Parallel Lives (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Phyllis Rose
- First Published: 1983
- Type of Work: History
- Time of Work: The nineteenth century
- Setting: Great Britain
- Principal Characters: Jane Welsh, Thomas Carlyle, Effie Gray, John Ruskin, John Everett Millais, Harriet Taylor, John Stuart Mill, Catherine Hogarth, Charles Dickens, Marian Evans, George Henry Lewes
- Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography, Sociology
- Subjects: Gender roles, Authors or writers, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Adultery, Divorce, Fratricide, parricide, or filicide, Conformity, Gossip, Happiness, Victorian era or Victorianism
- Locales: Great Britain
Form and Content
Inspired by The Mausoleum Book—Sir Leslie Stephen’s marital memoir prompted by James Anthony Froude’s biographical portrait of Thomas Carlyle as insensitive husband—Parallel Lives explores the relationships of five Victorian writers to their mates. Through these marriages, or parallel lives, Phyllis Rose examines not only the power dynamics between romantic partners but also the way in which each union “seems . . . a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent.” Her political...
[The entire page is 2099 words long]
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