Victorian Scandals: Representations of Gender and Class.

Publication: The Journal of English and Germanic Philology

Publication Date: 01-APR-94

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COPYRIGHT 1994 University of Illinois Press

Edited by Kristine Ottesen Garrigan. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. Pp. xi + 337; 12 illustrations. $39.95.

Together with a foreword by the editor and an afterword by Thais E. Morgan the ten essays in this volume enliven and challenge our understanding of Victorian England. "Gender" in the subtitle "signs" the predominantly feminist perspective of the contributors and prepares us for a predictable register of academic language. Despite my reservations about the style of several of the essays, the volume as a whole makes a significant contribution to nineteenth-century social history.

In "|Intended Only for the Husband': Gender, Class, and the Provision for Divorce in England, 1858-1868," Gail L. Savage on the basis of a one-in-ten sampling of petitions filed before the Divorce Court from 1858 to 1868 reaches unexpected conclusions: namely, that both women and the shopkeeper/artisan class...

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