Medieval imagery and nineteenth-century domesticity

My study examines moments in the text where nineteenth-century medievalism and the exploration of gender and domesticity intersect to interrogate middle-class society and perhaps, agitate for change. An imagery known for reinforcing the status quo, medievalism can also disrupt the boundaries that blighted domestic spaces. By manipulating the medieval conceits that were familiar to middle-class readers, the authors in this study: Anna Jameson, Thomas Love Peacock, Charles Dickens, Catherine Sinclair, and Charles Chesnutt; explore possible reconfigurations of the home.;This group is representative of authors who were not revivalists but who infused their work with medievalism that engaged problematic domestic issues. They recognized the immediacy of historical exoticism for their middle-class readers and used it to pose solutions for issues that threatened the domesticity that Victorians privileged. By providing slight, but essential, modifications to medievalized models used for respectable women, such as the angel or the saint, the authors engaged issues such as middle-class female employment and incompatible spouses without offending class sensibilities.;My first chapter examines how Jameson taught Victorians to view medieval art and see women differently. She exchanged the damsel-in-distress for a feminine knight who could work with men for the common good. Chapter two argues that Peacock disrupts the woman as saint model through the image of Saint Catherine of Alexandria. My next chapter engages Dickens whose medievalism functions in opposition to Jameson's. Rather than depicting cooperative communities, his imagery depicts failed domesticity. Sinclair's Beatrice and Chesnutt's The House Behind the Cedars are the topic of chapters four and five. Their focus on marriage and inheritance dissect vital questions of domesticity, race, and nationality. Chesnutt's households are set in the post Civil War American South while Sinclair's are found in a Scottish village "threatened" by Irish Catholics.;Each of the authors, though with different perspectives and agendas, used medievalism to engage domesticity. Their work expands our critical perception of domesticity and enlarges our conception of how the period internalized medieval conceits in gender relationships. Moreover, their reliance on medievalism to examine domesticity relied on several factors that coalesced during the nineteenth-century.