Hidden Hands - 9780821413883

Hidden HandsWorking-Class Women and Victorian Social-Problem Fiction\nAuthor(s): Patricia E. Johnson\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Ohio University Press, United States\nImprint: Ohio University Press\nISBN-13: 9780821413883, 978-0821413883\nSynopsis\nTracing the Victorian crisis over the representation of working-class women to the 1842 Parliamentary bluebook on mines, with its controversial images of women at work, Hidden Hands argues that the female industrial worker became even more dangerous to represent than the prostitute or the male radical because she exposed crucial contradictions between the class and gender ideologies of the period and its economic realities.\n Drawing on the recent work of feminist historians, Patricia Johnson lays the groundwork for a reinterpretation of Victorian social-problem fiction that highlights its treatment of issues that particularly affected working-class women: sexual harassment; the interconnections between domestic ideology and domestic vio.