The Afterlife of Property

Taking as its example the texts of Charles Dickens and George Eliot, this study investigates the qualities of a woman's love as defined in the Victorian novel. Additionally, it explores how the issues of gender, sexuality, race and fiction define one another in the Victorial novel.

---

This study investigates the conviction passed on by the Victorian novel that a woman's love is the only fortune a man can count on to last. Taking for its example four texts, Charles Dickens's "Little Dorrit" and "Dombey and Son", and George Eliot's "Daniel Deronda" and "Silas Marner", it studies the diverse ways that the Victorian novel imagines women as property removed from the uncertainties of the marketplace. Along the way, it relates how the categories of economics, gender, sexuality, race and fiction define one another in the Victorian novel.