The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture
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Author Description
Introduction -- What Is A Victorian Baby? -- Nineteenth-century Infancy: Historiography -- The Iconic Baby -- The Victorian Baby: Lived Realities And Their Narratives -- Chapter Outline -- 1: 'a Very Moloch Of A Baby': Left To Be Minded In Dickens -- 'a Dead Hand At A Baby': Comical And Savage Babies In The Haunted Man -- 'myriads Of Peepies Yet To Come': Bleak House's Comical Toddler -- 'the Genuine Minder': Child Care Business In Our Mutual Friend -- 2: 'how I Managed': Victorian Infant Care Instructions -- Victorian Baby Care In Print: Instruction Manuals, Mothers' Magazines, And Baby Diaries -- Eliza Warren's Textual Mothering: Infant Protagonists As Case Studies -- The Baby Of Victorian Instruction Manuals Reconsidered -- 3: Competitive Infant Care In Domestic Fiction: Charlotte Yonge And The Unidealized Baby -- 'this Very Anxiety Is The Best Pledge': Charlotte Yonge's Everyday Mothering -- Substitute Mothers And Dying Babies In The Daisy Chain -- When They Want A Supposititious Heir': Yonge's Kidnapping Stories -- 4: Sensational Babies -- The Sensational Victorian Nursery: Mrs Henry Wood's Parenting Advice -- Anxious Maternity As A Source Of Sensation -- Danesbury House: Cautionary Parenting Narratives As Sensation Fiction -- George Canterbury's Will: The Victorian Nursery As A Crime Site -- A 'paragon Of Infantine Grace And Intelligence': The Return Of Braddon's Slaughtered Innocents -- The Trail Of The Serpent: The Baby As Victim And Avenger -- Weavers And Weft: Sensational Twists To Plots Of Infanticide And Maternal Suffering -- Wilkie Collins's Sensational Maternal Bonds -- Breastfeeding In Victorian Fiction -- Sentimentalised Babyhood And The Illegitimate Infant -- The Dead Secret: Detecting The Birth Mother -- The Fallen Leaves: Sensationalizing Commodified Babyhood -- The Legacy Of Cain: Adoption In Sensation Fiction -- Sensationalized Baby-worship. Tamara S. Wagner.. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. Electronic Reproduction. Oxford Availab
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This work investigates how the Victorian baby functioned as a complex cultural symbol and a focal point for anxieties regarding domesticity, class, and morality in nineteenth-century literature and instructional media. Tamara S. Wagner, a scholar specializing in Victorian literature and culture, utilizes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze how infants were represented in both popular fiction and contemporary childcare manuals. By examining the tension between idealized notions of childhood and the lived realities of infant care, the author argues that the 'Victorian baby' was a constructed figure used to navigate shifting social norms and anxieties about maternal responsibility.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of infant representation in works by Charles Dickens, Charlotte Yonge, Mrs. Henry Wood, and Wilkie Collins.
- Examination of nineteenth-century childcare manuals, mothers' magazines, and personal baby diaries.
- Exploration of themes including infanticide, adoption, breastfeeding, and the commodification of babyhood.
Scope Limits
- The study focuses primarily on British literary and print culture rather than a global or comparative history of infancy.
- The analysis does not provide a comprehensive medical history of Victorian pediatrics, focusing instead on the cultural and narrative implications of infant care.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Scholars in the field of Victorian studies frequently cite this text for its detailed synthesis of domestic fiction and historical instructional literature. It is regarded as a rigorous examination of how nineteenth-century authors utilized the figure of the infant to drive narrative tension and social commentary.
Page Count:
320
Publication Date:
2020-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press,
ISBN-10:
0192599984
ISBN-13:
9780192599988
History
Cultural History
English literature
In literature
Literary Criticism
Sociology
Gender Studies
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