The fantasy of family : nineteenth-century children's literature and the myth of the domestic ideal / Elizabeth Thiel.

The myth of the Victorian family remains a pervasive influence within a contemporary Britain that perceives itself to be in social crisis. Nostalgic for a golden age of Victorian values in which visions of supportive, united families predominate, the common consciousness, exhorted by social and poli...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Thiel, Elizabeth.
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: New York : Routledge, 2008.
Series:Children's literature and culture.
Subjects:
Table of Contents:
  • Redefining the past
  • Snatched from "the seed-plot" of degeneracy : the "rescue" of the destitute child in tales of street-arab life
  • Forever cursed : stepmothers, "otherness," and the reinscription of myth in transnormative family narratives
  • "Uncles are one thing ... [but] aunts are always nasty!" Relational failures and the discourse of gender bias in foster family stories
  • Mother, ally, friend, or foe? The "dependable" female author as one of the family
  • Into the future : the enduring potency of the nineteenth-century ideal.