Accidents at Home in the Victorian Novel
Auguries, Probability, and Charlotte Yonge's Household Advice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12410784 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tamara S Wagner (0000-0002-7537-9815, Nanyang Technological University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 483-511 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Victorian Literature and Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1060-1503 • E-ISSN: 1470-1553 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1060150322000274 |
| OpenAlex | W4390586471 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 22 |
This article explores the narrative functions of domestic accidents in Victorian fiction. Taking Charlotte Yonge's The Pillars of the House (1873) as a case study, it critically parses how popular fiction engaged with competing explanations of how or why accidents occur. As a new understanding of chance, risk, and statistical likelihood in the nineteenth century began to reshape the representation of accidents, narratives navigated shifting concepts of personal misfortune, of providence and poetic justice, as well as of probability. In Yonge's novel, domestic accidents demonstrate risk-management at home, promoting a concept that complicates narrative expectations both of divine punishment and of conventional conversion patterns
Art · Criminology · Literature · Misfortune · Narrative · Poetry · Political science · Punishment (psychology · Representation (politics · Sociology · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Psychology · Social Psychology
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |