Mobility and Modernity in Women's Novels, 1850s-1930s, Women Moving Dangerously (Innbundet (stive permer))

WENDY PARKINS is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Otago, New Zealand. She is the co-author, with Geoffrey Craig, of Slow Living (2006), the editor of Fashioning the Body Politic (2001) and has published a number of journal articles on women's modernity.

Novels by women writers from the period of the 1850s to the 1930s frequently represent women in motion, whether travelling the Continent, leaving the family home for an independent life, walking through the countryside, or simply catching the train. Examining these diverse representations of mobility, this book argues it is possible to consider women's place in modernity and the opportunities for (or limitations on) women's agency in this period. Much previous discussion of women's mobility in modernity has focused almost exclusively on women's increasing movement within urban contexts but this book widens the frame to consider the mobility of the female subject beyond the city as well in order to demonstrate the complexities of the position and agency of modern women.

Contents Acknowledgements Introduction: Modernity, Mobility and Women's Agency Home and Away: North and South and Adam Bede Travelling Companions: Moths and Miss Brown The New Woman's 'Wheels of Daily Existence': The Daughters of Danaus and Red Pottage Street Politics: The Convert and Clash Moving Dangerously: Cold Comfort Farm and To the North Destinations of the Modern Woman Endnotes Bibliography Index