The Foreign Woman in British Literature: Exotics, Aliens, and Outsiders

(Hardback)

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While England has been strengthened by a proud isolationism, she has simultaneously been enriched by the economic, social and political complexities that have emerged as people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds have moved within her borders, or when her own citizens have emigrated among those foreigners to live or rule. This book explores the foreign element in English culture and the attempt by English writers from the early 19th to the mid-20th century to portray their complex and often ambiguous responses to that doubly foreign element among them: the foreign woman. While being foreign may begin with national or ethnic difference, the contributors to this book expand it to include other forms of alienation from a dominant culture, resulting from gender, race, class, ideology or temperament. The many factors shaping English national identity - including British imperialism, immigration patterns, English family and social structures, and English common law - have been shaped by gender-related issues. Though not a prominent literary figure, the foreign woman in England has received increasingly critical attention in recent years as a psychological and sociological phenomenon. By beginning with Byron in the early 19th century and concluding with Lawrence Durrell in the 20th century, this study contributes to a more comprehensive vision of the foreign woman as she is portrayed by a number of British authors, including Shelley, Wordsworth, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad, D.H. Lawrence and Anita Brookner.

Reviews

"How have modern authors imagined the Other For the past generation critics have served up confident answers to that question. This collection demonstrates that the reality may be more complicated than we imagined. These essays will upset quite a few stereotypes--particularly your own."-Jonathan Rose, PhD Professor of History, Drew University Author, The Edwardian Temperament
An evocative book edited by Marilyn Demarest Button and Toni Reed is The Foreign Woman in British Literature Exotics, ALiens, and Outsiders. The range of topics and high quality of essays make this collection particularly readable.-Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900
"An evocative book edited by Marilyn Demarest Button and Toni Reed is The Foreign Woman in British Literature Exotics, ALiens, and Outsiders. The range of topics and high quality of essays make this collection particularly readable."-Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Author Bio

MARILYN DEMAREST BUTTON is Associate Professor of English at Lincoln University. She has contributed to numerous scholarly journals and reference works. TONI REED is a grant development consultant and freelance writer. Her previous books include Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction (1988).