Novels behind Glass Commodity Culture and Victorian Narrative Miller Hardback

Novels behind GlassCommodity Culture and Victorian Narrative\nAuthor(s): Andrew H. Miller\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521471336, 978-0521471336\nSynopsis\nDrawing on work in critical theory, feminism and social history, this book traces the lines of tension shot through Victorian culture by the fear that the social world was being reduced to a display window behind which people, their actions and their convictions were exhibited for the economic appetites of others. Affecting the most basic elements of Victorian life - the vagaries of desire, the rationalisation of social life, the gendering of subjectivity, the power of nostalgia, the fear of mortality, the cyclical routines of the household - the ambivalence generated by commodity culture organizes the thematic concerns of these novels and the society they represent. Taking the commodity as their point of departure, chapters on Thackeray.