Subversion and Sympathy: Gender, Law, and the British Novel

by Martha C. Nussbaum (Editor), Alison L. LaCroix (Editor)

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds, the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned. Their chapters shed light on a range of gender-related issues, from inheritance to money-lending to illegitimacy, but also make an important methodological contribution by displaying (and discussing) a range of methodological perspectives that exemplify the breadth and range of this discipline, which links history, gender studies, philosophy, literary studies, and law.

336 pages, Hardcover

First published December 24, 2012

About the author

Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Law School and the Philosophy Department. Among her many awards are the 2018 Berggruen Prize, the 2017 Don M. Randel Award for Humanistic Studies from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the 2016 Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy.

Reviews

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am not an academic, but I found this collection of critical essays very mixed indeed. And maybe that is the point. Nicola Lacey's piece titled "Could He Forgive Her? Gender, Agency and Women's Criminality in the novels of Anthony Trollope" very interesting indeed. Four pages of notes provide a great resource for more reading on this topic--developing the thesis that, although his novels are full of strong female characters, he was ambivalent towards their independence. There is a section entitled "Trollope's Trollops." If a woman was too independent, she was often punished. I really enjoyed a few other essays, and they are all most informative.