Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
INTRODUCTION: The Female Relations of Victorian England 1
Overview 2
Historical and Disciplinary Borders 5
How This Book Engages Scholarly Debates 9
How I Came to Write This Book 14
Conclusion 21
PART ONE: Elastic Ideals: Female Friendship 23
CHAPTER ONE: Friendship and the Play of the System 25
Female Friendship in Feminist Studies 29
Victorian Women's Lifewriting and Relationships between Women 32
Female Friendship as Gender Norm 38
Friends and "Friends" 43
The Repertory of Friendship 54
"Purified and Made One in Jesus" 62
Friendship, Kinship, Marriage 66
CHAPTER TWO: Just Reading: Female Friendship and the Marriage Plot 73
The Form of the Plot 82
Female Amity and the Companionate Marriage Plot 85
Female Amity and the Feminist Marriage Plot 91
The Double Marriage Plot: Friendship as Cause and Effect 96
Unamiable Villette: Lucy Snowe's Passion 102
PART TWO: Mobile Objects: Female Desire 109
CHAPTER THREE: Dressing Up and Dressing Down the Feminine Plaything 111
Fashion and Fantasies of Women 116
Discipline and Punishment in the Fashion Magazine 135
Live Dolls 149
CHAPTER FOUR: The Female Accessory in Great Expectations 167
The Female Dyad and the Origins of Desire 173
Gender Mobility I: Masculinity as Castoff 177
Gender Mobility II: Pip as Doll and Fashion Plate 180
The Sentimental Education of the Female Dyad 184
PART THREE: Plastic Institutions: Female Marriage 191
CHAPTER FIVE: The Genealogy of Marriage 193
Female Marriage in the Nineteenth Century 196
Female Marriage and Victorian Marriage Reform 204
The Debate over Contractual Marriage 212
Victorian Anthropology and the History of Marriage 217
Same-Sex Unions and the History of Civilization 222
CHAPTER SIX: Contracting Female Marriage in Can You Forgive Her? 227
Trollope, Feminism, and Female Marriage 228
Female Marriage and Contractual Marriage in Can You Forgive Her? 232
Marriage as Forgiveness: Primitive Contract and Modern Punishment 239
The Persistence of Female Relations 251
CONCLUSION: Woolf, Wilde, and Girl Dates 257
Notes 263
Bibliography 317
Illustration Credits 347
Index 349
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