Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body Reissue Edition
Author(s): Anna Krugovoy Silver (Author)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication Date: March 30, 2006
Edition: Reissue
Language: English
Print length: 236 pages
ISBN-10: 0521025516
ISBN-13: 9780521025515
Book Description
Anna Silver examines the ways nineteenth-century British writers used physical states of the female body–hunger, appetite, fat and slenderness–in the creation of female characters. She argues that anorexia nervosa, first diagnosed in 1873, serves as a paradigm for the cultural ideal of middle-class womanhood in Victorian Britain. Silver uses the works of a wide range of writers (including Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti, Charles Dickens, Bram Stoker and Lewis Carroll) to demonstrate that mainstream models of middle-class Victorian womanhood share important qualities with the beliefs or behaviors of the anorexic female.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Anna Krugovoy Silver’s book [has] an immediate relevancy and edge. Victorian Literature and the Anorexic Body convincingly shows that the paradigms of anorexia are at work in almost every Victorian text…[T]his book provides a readable and straightforward account and a helpful summary of the literature on anorexia and Victorianism.” Kirstie Blair, St. Peter’s College, Oxford, George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies
“Silver offers an analysis of what she terms the ‘Victorian culture of anorexia,’ a culture that links feminine slenderness with such moral qualities as self-control and piety…. [T]he book is lucid and well written. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.” Choice
“…fascinating and well-researched…” English Literature In Transition 1880-1920
Book Description
A study of women’s bodies and eating disorders as depicted in Victorian literature.
About the Author
Anna Krugovoy Silver is Assistant Professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at Mercer University. She has published essays in Studies in English and Victorians Institute Journal.
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