Greed, Generosity, and other Problems with Unmarried Women's Property

Bibliographic Data

ID10866907
AuthorsJill Rappoport (corresponding author), Jill Rappoport Jill Rappoport
Year2016
Volume58
Issue4
Pages636
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueVictorian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0042-5222 • E-ISSN: 1527-2052
PublisherIndiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2979/victorianstudies.58.4.02
OpenAlexW2565269474
LanguageEN
References cited14

This essay examines how blood ties motivate the financial choices of several unmarried women in Anthony Trollope’s fiction. It both proposes a model for interpreting female economic agency that does not depend primarily upon sexual economies and suggests the significance of married women’s property reform for relationships outside of marriage. The punitive plotlines I examine in The Eustace Diamonds, Phineas Finn, Phineas Redux , and Can You Forgive Her? highlight the similar threats posed by single women’s greed and generosity. By challenging principles of inheritance and heterosexual exchange, depriving the very families they claim to help of support, and creating unacceptable burdens for their male kin, these characters underscore contemporary fears and fantasies about the intrafamilial stakes of women’s independent financial choices

Agency (philosophy · Beneficiary · Demographic economics · Economics · Generosity · Inheritance (genetic algorithm · Marriage market · Political science · Property (philosophy · Punitive damages · Social science · Sociology · American and British Literature Analysis · Gender Studies · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Short Stories in Global Literature

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