance in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

by Leila Silvana May

This book offers fresh insight into English literature and culture by providing an essential recasting of the way in which we view the nineteenth-century family. The study examines the novels of the nineteenth-century "family romance, " as well as non-fictional documents to show that the key familial relationships in these works is not the parent-child hierarchy, but the sibling bond. It reveals the contradictory nature of the crucial oral role demanded of sisters in the political and cultural ideology of nineteenth-century England, and demonstrates that the same literature that records this sororal myth also registers an anxiety about the sister figure it has forged, and uncovers a disquietude about the family itself and the very society of which that family was the foundation.

276 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001