Desire and Domestic Fiction

The author argues that the novel, from Richardson to Woolf, was an agent of the hegemony that legitimized middle-class power.

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'Desire and Domestic Fiction' argues that, far from being removed from historical events, novels by writers from Richardson to Virginia Woolf were themselves agents of the rise of the middle class. A very original treatment of the rise of the novel, it makes an interesting contribution to feminst theory, to the understanding of the role of gender in culture and its relation to political change, and to studies in the history of the British novel. Readership: students of English literature and literary theory.