19th Century Marriage | digitales.com.au

19th century marriage - happens. can

Thanks to James Heffernan, founder and editor-in-chief of Review 19 for sharing this review with readers of the Victorian Web. Godfrey is most interested in the "provocative scenarios for theorizing gender and power" 5 that this literary trope offers; she "chose the nineteenth century as the scope of this book because it offers a unique period of gender disruption and anxiety, but the patterns of exchange that its texts reveal can inform our larger understanding of age as a fundamental marker of gender" Challenging Eve Sedgwick and Gayle Rubin, who stress women's passivity in homosocial exchanges, Godfrey emphasizes "the importance of female sexual desire" 7 in the January-May triangulation of older man, younger woman, and younger man. Beginning with Chaucer's Wife of Bath, Godfrey's first chapter usefully traces a literary genealogy for the January-May marriage in British literature. Moving from Chaucer through Shakespeare and Restoration comedies to the Romantics and Victorians, Godfrey illuminates familiar texts in unexpected ways. Her commentary upon Othello and Desdemona's tragedy focuses upon age and gender anxiety rather than upon race; Godfrey argues that "the adaptation of the theme for tragedy rather than comedy.