Beth Newman is an associate professor of English at Southern Methodist University, where she was named a University Distinguished Teaching Professor. A founding member of the Dallas Interdisciplinary Psychoanalytic Consortium, she is the author of several articles on nineteenth-century fiction as well as the editor of Jane Eyre for Bedford Books.
Listed in: Victorian Studies · Gender Studies · British Literature · Literary Criticism · Psychology · Women’s Studies · Literature
Subjects on Display
Psychoanalysis, Social Expectation, and Victorian Femininity
By Beth Newman
Subjects on Display explores a recurrent figure at the heart of many nineteenth-century English novels: the retiring, self-effacing woman who is conspicuous for her inconspicuousness. Beth Newman draws upon both psychoanalytic theory and recent work in social history as she argues that this paradoxical figure, who often triumphs over more dazzling, eye-catching rivals, is a response to the forces that made personal display a vexed issue for Victorian women.
