The Fallen Angel: Chastity, Class and Women's Reading 1835-1880

by Sally Mitchell

This book discusses the figure of the unchaste woman in a wide range of fiction written between 1835 and 1880; serious novels by Dickens, Mrs. Gaskell, Meredith, and George Eliot; popular novels that provided light reading for middle-class women (including books by Dinah Craik, Rhoda Broughton, and Ouida); sensational fiction; propaganda for social reform; and stories in cheap periodicals such as the Family Herald and the London Journal , which reached a different and far wider audience than either serious or popular novels.

223 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Sally Mitchell is Professor of English and Affiliated Professor of Women's Studies at Temple University. She is the author or editor of several books on 19th century England.

Reviews

[Lorraine · Rating 4 out of 5]

The major theme of this work is the fallen woman, how she's represented in early Victorian fiction, and how that representation differs from the fallen woman in actuality. Naturally this entails a discussion of how the Victorians defined chastity and the consequences of that definition.

In addition, Mitchell focuses on reading habits of the time period. This is a good examination of the kinds of novels being written by and for women from the 1830s-1880s. Mitchell discusses sensation novels as well as the novels and stories being published in penny periodicals.

I read this book for her criticism of Ouida's novels, which is pretty spare. She only discusses Moths and Folle-Farine very briefly and Ouida's canon as a whole very generally, but her comments are important to note. Her research did point me to a couple primary sources, including contemporaneous reviews, of which I was unaware. I also appreciated the little bit of information Mitchell includes about Geraldine Jewsbury; she was a critic who reviewed several of Ouida's novels, but I didn't know anything about her personally.