Title The social life of fluids : blood, milk, and water in the Victorian novel / Jules Law

Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2010

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 204 pages) Contents Introduction : dark ecologies : A tale of two cities and "The cow with the iron tail" -- Disavowing milk : psychic disintegration and domestic reintegration in Dickens's Dombey and son -- A river runs through him : Our mutual friend and the embankment of the Thames -- Perilous reversals : fluid exchange in George Eliot's early works -- Merging with others : destiny and flow in Daniel Deronda -- Tempted by the milk of another : the fantasy of limited circulation in Esther Waters -- Ever-widening circulations : Dracula and the fear of management Summary British Victorians were obsessed with fluids-with their scarcity and with their omnipresence. By the mid-nineteenth century, hundreds of thousands of citizens regularly petitioned the government to provide running water and adequate sewerage, while scientists and journalists fretted over the circulation of bodily fluids. In The Social Life of Fluids Jules Law traces the fantasies of power and anxieties of identity precipitated by these developments as they found their way into the plotting and rhetoric of the Victorian novel.Analyzing the expression of scientific understanding and the technological manipulation of fluids-blood, breast milk, and water-in six Victorian novels (by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Moore, and Bram Stoker), Law traces the growing anxiety about fluids in Victorian culture from the beginning of the sanitarian movement in the 1830s through the 1890s. Fluids, he finds, came to be regarded as the most alienable aspect of an otherwise inalienable human body, and, paradoxically, as the least rational element of an increasingly rationalized environment. Drawing on literary and feminist theory, social history, and the history of science and medicine, Law shows how fluids came to be represented as prosthetic extensions of identity, exposing them to contested claims of kinship and community and linking them inextricably to public spaces and public debates Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Criticism and interpretation Eliot, George, 1819-1880 -- Criticism and interpretation Moore, George, 1852-1933 -- Criticism and interpretation Stoker, Bram, 1847-1912. Dracula. SUBJECT Stoker, Bram, 1847-1912. Dracula Moore, George, 1852-1933 -- Criticism and interpretation Eliot, George, 1819-1880 -- Criticism and interpretation Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 -- Criticism and interpretation Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 fast Eliot, George, 1819-1880 fast Moore, George, 1852-1933 fast Dracula (Stoker, Bram) fast Subject English fiction -- 19th century -- History and criticism Body fluids in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- European -- English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh. Body fluids in literature English fiction Körperflüssigkeit -- Motiv -- Roman -- englischer. Roman -- englischer -- Motiv -- Körperflüssigkeit. Literatur. Englisch. Motiv. Körperflüssigkeit. Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780801462382 080146238X

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