Jean Arnold explores the role material objects play in the cultural cohesion of the West, arguing that gems symbolized the most closely held beliefs of the Victorians and thus can be considered "prisms of culture." Her close readings of works by...
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Jean Arnold explores the role material objects play in the cultural cohesion of the West, arguing that gems symbolized the most closely held beliefs of the Victorians and thus can be considered "prisms of culture." Her close readings of works by Wilkie Collins, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope show jewels turned into symbols of power, personal relationships, and valued ideas that serve to bind the materialist culture together
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Cover; Contents; List of Figures; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction: Jewels and the Formation of Identity in Victorian Literature and Culture; 2 Perceiving Objects; 3 The Commodity Fetish in Thackeray's The Great Hoggarty Diamond; 4 Gift, Theft, and Exchange in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins; 5 Cameo Appearances: Aesthetics and Gender in Middlemarch; 6 Tactics and "Strate-Gems": Jewelry, Gender, and the Law in Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds; Afterword; Bibliography; Index
