Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages - Hardcover

Rose, Phyllis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0099308711 ISBN 13: 9780099308713

Publisher: Vintage, 1994

Synopsis

In Parallel Lives, Phyllis Rose examines five famous Victorian marriages and reveals that marriage was likely to have been more flexible than we 'liberated' post-Freudians commonly suppose. Raising questions about the politics of sex and the expectations of marriage, she probes inherited myths and assumptions. Of the five marriages here, that of John Ruskin and Effie Gray was unconsummated, those of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh and John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor were almost certainly chaste, the Dickenses marriage degenerated into melodrama and the liaison between George Eliot and G. H. Lewes, which scandalised London society, was the happiest of the lot.

About this title

Synopsis:

Phyllis Rose sets out to show that Victorian marriage was likely to have been far more varied, flexible, and even tolerant, than we "liberated" post-Freudians commonly suppose. Famous literary marriages are examined: that of John Ruskin and Effie Gray was unconsummated; those of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welsh, and John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor, almost certainly were also; the Dickenses' marriage degenerated into melodrama; and the liaison between George Eliot and G.H. Lewes, which scandalized London society, was the happiest of the lot. The author raises questions about the role of power and the nature of equality within marriage, the politics of sex, and the expectations of marriage, when the rules of the game were perhaps clearer than they are today. In doing so, she probes our inherited myths and assumptions to prompt a re-examination of what we expect from our marriages.

About the Author:

Phyllis Rose is the author of Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf, and of the highly acclaimed Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages, which established her as a biographer of the first rank. Her most recent book is Jazz Cleopatra, a biography of Josephine Baker. She has taught literature at Wesleyan University since 1969, and has written essays, reviews, and articles for many publications. She lives in Middletown, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0099308711
• ISBN 13: 9780099308713
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320